During the hardships of his exile to Sado Island, Nichiren became convinced that his own trials were not retributions for ordinary misdeeds. Rather, in previous lives, he himself must have slandered the dharma, the offense that he now so implacably opposed. He reflected: “From time without beginning I must have been born countless times as an evil ruler who robbed practitioners of the Lotus Sūtra of their clothing and food, paddies and fields … countless times I must have beheaded Lotus Sūtra practitioners.” Ordinarily, he explained, the karmic retribution for such horrific offenses would torment a person over the course of innumerable lifetimes. But by asserting the unique truth of the Lotus Sūtra and meeting persecution as a result, he had in effect summoned the consequences of those misdeeds into the present lifetime to be eradicated once and for all. “By being pounded in the fire, iron is forged into swords,” he said. “Worthies and sages are tested by abuse. My present sentence of exile is not because of even the slightest worldly wrongdoing. It has come about solely that I may expiate my past grave offenses in this lifetime and escape [rebirth in] the three evils paths in the next.”