Reply to the Lady of Sajiki
IHAVE received the white unlined robe1 and the length of cloth that you sent.
There are ten types of offerings that one may make to the Lotus Sutra, or ten ways of making offerings.2 Among these is the offering of clothing. It may be of any kind, but this is an offering of clothing to be worn by the priests. And regarding the causes that made such an offering possible, it is stated that the person making the offering made offerings in the past to a hundred thousand million Buddhas, and therefore is now able to draw close to the Lotus Sutra.
I just mention here the general outline of the doctrine on offerings. I am not feeling well at the moment and so will not go into details.
With my deep respect,
Nichiren
The seventeenth day of the second month
Reply to the lady of Sajiki
Background
The lady of Sajiki was a follower of Nichiren Daishonin who lived in Kamakura, Sajiki being an area in that city. Information about her is scant, but in the only other extant letter he addressed to her, The Offering of an Unlined Robe (I, p. 533), the Daishonin refers to her husband as Hyōe no Saemon.
This reply was written at Minobu on the seventeenth day of the second month in what is thought to have been 1278. Like his earlier letter to her, this one is a response to an offering of an unlined robe she had sent him. But unlike that previous letter, which emphasizes the great benefit deriving from such an offering, here the Daishonin stresses the profound past causes that have enabled her to take faith in the Lotus Sutra and make offerings to it. Regarding the date of this letter, another view places it in 1281.
Notes
1. An unlined robe for summer use, made of hemp cloth or crinkled silk.
2. Chapter ten of the Lotus Sutra says: “If there are persons who embrace, read, recite, expound, and copy the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law, even only one verse, and look upon this sutra with the same reverence as they would the Buddha, presenting various offerings of flowers, incense, necklaces, powdered incense, paste incense, incense for burning, silken canopies, streamers and banners, clothing and music, and pressing their palms together in reverence, then, Medicine King, you should understand that such persons have already offered alms to a hundred thousand million Buddhas and in the place of the Buddhas have fulfilled their great vow, and because they take pity on living beings they have been born in this human world.”