His missionary journeys and converts

Another interval, lasting nearly four years, followed the peril at the Pine Forest, and it was a fruitful period in Nichiren’s harvest of converts! During these years Nichiren went on missionary journeys in the eastern provinces and succeeded in converting many local lords. The first thing which strikes us in the results of his propaganda is that there were only a few among his disciples who had been Buddhist monks, and that most of his followers were recruited from among the warriors and feudal lords. Most of the warriors converted by him remained laymen and became the “outside” supporters of Nichiren; but they dedicated to the religion their brothers or sons who, after the years of their novitiate, were ordained, and worked under the master in disseminating his doctrine. The first converts made by Nichiren, as we mentioned, were his parents, who were given the Buddhist names Myōnichi and Myōren respectively, meaning “Perfection-Sun” and “Perfection-Lotus.” The first monk disciple was Nisshō, who had been the master’s fellow student on Hiei, and had followed him to Kamakura. After this comes a list of converts from the warrior class, or their sons and brothers. During the four years of which we are now speaking, there was a notable increase in numbers, and it was in the years before and after Nichiren’s exile to Izu that his religion was planted in the provinces of Awa and Kazusa, which have been its stronghold down to the present time.

This chapter may properly conclude with quotations from poems ascribed to the prophet on these missionary journeys.

Outside pours the rain, and its drops strike the windows.
Surely, it is not thy own nature,
O rain, that makes thee fall aslant,
But the wind that causes thee to beat so noisily on the sliding screens.

My body is all wet with the rain drops –
Nay, by my own tears, shed over calamities and perils;
And yet, under the “Umbrella-Forest ” I am sheltered,
Now, even on this dreary evening.

The word rendered “nature” also means “conscience,” and “aslant, oblique,” means “crooked, vicious.” Thus the didactic purpose of the verse is clear.

These poems reflect the hardships he encountered everywhere, and make us vividly imagine a poor monk, clad in simple gray robes, with a little bag in his hands and a straw umbrella-hat on his head, passing stormy nights in cottages or deserted shrines. The latter of the poems cited is said to have been written in a shrine dedicated to Kwannon, at Kasa-mori, or “Umbrella-Forest,” which stands today marking the site.

NICHIREN: THE BUDDHIST PROPHET

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The peril of the pine forest and the escape

This visit to his native place was an interlude in the perilous life of Nichiren; affectionate reminiscences of his childhood were associated with a pious desire to perpetuate these early relationships to eternity. But the interlude was destined to be interrupted; wherever Nichiren, the apostle of the Truth, went, the shadow of danger attended him. The shadow now was embodied in the person of the local chief who had tried to kill him immediately after the assembly at Kiyozumi. When Nichiren parted from the abbot and left the village convent where they had met, his adversary was waiting for him. It was early in the evening on an autumn day (the eleventh of the eleventh month 1264) that Nichiren, accompanied by a few disciples from among the monks and some believing warriors, was making his way through the gloom of a pine forest. The pursuer, with hundreds of his troops cut off the way. The danger was imminent. “Shooting arrows flew like rain drops,” Nichiren narrates, “and the sparks from clashing swords were like lightning. One of my disciples was instantly killed, two others severely wounded, and I myself received a blow (on the forehead). There seemed to be no hope of escape, but I was saved – how, I cannot explain. Thus, my gratitude toward the Lotus of Truth has ever since grown deeper.” The wound on his forehead was left to remind him of his narrow escape. The orphan boy of the warrior disciple who had died in his defense became Nichiren’s favorite disciple and served the prophet with an inherited devotion.

Although the attack seems to have been prompted by diverse motives, Nichiren saw in it a plot organized by the Amita-Buddhists. It had the effect of confirming his conviction of the falsity of Amita-Buddhism, and the truth of his own religion; and, what was far more important, of strengthening the faith of Nichiren and his followers that he was a man sent and protected by the Lord Śākyamuni, and by his Truth. The belief in his mission which had been growing since his days in Izu reached a stage in which the self-consciousness of the prophet is more explicitly proclaimed. After having told of the incident, in the letter above cited, and quoting the same passages of the scripture he cited in his writings in Izu, Nichiren tells more of himself.

“There are many in Japan who read and study the Lotus of Truth; there are, again, many who are attacked because they have conspired against others; but there is none who is abused because of (his revering) the Lotus of Truth. Thus, none of the men in Japan who hold to the Scripture have yet realized what is stated in the [Lotus Sutra] (since everyone who really holds to it must encounter perils on that account); the one who really reads it is none other than I, Nichiren, who put in practice the text, ‘We shall not care for bodily life, but do our best for the sake of the incomparable Way.’ Then I, Nichiren, am the one, supreme one, the pioneer of the Lotus of Truth.”

NICHIREN: THE BUDDHIST PROPHET

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