"Of the inhabitants of this country, there is not one who is not a disciple and subject of Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings. If a person does not paint or carve a single image of Amida or of any Buddha other than Shakyamuni, or does not chant Amida’s name, then, although he may be an evil person, he still has not clearly shown that he has rejected Shakyamuni Buddha. But all those people who worship Amida Buddha exclusively have already clearly shown that they have rejected Shakyamuni Buddha. Those who chant the futile formula of the Nembutsu— they are the truly evil ones.
They treat this Buddha who is neither father nor mother, neither sovereign nor teacher to them with the kind of tenderness one might show to a beloved wife. At the same time, they cast aside Shakyamuni Buddha, our real sovereign, parent, and enlightened teacher, and fail to open their mouths to recite the Lotus Sutra, which is like a wet nurse to us all. How can they be called anything but unfilial?
These unfilial persons number not just one or two, a hundred or a thousand; they include not just the inhabitants of one or two provinces. From the ruler on down to the common people, everyone in the entire land of Japan, without a single exception, is guilty of committing the three cardinal sins!
As a result, the sun and moon change color and glare down on them, the earth shakes and heaves in anger, great comets fill the sky, and huge fires break out all over the land. Yet these persons fail to perceive their error and instead praise themselves, saying, “We unceasingly recite the Nembutsu, and in addition we build Amida halls and pay honor to Amida Buddha!”
Such actions may seem wise, but in fact they are worthless. Suppose there is a young couple. The husband is so in love with his wife, and the wife thinks so tenderly of her husband, that they completely forget about their parents. As a result, the parents go about in thin clothing, while the bedroom of the young couple is warm and snug. The parents have nothing to eat, while the young couple’s stomachs are full. Such young people are committing the worst kind of unfilial conduct, and yet they fail to see that they are doing wrong. A wife who would deliberately turn her back on her own mother and a husband who would go against his own father— are they not guilty of an even graver offense?
Amida Buddha dwells in a land that is located a hundred thousand million worlds away and has not the slightest connection with this saha world. However one may claim [that such a connection exists], there is no basis for it. It is like trying to mate a horse with an ox, or a monkey with a dog.
I, Nichiren, am the only person who is aware of this. If I should begrudge my life and thus refrain from speaking out, not only would I be failing to repay the debt of gratitude I owe to my country, but I would also be acting as an enemy of Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings. On the other hand, I knew from the outset that, if I set aside my fears and declared things exactly as they are, I would be sentenced to death. And even if I should escape the death penalty, I would surely be condemned to exile. So great is the debt of gratitude I owe the Buddha, however, that I have not let others intimidate me, but have spoken out.
Just as I anticipated, I was exiled no less than twice. During the second of these sentences, in the summer of the ninth year of the Bun’ei era (1272), I was sent to a place called Ichinosawa in Ishida Village in the province of Sado. The headman and his men in the region to which I had been assigned, in both official and unofficial matters, treated me with greater malice than if I had been a lifelong enemy of their parents or a foe from some previous existence. But the lay priest of the lodgings where I was put up, as well as his wife and servants, though they seemed fearful at first, privately came to look on me with pity, perhaps because of some bond formed between us in a previous existence."
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SGI members give all praise, reverence, and affection to Daisaku Ikeda at the expense of Shakyamuni Buddha. This is one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand million times more grave an offense than that of the Nembutsu believers. For this reason, Nichiren's disciples are exiled again again and Japan is in ruins. Not ordinary fires but radioactive fires break out here and there and the earth shakes so violently that the bones of the dead emerge from the ground to dot the land like sea shells. The floods sweep everything and everyone out to sea. Cancerous growths afflict the people like the sprouting of so many mushrooms on a bedewed meadow and their stool begins to flow like lehar from an active volcano. Food has become unfit for both human and animal consumption and even saleable products are shunned because they are noxious to man and beast. This is the effect of SGIs transgressions if we are to believe the Supreme Votary of the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren Daishonin.
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