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Nichiren
Daishonin’s
relationship
to the Lotus
Sutra of
Shakyamuni
Buddha
is based on
a number of
factors -
the age in
which he was
living, the
historical
flow of
Buddhism,
and what
Buddhist
teachings
themselves
state.
He grew up
acutely
aware that
the decline
and
corruption
of Buddhism
in the Japan
of his day,
and the
doctrinal
disputes
between the
various
schools,
confirmed
the
widespread
belief that
the evil
Latter Day
of the Law
had already
begun; the
generally
held view
was that it
started in
1052.
Through his
extensive
studies of
the sutras
and their
commentaries,
he was also
aware that
such great
scholars as
T’ien-t’ai
and Dengyo
(who lived
between 767
and 822, and
founded the
Tendai
school in
Japan), had
proved the
supremacy of
the Lotus
Sutra in the
past and had
for a time
established
it as the
foremost
teaching in
China and
Japan
respectively.
He was
conscious,
too, that
while
Shakyamuni
had himself
predicted
that even
the Lotus
Sutra would
lose its
power in the
Latter Day
to enable
ordinary
people to
achieve true
happiness,
he had
clearly
implied that
there would
be a ‘Lotus
Sutra of the
Latter Day’.
How else was
one to
interpret
the transfer
of the Law
to the
Bodhisattvas
of the Earth
in the
‘Supernatural
Practices of
the Thus
Come One’
(twenty-first)
chapter, and
the Buddha’s
insistence
later in the
sutra that
‘After I
have passed
into
extinction,
in the last
five-hundred-year
period you
must spread
it [the
sutra]
abroad
widely
throughout
Jambudvipa
and never
allow it to
be cut off’?
The question
that had
still to be
resolved was
how to
recognize
the person
whose
mission it
was to
establish
the ‘Lotus
Sutra of the
Latter Day’.
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