Banishing the seven disasters

 

"Within the nation there are two types of slanderers of the Law, those in the outer branches of government, and those within the central government. Those in the outer branches are the slanderers of the Law in the sixty-six provinces that make up Japan. Those in the central government are the slanderers within the ninefold bastions of the ruler’s city. If one does not take measures to control and outlaw these two types of slanderers in the inner and outer branches of government, then the gods who protect the nation’s ancestral shrines and the altars of the soil and grain will cease to do so, and the nation will face inevitable ruin. Why? Because the ancestral shrines are where the gods of the nation are worshiped, the altars of the soil honor the earth gods, and the altars of grain honor the gods of the five kinds of grain.

Now these two types of gods, the gods of the nation and those of the soil and grain, are starved for the flavor of the Law and they have abandoned the nation. Hence the nation has day by day fallen into a more ruinous state of decay.

Therefore On “Great Concentration and Insight” says: “The earth is so broad that one cannot pay proper respect to it all. Hence one marks off a certain area to create an altar of the soil. ‘Grain’ is the general term by which the five kinds of grain are known; it refers to the gods of the five kinds of grain. Thus in the place where the Son of Heaven dwells, the ancestral shrines are placed on the left, and the altars of the soil and grain on the right, and offerings are made to them in accordance with the four seasons and the five agents. Hence to bring ruin to the nation is to destroy the altars of the soil and grain.”

And therefore the great teacher of the Mountain school says: “In the nation when there are voices slandering the Law, the people will be reduced in number. But when in the family honor is paid diligently to the teachings, the seven disasters* will most certainly be banished.”

Thanks to Shinzo Abe, Taro Aso, Natsuo Yamaguchi, and Daisaku Ikeda, Japan has fallen into "a more ruinous state of [radiocative] decay

*The Lotus Sutra lists seven disasters from which people can be saved by the power of Bodhisattva Perceiver of the World’s Sounds: 

(1) fire, 

(2) flood, 

(3) rākshasa demons,

(4) attack by swords and staves, 

(5) attack by yaksha and other demons, 

(6) imprisonment, and 

(7) attack by bandits. 

Nichiren often cites the seven disasters listed in the Benevolent Kings Sutra: 

(1) extraordinary changes of the sun and moon, 

(2) extraordinary changes of the stars and planets, 

(3) fires, 

(4) unseasonable floods, 

(5) storms, 

(6) drought, and 

(7) war, including enemy attacks from without and rebellion from within. 

and in the The Medicine Master Sutra:

(1) pestilence, 

(2) foreign invasion, 

(3) internal strife, 

(4) extraordinary changes in the heavens, 

(5) solar and lunar eclipses, 

(6) unseasonable storms, and

(7) drought.