His warning and the first exile

Out of pity, not only for the people stricken by these calamities, but on account of the superstitious practices in which they took refuge, Nichiren pondered in his mind the question, What are the causes of these evils, and how can they be averted?

In attacking the problem, Nichiren’s thought naturally turned to the unique authority of the Lotus [Sutra], in contrast to the syncretistic practices of the prevailing Buddhism. Yet he was not satisfied until he had made a further investigation of the sacred books and found various prophecies concerning calamities which should befall the people who degraded the true Buddhist religion by resorting to superstitions. He retired, for this investigation, to a monastery furnished with a good library. There he wrote and rewrote his ideas, which finally took shape in an essay entitled “Risshō Ankoku Ron,” which means “The Establishment of Righteousness and the Security of the Country.”

In this essay Nichiren fearlessly pointed out the degeneracy of the people and the foolishness of the rulers. The heaviest responsibility for the miseries of the time he ascribed to Amita-Buddhism, by which both the government and the people were led astray from righteousness. Moreover, he gave a prophetic warning to the nation that, if it did not turn at once to the unique Truth, the country would experience more disastrous calamities, especially a foreign invasion and a rebellion. His vehement expression runs as follows:

“Of all the misfortunes but one remains that we have not yet experienced, the misfortune of foreign invasion. … When I consider thee Scriptural prophecies and then look at the world around me, I am bound to confess that both the gods and the minds of the people are confused. You see the fulfilment of the prophecy in the past; dare we say that the remaining prophecies will fail of their fulfilment?”

(This prediction foreign invasion was based on statements in several Buddhist books, and its realization in the following years immensely strengthened Nichiren’s faith.)

This warning was followed by an admonition to the nation to be converted to Nichiren’s religion, based on the sermon of the [Lotus Sutra]. The vehement prophet would not be satisfied unless all other forms of Buddhism were suppressed and their leaders severely punished. Thus he concludes:

“Woe unto them! They have missed the entrance into the gate that leads to the true Buddhism and have fallen into the prison-house of the false teachings. They are fettered, entangled, bewildered. Whither will their blind wanderings lead them?

“Ye men of little faith, turn your minds and trust yourselves at once to the unique Truth of the Righteous Way! Then ye shall see that the three realms of existence are (in reality) the Kingdom of Buddha, which is in no way subject to decay; and that the worlds in the ten directions are all Lands of Treasures, which are never to be destroyed. The Kingdom is changeless, and the Lands eternal. Then how shall your bodies be otherwise than secure and your minds serene in enlightenment?”

Not only were these words preached to the masses on the streets and in the parks, but the written document was presented to the government authorities (in the seventh month of 1260). The government was shocked, the ecclesiastical dignitaries were enraged, and instigation from behind the scenes stirred up a mob which attacked Nichiren’s hermitage and burnt it down. Nichiren escaped the peril through the darkness of the night, and fleeing out of Kamakura, went on a missionary journey in adjacent provinces. There, more converts were made, and among them not a few of the warrior class, the local chiefs who were not under the direct control of the Dictator. The suspicion in which the government held Nichiren increased, and when he came back to Kamakura in the following year, he was officially arrested, and finally sentenced to banishment and sent to the desolate shore of the peninsula Izu (in the fifth month of 1261).

In this place of exile, Nichiren found bare shelter with a fisherman and his wife amid threatening dangers. How deeply he felt his obligations to these simple and faithful converts is shown in the letters written to them later, wherein they are likened to Nichiren’s parents, perhaps in a former life. His hardest trials did not last long. More converts were made, and Nichiren’s message found a sincere response in the unprejudiced hearts of the country folk. Yet he was an exile; he had been repeatedly attacked and had some narrow escapes from death; his future showed no bright prospects, and his hope of converting the nation as a whole seemed to be very remote, if not totally vain. His thought turned to the question whether his mission would be fulfilled, and he re-examined the [Lotus Sutra] with reference to this problem.

