I HAVE received the offerings that you sent for the forty-ninth-day ceremony marking the passing of your son, the late Nanjo Shichiro Goro. As noted on the list, they consist of two strings of coins, one horseload of polished rice, one horseload of yams, pounded bean curd, konnyaku,1 one basket of persimmons, fifty citrons, and other items. For the sake of your son’s repose, I have recited the entire Lotus Sutra once and the verse section of its “Life Span” chapter several times, and chanted the daimoku hundreds or thousands of times.
The sutra known as the Lotus Sutra is a scripture that has no match among all the sacred teachings of the Buddha’s lifetime. And, as indicated by its words “between Buddhas,”2 it can only be understood between one Buddha and another. Those at the stage of near- perfect enlightenment or below, on down to ordinary mortals, cannot fathom it. This is why Bodhisattva Nagarjuna stated in his Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom that persons below the level of Buddha should simply have faith, and in that way they can attain Buddhahood.
In the “Teacher of the Law” chapter in the fourth volume of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha states, “Medicine King, now I say to you, I have preached various sutras, and among those sutras the
Lotus is the foremost!” In the fifth volume it says, “Manjushri, this Lotus Sutra is the secret storehouse of the Buddhas, the Thus Come Ones. Among the sutras, it holds the highest place.”3 In the seventh volume we read, “So this Lotus Sutra is likewise. Among all the sutras, it holds the highest place.”4 We also read, “It [this Lotus Sutra] shines the brightest. . . . so this sutra is the most honored.”5
These passages of scripture do not represent some doctrine that I have put forward on my own. They are the truthful words of the Buddha, and hence it is impossible that they could be in error.
If someone born a commoner should claim to stand equal to a samurai, he would surely be faulted. And how much more so if he should claim that he is equal to the ruler of the nation, or even superior to the ruler! Not only would he himself be punished, but his father and mother and his wife and children would be made to suffer as well. It is like the case of a great fire that burns down houses, or of a great tree that, in falling, brings down the little trees around it as well.
It is the same with the Buddhist teachings. People who rely on the various sutras expounded in the Flower Garland, Agama, Correct and Equal, and Wisdom periods, such as the Maha
