Yeh and Lo.’ Yeh is in Hsiang-chou and was the capital of the Ch’i and Wei dynasties. The founder of Zen caused Buddhism to flourish there and converted the people of the region. The Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai, out of deference to the people of his time, refrains from naming anyone specifically. Lo refers to the city of Lo-yang.”
The six-volume Parinirvana Sutra says, “The extreme is impossible to see. That is, the extremely evil deeds done by the icchantika are all but impossible to perceive.” Or, as Miao-lo has said, “The third [group] is the most formidable of all. This is because [the second and third ones are] increasingly harder to recognize for what they really are.”
Those without eyes, those with only one eye, and those with distorted vision cannot see these three types of enemies of the Lotus Sutra who have appeared at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law. But those who have attained a portion of the Buddha eye can see who they are. “They will address the rulers, high ministers, Brahmans, and householders.” And Tung-ch’un states, “These men will appeal to the government authorities, slandering the Law and its practitioners.”
In the past, when the Middle Day of the Law was coming to an end, Gomyo, Shuen, and other priests presented petitions to the throne in which they slandered the Great Teacher Dengyo. Now, at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law, Ryokan, Nen’a, and others drew up false documents and presented them to the shogunate. Are they not to be counted among the third group of enemies of the Lotus Sutra?
Nowadays the teachers of the Nembutsu address the “rulers, high ministers, Brahmans, and householders” who support the Tendai Lotus school, saying, “The principles of the Lotus Sutra are very profound, but our understanding is slight. The doctrine it teaches is
extremely deep; our capabilities are extremely shallow.” [ Just as Great Concentration and Insight says,] they “object that it pertains to the lofty realm of the sages, something far beyond the capacity of one’s own wisdom to comprehend.”
Again, the men of the Zen school say: “The Lotus Sutra is a finger pointing at the moon, but the Zen school is the moon itself. Once one has the moon, of what use is the finger? Zen is the mind of the Buddha. The Lotus Sutra is the word of the Buddha. After the Buddha had finished preaching the Lotus Sutra and all the other sutras, he held up a single flower and through this gesture conveyed his enlightenment to Mahakashyapa alone.201 As a token of this tacit communication, the Buddha presented Mahakashyapa with his own robe, which together with the enlightenment has been handed down through the twenty-eight patriarchs of India and so on through the six patriarchs of China.” For many years now, the whole country has been intoxicated and deceived by this kind of falsehood.
Again, the eminent priests of the Tendai and True Word schools, though nominally representatives of their respective schools, are in fact quite ignorant of their teachings. In the depths of their greed and out of fear of the courtiers and warriors, they compromise with the assertions of the Nembutsu and Zen followers and sing their praises. Long ago, Many Treasures Buddha and the various Buddhas who were emanations of Shakyamuni Buddha acknowledged their allegiance to the Lotus Sutra, saying that they would “make certain that the Law will long endure.” But now the eminent leaders of the Tendai school acknowledge the assertion that the doctrines of the Lotus Sutra are very profound but that human understanding is slight. As a result, the Lotus Sutra exists in Japan today in name
