The Refutation of the Three Great Teachers Chapter1
Nichiren
YOUR letter dated the nineteenth day of the seventh month reached me on the thirtieth of the same month. I will not for the moment comment on the state of worldly affairs. I simply wish to point out that, speaking of a person who goes against the Buddha’s teachings, volume two of the Lotus Sutra says, “When his life comes to an end he will enter the Avīchi hell.”1
Question: Just what sort of persons are meant by the word “he”?
Answer: A little before the passage quoted above, the sutra states, “I am the only person who can rescue and protect others, but though I teach and instruct them, they do not believe or accept my teachings.”2 It also says, “If a person fails to have faith . . .” And again, “Or perhaps he will scowl with knitted brows,” and “If this person . . . on seeing those who read, recite, copy, and uphold this sutra, should despise, hate, envy, or bear grudges against them, . . .”
Volume five says, “If with regard to this sutra one should harbor doubt and fail to believe, one will fall at once into the evil paths.”3 And volume eight says, “If there is anyone who disparages or makes light of them [those who uphold the Lotus Sutra], saying, ‘You are mere idiots! It is useless to carry out these practices—in the end they will gain you nothing!’”4
The “he” in the first passage quoted above therefore refers to persons such as these. For the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai in China, these passages referred to the leaders of the ten schools of Buddhism in northern and southern China5 in his time. And for the Great Teacher Dengyō of Japan, it is clear that these passages referred to eminent priests of the six schools of Nara. Now I, Nichiren, declare that these passages refer to the three Great Teachers Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō, as well as to San-chieh, Tao-ch’o, and Shan-tao.
Background
This letter dated the first day of the intercalary seventh month of 1281 was addressed to the lay priest Soya Jirō Kyōshin of Shimōsa Province.
That year the Mongol forces made their second attempt to invade Japan. In the fifth month, some forty thousand troops of the Yüan dynasty (the name of the Chinese dynasty under the Mongols) were dispatched from Korea, attacking the islands of Tsushima and Iki off the coast of Kyushu in southern Japan, and in the sixth month, some one hundred thousand more were sent from China to join them and attack Kyushu. Soya Kyōshin sent a letter dated the nineteenth day of the seventh month to the Daishonin, in which he very likely mentioned that he would be sent to the battleground. The Daishonin responds at the end of this letter: “Now you and I are joined together as teacher and lay supporter. But so long as you live, endowed with the sense organs and subject to the outflows of defilement, you must follow and obey the ruler of the nation. Thus you are going to face this present perilous situation, but I can hardly hold back my tears [thinking how your personal crisis will serve to relieve you of your past offenses].”
The Daishonin affirms that this calamity is a result of the entire nation’s slander of the correct Buddhist teaching, and the primary source of that slander was the three great teachers of the True Word doctrines, Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō. Hence the title of this writing, The Refutation of the Three Great Teachers.
With the threat of an invasion by the Mongols looming, both the leadership of the Kamakura shogunate and the imperial court had been relying on the esoteric True Word school and the esoteric tradition of the Tendai school to bring defeat upon the enemy.
In this context, the Daishonin begins this letter by citing a passage from the Lotus Sutra that states that those who slander the sutra will fall into the Avīchi hell, or the hell of incessant suffering. Destined for that hell, he says, are the Great Teachers Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō, and their followers, as well as the early patriarchs of such traditions as the Pure Land teachings and their followers. Because the people of Japan believe in the doctrines of these teachers and slander the Lotus Sutra, they are likewise destined for that hell.
He then poses a question: Among the people of Japan there are both good and bad, but why does he hold them all to be guilty of the same offense that condemns them equally? In response, he explains that, while distinctions may be made between acts of relatively minor good or evil, such distinctions pale in significance when compared with the fundamental evil act of slandering the Lotus Sutra, in which all the people of Japan engage.
Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō led the people to slander the Lotus Sutra by preaching that among Shakyamuni’s teachings the Lotus Sutra ranked second or third in relative superiority. The Daishonin points out that, though he has exposed the errors of these three teachers as well as the doctrines of other schools, the contemporary Buddhist scholars and teachers continue to adhere to their doctrines, hate him even more, and contrive to persecute him. He says such persecution of the votary of the Lotus Sutra constitutes an offense far greater than that committed by Devadatta, and for this reason, calamities of unprecedented scale have assailed the country. In closing, the Daishonin assures Kyōshin that, even if he is plunged into battle, “the realm of asuras,” he will definitely achieve Buddhahood. The Daishonin urges Kyōshin to aspire to meet him again in “the pure land of Eagle Peak.”
Notes
1. Lotus Sutra, chap. 3.
2. Ibid. The three other passages cited in this paragraph are from the same chapter.
3. Ibid., chap. 15.
4. Ibid., chap. 28.
5. See three schools of southern China and seven schools of northern China in Glossary.