NICHIREN: THE BUDDHIST PROPHET

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His proclamation of his new faith

The young monk, now no longer a seeker after truth, but a reformer filled with ardent zeal, bade farewell to the great center of Buddhism on Hiei and went back to the old monastery on Kiyozumi, which he had left fifteen years before. He visited his parents, and they were his first converts. His old master and fellow monks welcomed him, but to their minds Nichiren, the former Renchō, was nothing more than a promising young man who had seen the world and studied at Hiei. Keeping silence about all his plans and ambitions, Nichiren retired for a while to a forest near the monastery. Everyone in the monastery supposed that he was practicing the usual method of self-purification, which they themselves employed; but, in fact, Nichiren was engaged in a quite different task, and occupied with his original idea, neither shared nor guessed by anyone else.

The seven days of his seclusion, as the tradition says, was a period of fervent prayer, in preparation for launching his plan of reformation and proclaiming his new gospel. When his season of meditative prayer had reached the stage when he was ready to transform it into action, Nichiren one night left the forest and climbed the summit of the hill which commands an unobstructed view of the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. When the eastern horizon began to glow with the approaching daybreak, he stood motionless looking toward the East, and as the golden disc of the sun began to break through the haze over the vast expanse of waters, a loud voice, a resounding cry, broke from his lips. It was “Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō” “Adoration be to the Lotus of the Perfect Truth!” This was Nichiren’s proclamation of his gospel to heaven and earth, making the all-illumining sun his witness. It happened early in the morning of the twenty-eighth day of the fourth lunar month 1253. (See explanation of dates here.)

The proclamation of the Lotus of Truth, with the sun as witness, was, indeed, the first step in translating into action the ideal symbolized in his name, the Sun-Lotus. After this unique proclamation, Nichiren came back among human beings, and at noon of the same day, in an assembly hall facing south, he preached his new doctrine, and denounced the prevailing forms of Buddhism, to an audience composed of his old master and fellow monks, and many others. There was none who was not offended by his bold proclamation and fierce attack. Murmurs grew to cries of protest; and when the sermon had been finished, everyone assumed that the poor megalomaniac was mad. The feudal chief ruling that part of the country was so incensed that he would not be satisfied with anything short of the death of the preposterous monk. This lord, who was Nichiren’s mortal foe throughout the subsequent years of his mission, was watching to attack Nichiren, who was now driven out of his old monastery. His master, the abbot, pitied his former pupil, and gave instruction to two elder disciples to take Nichiren to a hidden trail for escape. It was in the dusk of evening that Nichiren made his escape in this way. The sun, which at its rising had beheld Nichiren’s proclamation, the sun which at noon had witnessed Nichiren’s sermon, set as the hunted prophet made his way through the darkness of a wooded trail; only the evening glow was in the sky. What must his thoughts have been? What prospect could he have cherished in his mind for his future career and for the destiny of his gospel?

The expelled prophet now went on missionary journeys in the neighboring provinces, and finally settled down in Kamakura, the seat of the Dictatorial government. While he was studying further the religious and social conditions of the time and looking for an opportunity to appear again in public, the city of Kamakura was the scene of many frightful events. There were rumors of plots against the Hōjōs, and family strife arose among them; in addition to these things, storms, inundations, earthquakes, famines, comets, followed one another in swift succession. The people were panic-stricken, and the government could only resort to the offerings at Shinto sanctuaries and to the Buddhist rites of the Shingon mysteries. Nichiren himself describes the conditions as follows [in the “Risshō Ankoku Ron”]:

“We have seen many signs in heaven and in earth; a famine, a plague – the whole country is filled with misery! Horses and cows are dying on the roadsides, and so are men; and there is no one to bury them. One half of the population is stricken, and there is no house that has entirely escaped.

“Hence many minds are turning to religion. Others, again, in accordance with the doctrines of the Secret Shingon, use copious sprinkling of holy water from the five vases. … Some write the names of the seven gods of luck on pieces of paper and affix them by the hundreds to the door-posts of their houses, whilst others do the same with the pictures of the five Great Powerful and the various (Shinto) gods of Heaven and Earth. … But let men do what they will, the famine and the plague still rage; there are beggars on every hand, arid the unburied corpses line the roads.”

NICHIREN: THE BUDDHIST PROPHET

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