I HAVE read your letter carefully. In the past as well, when I was exiled to the province of Izu on account of the Lotus Sutra, I rejoiced at heart, though, when I say so, I suppose people will think that I am speaking immodestly.
If, since the beginningless past, I had ever incurred blame for the sake of the Lotus Sutra, whether I was sincerely devoted to it or not, would I then have been born in this lifetime as a mere ordinary mortal? [Therefore, when I was condemned to exile,] though I felt downcast for a while, seeing that it was for the sake of the Lotus Sutra, I was also delighted, for I thought that I might thereby eradicate to some small extent the offenses of my previous existences. However, the various grave sins of the ten evil acts, the four major offenses, the six major offenses, the eight major offenses, the ten major offenses, the five sins1 that condemn one to the hell of incessant suffering, the slander of the correct teaching, and the sin of incorrigible disbelief accumulated since the beginningless past must stand taller than a huge mountain, run deeper than the great sea.
When it comes to the five cardinal sins, the commission of even one of them will condemn one to the hell of incessant suffering for the space of an entire kalpa. A kalpa is the length of
time it takes for the life span of human beings to decrease from eighty thousand years to ten years, decreasing at the rate of one year every hundred years, and then to increase again to eighty thousand years at the same rate.2 One who murders one’s parent will fall into the hell of incessant suffering and undergo its terrible pain without a moment’s respite for such a period of time.
As for the person who slanders the Lotus Sutra, though he may not be serious at heart, if he so much as manifests the outward appearance of animosity, disparages the sutra even in jest, or makes light, not of the sutra itself, but of those who act in its name, then, the sutra says, he will fall into the hell of incessant suffering for countless kalpas of the kind described above.
The people who cursed and struck Bodhisattva Never Disparaging at first behaved with such animosity, but later they took faith in him and became his followers, looking up to him and treating him with great respect, honoring him as the heavenly deities would the lord Shakra and standing in awe of him as we do the sun and moon. Despite this, the great offense of their initial slander was difficult to extinguish, so they were condemned to the great Avichi hell for a thousand kalpas and abandoned by the three treasures for two hundred million kalpas.
