Tokisuke himself was attacked and killed in Kyoto on the fifteenth. The “seventeenth” either was based on inaccurate information or else was a mistake that entered when the original document was copied.
5. Lotus-like Face Sutra.
6. Kanto refers to the Kamakura government.
7. Yasuhira refers to Fujiwara Yasuhira (1155–1189), the son of Fujiwara Hidehira, lord of the province of Mutsu in northeastern Japan. Yasuhira killed his brother and seized power for himself. Minamoto no Yoritomo, the Kamakura shogun, ordered him to kill Kuro Hogan Yoshitsune, Yoritomo’s brother, which he did to prove his loyalty. Later, however, Yoritomo had him executed to consolidate his own power in the northern part of Japan.
8. Lotus Sutra, chap. 13.
9. “Those who forgot the seeds of enlightenment” are individuals who, because of the slanders they have committed, do not remember that they received the seeds of Buddhahood from Shakyamuni Buddha numberless major world system dust particle kalpas ago.
10. According to the “Expedient Means” chapter of the Lotus Sutra, five thousand people— monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen— left the assembly as Shakyamuni began to preach about “the replacement of the three vehicles with the one vehicle,” because they supposed they had attained what they had not attained.
11. This is described in the “Parable of the Phantom City” chapter of the Lotus Sutra. Major world system dust particle kalpas ago, the Buddha Great Universal Wisdom Excellence preached the Lotus Sutra to his sixteen sons. These sons then preached the sutra to the people, some of whom took faith in it and attained enlightenment. The third group comprises those who heard the Lotus Sutra at that time, but did not take faith in it. And even though
they were reborn in Shakyamuni’s lifetime, they still were unable to believe in the Lotus Sutra.
12. Honen does not use these words in this particular form, however. Nichiren Daishonin took these words from The Nembutsu Chosen above All and put them together as a set.
13. Tao-ch’o’s Collected Essays on the World of Peace and Delight.
14. Shan-tao’s Praising Rebirth in the Pure Land.
15. Presumably a rephrasing of a passage in the Shuramgama Sutra (Sutra of the Resolute Meditation).
16. One of the five sacred mountains in China.
17. Lotus Sutra, chap. 13. This chapter actually refers only to “swords and staves.” “Rocks and tiles” is an interpolation from the “Never Disparaging” chapter.
18. Bhadrapala was the leader of the five hundred bodhisattvas involved in the persecution of Never Disparaging.
19. Eighteen elements: The comprehensive concept of the three interrelated categories: the six sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind), the six objects they perceive, and the six consciousnesses or the sense organs’ functions of perceiving the objects.
20. Based on a passage in The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom. The “ninetyfive” ways may be ascribable to the fact that there were ninety-five non-Buddhist schools during Shakyamuni’s day.
21. Kawanobe, Yamashiro, and Tokugyoji were followers of the Daishonin, said to have been imprisoned in a dungeon following the Tatsunokuchi Persecution.
22. A work written by Wu Ching during the T’ang dynasty. The work discusses the state of political affairs between the emperor and his subjects during the Chenkuan era (627–649).
