Why Present-Day NembutsuPractitioners Are Destined for the Hellof Incessant Suffering

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He took a country suited for the pure and perfect teaching and made it a country of the provisional teachings. It was as though, to persons accustomed to the flavor of ghee, he offered mere curdled milk or butter. Great, in truth, were the errors he committed!

Why Present-Day NembutsuPractitioners Are Destined for the Hellof Incessant Suffering

Background

Written by Āchārya Nichiren at Renge-ji temple in the hamlet of Hanabusa in Tōjō Village, Nagasa District, Awa Province, for Jōen-bō. The first year of Bun’ei [1264], cyclical sign kinoe-ne, ninth month, twenty-second day.

QUESTION: What is your reason for asserting that present-day practitioners of the Nembutsu are destined to fall into the hell of incessant suffering?

Answer: I base my reasoning on The Nembutsu Chosen above All by Hōnen.

Question: And what does this Nembutsu Chosen above All say?

Answer: During the Kennin era [1201–1204], when the Retired Emperor Gotoba exercised power, a comet appeared in the country of Japan, and its name was Hōnen, also known as Genkū. He wrote a work in one volume called Nembutsu Chosen above All, which runs to some sixty or more sheets of paper. It is divided by topic into sixteen sections, and in the first section he states that, according to The Collected Essays on the World of Peace and Delight by the Meditation Master Tao-ch’o, two categories of teachings are to be distinguished, the Sacred Way teachings and the Pure Land teachings.

The Sacred Way teachings include all the Hinayana and Mahayana sutras with the exception of the three Pure Land sutras. The designation “Sacred Way teachings” includes the various exoteric and esoteric Mahayana sutras, such as the Mahāvairochana Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, the Benevolent Kings Sutra, and the Golden Light Sutra, works that have been held in particular reverence by the imperial court, and all schools of Buddhism that honor any Buddha or bodhisattva other than Amida Buddha, among these the True Word school and the others that make up the eight schools that have been held in particular reverence by the imperial court. It is asserted that although these various sutras, Buddhas, and schools were appropriate for the capacities of persons living in the Former and Middle Days of the Law, now that the world has entered the Latter Day of the Law, not a single person who puts faith in them can hope to gain release from the sufferings of birth and death.

Hōnen also notes that the Dharma Teacher T’an-luan in his Commentary on “The Treatise on Rebirth in the Pure Land” distinguishes two types of practice, a difficult-to-practice way and an easy-to-practice way.

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The scholars of the three Hinayana schools, the Dharma Analysis Treasury school, the Establishment of Truth school, and the Precepts school, no longer thought, as the doctrines of these schools taught, that one should pass through the seven stages of worthiness and the three ways, cut off the illusions of thought and desire, and thereby achieve the goals of the two vehicle teachings. They simply practiced these Hinayana school teachings as a kind of introduction to the Mahayana doctrines and never believed that through them they could achieve the highest goal.

Likewise, those who practiced the teachings of the three provisional Mahayana schools abandoned the doctrine, taught by these schools, that living beings by their nature fall into five distinct groups,19 and instead sought to understand the wonderful insight expressed in the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life and the meditation on the five elements.20

In addition, the lay believers, who were not learned enough to distinguish between Mahayana and Hinayana, provisional and true teachings, all gave their exclusive allegiance to the scholars of the Lotus Sutra and True Word teachings and contributed alms for their support. Thus the entire land of Japan, unlike India and China, was in effect populated by people whose capacity was fitted exclusively for the pure and perfect teaching. Most likely they resembled in capacity the living beings who for eight years on Eagle Peak listened to the preaching of the Lotus Sutra.

In this light it would appear then that the three Pure Land teachers of China had only the capacity to understand the provisional Mahayana teachings. But Hōnen understood neither the capacity fitted for the pure and perfect teaching, nor the pure and perfect teaching itself, nor that this is a land suited for the pure and perfect teaching. Instead he took the Nembutsu, a practice taught in the Meditation Sutra and similar sutras, which are among the provisional Mahayana sutras, and, following the commentaries written by the three Pure Land teachers of China, who could not distinguish between provisional and true teachings, propagated it throughout this country of ours. To persons whose capacity fitted them for the true teaching he offered the provisional doctrines. He took a country suited for the pure and perfect teaching and made it a country of the provisional teachings. It was as though, to persons accustomed to the flavor of ghee, he offered mere curdled milk or butter. Great, in truth, were the errors he committed!

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Background

According to the heading of this letter, Nichiren Daishonin wrote this work at Renge-ji temple in his home province of Awa in 1264, some fifty days before the so-called Komatsubara Persecution, and addressed it to a priest named Jōen-bō.

Jōen-bō appears to have been associated with Renge-ji temple. The Daishonin, in his Letter to the Priests of Seichō-ji, wrote, “On the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month in the fifth year of Kenchō [1253], I pointed out the errors of the various schools for the first time to a priest called Jōen-bō and to some of the people on the southern side of the image hall in Dōzen-bō’s quarters at Seichō-ji temple in Tōjō Village of Awa Province” (I, p. 651). Thus, Jōen-bō was witness to the Daishonin’s declaration of his teaching. And from this, we can imagine that he had a close relationship with Dōzen-bō, the Daishonin’s childhood teacher, and the other priests of Seichō-ji. It has also been suggested that Renge-ji, where the Daishonin wrote this letter in the ninth month of 1264 and two months later tried to convert Dōzen-bō, was a branch temple of Seichō-ji. While Jōken-bō and Gijō-bō, priests of Seichō-ji, had become the Daishonin’s disciples, Jōen-bō apparently had yet to do so, though from the contents of this letter he appears to have respected the Daishonin and his teaching.

In this writing, Nichiren Daishonin focuses his criticism of the Pure Land teaching on the contents of The Nembutsu Chosen above All, the central work of Hōnen, the founder of the Pure Land school in Japan. He attributes the slander of the Law inherent in the Pure Land teaching to the errors made by Hōnen in this treatise. He points to the falsehood of statements such as the one by the Chinese Pure Land teacher Shan-tao, cited in this treatise, that not one person in a thousand can be saved by teachings other than the Pure Land teaching, and Hōnen’s assertion that people should, in effect, “discard, close, ignore, and abandon” teachings other than the three Pure Land sutras, including the Lotus Sutra. Such claims, the Daishonin asserts, cause people to abandon their faith in the Lotus Sutra, and thus constitute the grave offense of slandering the Law. In terms of the actual effects of such slander, he points to reports concerning the deaths of leading priests and high-ranking lay practitioners of the Nembutsu teaching. According to these, a number of such individuals experienced agony to the point of losing their minds—exhibiting a “crazed and disordered” state of mind, under the Pure Land school’s own definition—in their final hours. He contrasts this with the state of mind of practitioners of the Lotus Sutra who have died, indicating that they met death in a state of “right mindfulness.” He also emphasizes that the three Pure Land sutras fall into the category of provisional teachings that have no power to benefit people in the Latter Day of the Law.

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Notes

19. A reference to five natures (see Glossary).

20. An esoteric form of meditation intended to lead to the realization that self and environment are composed of the five elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and space; that the five parts of the body, namely, crown, face, chest, abdomen, and knees, are governed by the five syllables of the esoteric mantra, avarahakha; and that one’s own life is ultimately one with the five Buddhas who are embodiments of the five aspects of Mahāvairochana Buddha’s wisdom.

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