Incomprehensible but true

Written by Rev. Tetsujo Kubota

Translated by H.G. Lamont

The works of Nichiren Shonin should be more than enough to show that the orthodox position, the correct standpoint, asserts the primacy of the mind of faith, not the absence or denial of faith. We must now see what that specific tradition says.

It is all but incomprehensible that the Kempon Hokke tradition, founded by Nichiju Shonin to restore the authentic teachings of Nichiren Shonin, would have turned against the conspicuous truth declared by Nichiren.

At the end of his life, Nichiju-Shonin specifically stated that if anything he had said or written went against Nichiren's essential meaning, his disciples should not accept them as the heart of their teaching. (The Record of Nichiun cited in the Seiten-edited by Reverend Kubota Tetsuju, p. 639)

Even if the orthodox tradition of the Kempon Hokke had disregarded the obvious and life-long teachings of Nichiren Shonin, Nichiju-Shonin would have disowned such heresy.

In effect, no one has the right to overrule the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren Daishonin. For the first two hundred years of the Myomanji tradition, the teachers engaged in vigorous remonstrance and propagation and wrote little in the way of systematic or theoretical treatises on the Dharma; however, Nichiju Shonin wrote in praise of the superior benefits  of the "one thought of faith and understanding" as well as the practice of the Daimoku without any contradiction. (Seiten, p. 650)

It was in the Edo period (1603-1868) that the tradition began to be expounded in an orderly fashion. We can examine the opinions of several teachers of the Kempon Hokke Sect:

Yotokuln Kenryin Nichijo (1598-1645) upheld the doctrine of faith: in his, "Shingyo yodo gi" he refers to the Kegon Sutra passage on "faith as the Origin of the Way" and the above-cited Hokke mongu ki passage that faith "the beginning of establishing the practice of the Doctrine of the Original (hommon)."

He describes the superiority of Nichiren Shonin's doctrine to meditational doctrine of Tendai as:"Believing (shin zu) in the Sublime Wisdom of the Original Buddha of the Doctrine of the Original."

He states, "When one believes and chants (shinsho sureba) this Sublime Name [i.e., the Daimoku], one certainly becomes a Golden-colored Tathagata." (The term "believe and chant" appears to have been often used in the Kempon Hokke sect.)

In any case, Kenry-Nichijo upholds the presence of the, "power of the Buddha" (butsuryoku), the "power of the Dharma" (horyoku), and the "power of faith"(shinryoku), the three powers mentioned earlier; his doctrine is described as the "practice of chanting the Daimoku with the mind of faith." (Described and analyzed by the noted Kempon Hokke priest, Sasakawa Giyu in his Nichiren Shonin no ji ken, pp. 96-1 00)