practiced great good—such are the times we live in.
Moreover, you were born in the remote land of Japan, a tiny island country in the east separated by two hundred thousand ri of mountains and seas from the country of the Thus Come One’s birth. And you are a woman, burdened by the five obstacles and bound by the three obediences. How indescribably wonderful, therefore, that in spite of these hindrances you have been able to take faith in the Lotus Sutra!
Even the wise or the learned, such as those who have pored over all the sacred teachings propounded by the Buddha in the course of his lifetime, and who have mastered both the exoteric and esoteric doctrines, are these days abandoning the Lotus Sutra and instead reciting the Nembutsu. What good karma you must have formed in the past, then, to have been born a person able to recite even so much as a verse or a phrase of the Lotus Sutra!
When I read over your letter, I felt as though my eyes were beholding something rarer than the udumbara flower, something even scarcer than the one-eyed turtle encountering a floating log with a hollow in it that fits him exactly.5 Moved to heartfelt admiration, I thought that I would like to add just one word or one expression of my own rejoicing, endeavoring in this way to enhance your merit. I fear, however, that, as clouds darken the moon or as dust defiles a mirror, my brief and clumsy attempts at description will only serve to cloak and obscure the incomparably wonderful blessings you will receive, and the thought pains me. Yet, in response to your question, I could scarcely remain silent. Please understand that I am merely joining my one drop to the rivers and the oceans, or adding my torch to the sun and the moon, hoping in this way to increase even slightly the
volume of the water or the brilliance of the light.
First of all, when it comes to the Lotus Sutra, you should understand that, whether one recites all eight volumes, or only one volume, one chapter, one verse, one phrase, or simply the daimoku, or title, the blessings are the same. It is like the water of the great ocean, a single drop of which contains water from all the countless streams and rivers, or like the wish-granting jewel, which, though only a single jewel, can shower all kinds of treasures upon the wisher. And the same is true of a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, or a million such drops of water or such jewels. A single character of the Lotus Sutra is like such a drop of water or such a jewel, and the hundred million characters6 are like a hundred million such drops or jewels.
On the other hand, a single character of the other sutras, or the name of any of the various Buddhas, is like one drop of the water of a particular stream or river, or like only one stone from a particular mountain or a particular sea. One such drop does not contain the water of countless other streams and rivers, and one such stone does not possess the virtues that inhere in innumerable other kinds of stones.
Therefore, when it comes to the Lotus Sutra, it is praiseworthy to recite any chapter you have placed your trust in, whichever chapter that may be.
Generally speaking, among all the sacred teachings of the Thus Come One, none has ever been known to contain falsehoods. Yet when we consider the Buddhist teachings more deeply, we find that even among the Thus Come One’s golden words there exist various categories such as Mahayana and Hinayana, provisional and true teachings, and exoteric and esoteric doctrines. These distinctions arise from the sutras themselves, and accordingly, we find that they are roughly
