R eply respectfully sent to the lay priest Takahashi.
O UR compassionate father Shakyamuni Buddha, the World- Honored One of Great Enlightenment, made his appearance in central India at a time when the human life span measured a hundred years,1 and set forth a lifetime of sacred teachings for the sake of all living beings. The people living at the same time as Shakyamuni Buddha had already formed profound karmic ties with him in the past; hence they were able to attain the way. Shakyamuni, however, was so concerned about how to save those who would live after his passing that he put his eighty thousand sacred teachings into written form. Then, among his lifetime of sacred teachings, he entrusted the Hinayana sutras to the Venerable Mahakashyapa, and both the Mahayana sutras and the Lotus and Nirvana sutras to Bodhisattva Manjushri.
But the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo, the heart of the eighty thousand sacred teachings and the core of the Lotus Sutra, he neither entrusted to Mahakashyapa or Ananda, nor transferred to great bodhisattvas such as Manjushri, Universal Worthy, Perceiver of the World’s Sounds, Maitreya, Earth Repository, or Nagarjuna. Even
though these great bodhisattvas hoped that he would do so and requested it of him, the Buddha would not consent. He summoned forth a venerable old man called Bodhisattva Superior Practices from the depths of the earth,2 and then, in the presence of the Buddha Many Treasures and the Buddhas of the ten directions, from within the tower adorned with the seven kinds of treasures, the Thus Come One Shakyamuni entrusted the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo to him.
The reason for this was as follows. All the beings who would live after the Buddha’s passing would be the children of the Buddha, and he felt compassion for all of them equally. But, just as it is customary for a physician to prescribe medicine according to the particular ailment he is treating, so for the first five hundred years after his passing, the Buddha decreed that Mahakashyapa, Ananda, and others should give all living beings the medicine of the Hinayana sutras. For the following five-hundred- year period, he decreed that the bodhisattvas Manjushri, Maitreya, Nagarjuna, and Vasubandhu should bestow upon all living beings the medicine of Mahayana sutras such as the Flower Garland, Mahavairochana, and Wisdom sutras. And for the period of the Middle Day of the Law, a thousand years after his passing, he decreed that Bodhisattva
