The Selection of the Time
Nichiren, disciple of Shakyamuni Buddha
Background
This treatise, counted among Nichiren Daishonin’s five major writings, was written at Minobu in the first year of Kenji (1275) and was entrusted to a believer named Yui who lived in Nishiyama of Suruga Province. As with a number of his other important works, it is written in the form of a dialogue between the Daishonin and a hypothetical questioner.
The Daishonin had met and remonstrated with Hei no Saemon, who represented the regent Hōjō Tokimune, in the fourth month of 1274, after returning from his exile to Sado. When this, his third and last admonition to the government, went unheeded, the Daishonin left to live in the forest of Mount Minobu. In the tenth month of 1274, Mongol forces launched an invasion of Japan just as the Daishonin had predicted to Hei no Saemon during their meeting. News of the invasion, the first in Japan’s history, came as a profound shock. Though the invasion ultimately failed, people were terrified that the Mongols would seize the next opportunity to launch a second attack. It was amid this uneasy situation that the Daishonin wrote The Selection of the Time.
“Time” in the title, The Selection of the Time, refers to the Latter Day of the Law, when the “pure Law” of Shakyamuni’s teaching was to become obscured and lost and the “great pure Law” of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo was to be spread.
Nichiren Daishonin set forth elsewhere five guides or criteria for the propagation of Buddhism: namely, a correct understanding of (1) the teaching, (2) the people’s capacity, (3) the time, (4) the country, and (5) the sequence of propagation. The Selection of the Time places the greatest emphasis upon the factor of the time.
In this writing, the Daishonin refers to the five five-hundred-year periods described in the Great Collection Sutra to outline the events of Buddhism over the first twenty-five hundred years following Shakyamuni’s passing. (1) In the first five hundred years of the Former Day of the Law, Mahākāshyapa, Ānanda, and others propagated the Hinayana teachings in India. (2) The second five hundred years of the Former Day saw the advent of Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, and others, who propagated the provisional Mahayana teachings. (3) In the first five hundred years of the Middle Day of the Law, the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai appeared in China and propagated the theoretical teaching of the Lotus Sutra. (4) The second five hundred years of the Middle Day saw the Great Teacher Dengyō propagate the theoretical teaching in Japan and establish the ordination platform for administering Mahayana precepts. (5) The first five hundred years of the Latter Day is the time when, according to the Great Collection Sutra, “the pure Law will become obscured and lost.” Nichiren Daishonin proclaims that during this period the great pure Law will be spread far and wide throughout the entire world.
Nichiren Daishonin then states that one who spreads the teachings of the Lotus Sutra in the Latter Day of the Law is the votary of the Lotus Sutra who possesses the three virtues of sovereign, teacher, and parent.
The Daishonin describes the Law that will spread in the Latter Day as follows: “Unbelievable as it may seem, there clearly appears in the text of the Lotus Sutra a correct Law that is supremely profound and secret, one that, though expounded in full by the Buddha, in the time since his passing has never yet been propagated by Mahākāshyapa, Ānanda, Ashvaghosha, Nāgārjuna, Asanga, or Vasubandhu, nor even by T’ien-t’ai or Dengyō” .
The latter half of the treatise exposes the errors of the Nembutsu, Zen, and True Word schools, pointing out these mistakes as the root causes of the calamities besetting Japan at that time. In On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land, the Daishonin focused his criticism on the Nembutsu doctrine as a primary source of disaster. In The Selection of the Time, he reveals, among others, the fallacies of the True Word school whose leading priests had by this time won the confidence of the ruling class, who in turn relied on the school to offer prayers for subduing enemies. The Daishonin points out the futility of such prayers by referring to the Mongol expeditionary force that had attacked Japan in 1274 and to the Jōkyū Disturbance of 1221, when the imperial court placed its faith in the True Word prayer rituals and was nonetheless defeated by the Kamakura government.
The Daishonin points out the doctrinal error of the True Word school. True Word patriarchs incorporated T’ien-t’ai’s doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life into their own teaching and then asserted that it is to be found in the Mahāvairochana Sutra, the basic scripture of their own school. They even went so far as to accuse T’ien-t’ai of stealing the supreme doctrine of the True Word. They asserted the superiority of the Mahāvairochana Sutra over the Lotus Sutra, and of Mahāvairochana Buddha, who appears in that sutra but is not an actual historical figure, over Shakyamuni Buddha.
Then he declares, “In China and Japan in the past, sages of outstanding wisdom and ability have from time to time appeared. But none, as an ally of the Lotus Sutra, has faced such powerful enemies within his country as have I, Nichiren. From the facts present before your very eyes, it should be apparent that Nichiren is the foremost person in the entire land of Jambudvīpa” .
The Daishonin next attributes the underlying cause of calamities to failure of the nation’s ruler to honor the Lotus Sutra and its votary.
The Buddhist and non-Buddhist texts say that a sage is one who knows the future. By this account, the Daishonin is a great sage, because, as he says, “Three times now I have gained distinction by having such knowledge” . The predictions he made on the three occasions he remonstrated with the authorities all came true. In his third remonstration, he said to Hei no Saemon, “Even if it seems that, because I was born in the ruler’s domain, I follow him in my actions, I will never follow him in my heart” . This can be taken as a bold expression of freedom of thought and belief, a rare statement in thirteenth-century Japan.
He further says that although he is a mere common mortal, because he is the votary of the Lotus Sutra, he deserves to be called the foremost Great Man in Japan. “Great Man” is one of the titles of a Buddha.
In response to this statement, the questioner in this writing criticizes him, saying that his arrogance is beyond measure. The Daishonin replies, in effect, that what seems like arrogance on his part is actually sublime conviction in the superiority of the Law that he embraces. Then he turns to his followers: “Therefore, I say to you, my disciples, try practicing as the Lotus Sutra teaches, exerting yourselves without begrudging your lives! Test the truth of Buddhism now” .
In conclusion, the Daishonin declares that he himself has lived up to the passage in the “Encouraging Devotion” chapter of the Lotus Sutra: “We care nothing for our bodies or lives but are anxious only for the unsurpassed way.” That is, in order to reveal the correct teaching, he has struggled continually without begrudging his life in the face of persecution by the three powerful enemies—especially those of the third group, respected priests who induce secular authorities to persecute the votaries of the Lotus Sutra.
Chapter1（Explaining that time is the key)
WHEN it comes to studying the teachings of Buddhism, one must first learn to understand the time. In the past, when the Buddha Great Universal Wisdom Excellence appeared in the world, he remained for a period of ten small kalpas without preaching a single sutra. Thus the Lotus Sutra says, “Having taken his seat, ten small kalpas pass.”1 And later, “The Buddha knew that the time had not yet come, and though they entreated, he sat in silence.”2
Likewise Shakyamuni, the lord of teachings in the present world, spent the first forty and more years of his preaching life without expounding the Lotus Sutra, because, as the sutra says, “the time to preach so had not yet come.”3
Lao Tzu remained in his mother’s womb for eighty years, waiting to be born,4 and Bodhisattva Maitreya abides in the inner court of the Tushita heaven for a period of 5,670 million years, awaiting the time for his advent in the world. The cuckoo sings when spring is waning, the cock waits until the break of day to crow. If even these lowly creatures have such an understanding of time, then how can a person who wishes to practice the teachings of Buddhism fail to make certain what time it is?
Notes
1. Lotus Sutra, chap. 7.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., chap. 2.
4. The Sutra of the Conversion of Barbarians by Lao Tzu states that Lao Tzu was white-haired at birth and had the appearance of an old man.