N OW, in the second year of Koan (1279), cyclical sign tsuchinoto-u, it has been twenty-seven years since I first proclaimed this teaching at Seicho- ji temple. It was at the hour of the horse [noon] on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month in the fifth year of Kencho (1253), cyclical sign mizunoto-ushi, on the southern side of the image hall in the Shobutsu-bo of Seicho-ji temple in Tojo Village. Tojo is now a district, but was then a part of Nagasa District of Awa Province. Here is located what was once the second, but is now the country’s most important center founded by Minamoto no Yoritomo, the general of the right, to supply provisions for the shrine of the Sun Goddess. The Buddha fulfilled the purpose of his advent in a little over forty years, the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai took about thirty years, and the Great Teacher Dengyo, some twenty years. I have spoken repeatedly of the indescribable persecutions they suffered during those years. For me it took twenty-seven years, and the great persecutions I faced during this period are well known to you all.
The Lotus Sutra reads, “Since hatred and jealousy toward this sutra abound even when the Thus Come One is in the world, how much more will this be so after his passing?”1 The Thus Come One Shakyamuni suffered innumerable persecutions: For ninety days
he was forced to eat horse fodder; a huge boulder was dropped on him, and though it missed him, his toe was injured and bled; a group of eight monks led by Sunakshatra, in their conduct appearing to be the Buddha’s disciples, but in spirit siding with the non-Buddhist teachers, watched every moment of the day and night for a chance to kill him; King Virudhaka killed countless members of the Shakya clan; and King Ajatashatru had innumerable disciples of the Buddha trampled to death by mad elephants and subjected the Buddha to a series of severe trials. Such are the minor persecutions that correspond to the time “when the Thus Come One is in the world.”
Neither Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, T’ien-t’ai, nor Dengyo encountered any of the still greater persecutions that the Buddha had predicted would occur “after his passing.” If one were to say that they were not votaries of the Lotus Sutra, how could they not have been? On the other hand, if one were to say that they were its votaries, without their having shed any blood—as the Buddha did—and even more so, without trials greater than the Buddha’s, it would be as if the sutra passages were empty, and the Buddha’s teachings would have already become great lies.
In these twenty-seven years, how
