T’ien-t’ai and Dengyo, who ranked as highly as ministers and court nobles, did not propagate.
You may not know this, but the crow, the most despised of birds, can recognize omens of good and evil events that will occur during the year, which the eagle and the hawk cannot. A snake is no match for a dragon or an elephant, but it can foresee the coming of a flood seven days in advance. Even if Nagarjuna and T’ien-t’ai had not known the teaching that I propagate, if it is clear in light of the sutra, one should not doubt it. One who holds me in contempt and does not chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is like a baby who doubts its mother’s milk and refuses the breast, or a sick man who is suspicious of his physician and rejects the medicine prescribed for him. Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu realized this teaching but did not propagate it, perhaps because they knew that the time was not right, and that the people of their day had no capacity to understand it. Others most probably did not spread it because they were ignorant of it. Buddhism spreads according to
the time and the people’s capacity. Although I may not be worthy of this teaching, I expound it because the time is right.
Our contemporaries think of the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo only as a name, but this is not correct. It is the essence, that is, the heart of the Lotus Sutra. Chang-an stated, “Hence [T’ien-t’ai’s explanation of the title in] the preface conveys the profound meaning of the sutra. The profound meaning indicates the heart of the text.”7 According to this comment, Myoho-renge-kyo is neither the scriptural text nor its meaning, but the heart of the entire sutra. Those who seek the heart of the sutra apart from its title are as foolish as the turtle who sought the monkey’s liver outside the monkey,8 or the monkey who left the forest and sought fruit on the seashore.
The twenty-eighth day of the eleventh month in the third year of Kenji (1277), cyclical sign hinoto-ushi
To the lay priest Soya Jiro9
“This is what I heard” is the phrase that appears at the beginning of many sutras. The sutras are records of Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings that were committed first to memory and later to writing by his disciples. The above phrase, therefore, represents a testimony to the validity of what was about to be set down in writing in the form of a sutra, but here the Daishonin explains its more profound meaning. T’ien-t’ai said, “The word ‘this’ [of ‘This is what I heard’] indicates the essence of a doctrine heard from the Buddha.” The essence of each sutra is represented by
its title. And the title, or essence, of the Lotus Sutra, Myoho-renge-kyo, is Buddhism’s supreme teaching. Hence Miaolo explained T’ien-t’ai’s words, saying, “If ‘this’ is not the teaching that surpasses the eight teachings, then how can it be considered the teaching of this [Lotus] sutra?”
In this letter, Nichiren Daishonin emphasizes that Myoho-renge-kyo, the title of the Lotus Sutra, is the essence of not only the Lotus, but all the other sutras as well. He compares it to the main cord of a net, which gathers the “meshes of the eight teachings.” This
