The Refutation of the Three Great Teachers Chapter5
Nichiren
Question: Who are these three great teachers you speak of?
Answer: The three great teachers are Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō.
Objection: What crime have these three great teachers committed, that you say that all the people in Japan are the ones spoken of in the sutra passage as being destined to “enter the Avīchi hell” because of them?
Answer: These three great teachers were men who abided by the Mahayana and Hinayana precepts. To all appearance they were men of wisdom, scholars of both the exoteric and esoteric teachings, who observed all the eighty thousand rules of behavior9 or the three thousand rules of conduct. Therefore in Japan, for over four hundred years10 all, from the sovereign on down to the common people, have looked up to them as though they were the sun and moon, have paid them honor as though they were the World-Honored One himself.
Indeed, they seemed to possess virtue loftier than Mount Sumeru, and wisdom that was deeper than the blue sea. But there was one thing regrettable about them. When they came to compare the Lotus Sutra with the Mahāvairochana Sutra of the True Word teachings and to pass judgment on their relative worth, they declared that the Lotus Sutra represented “a doctrine of childish theory,”11 that it should be ranked in second or third place,12 that Shakyamuni, the lord of teachings, who preached it, deserved to be called one who was still “in the region of darkness,”13 or that its practitioners deserved to be called “thieves.”14
In the case of the four kinds of believers numbering six hundred forty thousand million nayutas, who lived in the age after the passing of the Buddha Great Adornment, though they all differed in the actions they had done and the causes they had created, they all entered the hell of incessant suffering along with their four teachers, Shore of Suffering and the others. And the countless number of followers who lived in the Latter Day of the Law of the Buddha Lion Sound King, though they differed in social standing, because they were followers of the monk Superior Intent, all alike fell into the great citadel of the Avīchi hell. The same thing will happen to the people of Japan today.
During the years of the Enryaku and Kōnin eras, the Great Teacher Dengyō admonished the priests and lay supporters of the six schools of Nara, saying: “The place that the teachers of these doctrines fall into in their next existence the disciples will likewise fall into, and the place the disciples fall into the lay supporters will likewise fall into. Should one not therefore take care to abide by the teachings clearly enunciated by the golden mouth of the Buddha? Should one not?”15
Notes
9. Rules of behavior for Mahayana bodhisattvas to observe. The figure “eighty thousand” is not to be taken literally but simply indicates a large number, innumerable, or all. For three thousand rules of conduct mentioned subsequently, see Glossary.
10. This refers to the period from 823, when Emperor Saga granted Tō-ji temple to Kōbō, to the time when this letter was written.
11. The Precious Key to the Secret Treasury.
12. The “second place” refers to the interpretation set forth by Shan-wu-wei and espoused by Jikaku and Chishō, that the Lotus Sutra and the Mahāvairochana are equal in terms of principle but that the latter is superior in terms of practice. The “third place” refers to the view formulated by Kōbō in The Treatise on the Ten Stages of the Mind, in which he ranks the Mahāvairochana Sutra in first place, the Flower Garland Sutra in second place, and the Lotus Sutra in third place.
13. Precious Key to the Secret Treasury.
14. A Comparison of Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism.
15. An Essay on the Protection of the Nation.