Some of Nichiren’s followers actually found themselves [at odds with their parents]. Among them were two brothers, samurai of the Ikegami family living in Kamakura. They may have been direct vassals of the Hōjō family who ruled the Bakufu or military government. The elder was called Munenaka, and the younger, Munenaga. Their father, Yasumitsu, was a supporter of the eminent monk Ryōkan-bō Ninshō, widely acclaimed as a holy man for his acts of public charity and scrupulous adherence to the precepts. By Nichiren’s account, however, Ninshō’s machinations had brought about his second arrest and exile to Sado Island; Nichiren and his followers had learned to regard Ninshō as an enemy. Because their father revered this cleric, the two brothers, like Śubhavyūha’s two sons, must have felt that they had been born into a “house of wrong views.” Yasumitsu demanded that Munenaka, whose faith was the stronger, renounce his commitment to the Lotus Sūtra and to Nichiren. When Munenaka refused, his father disowned him. At this point, the younger brother began to waver, swayed perhaps by a more conventional understanding of the obedience owed to one’s father and by the unexpected opportunity to replace Munenaka as his father’s heir. Nichiren admonished him, “If you obey your father who is an enemy of the Lotus Sūtra and abandon your brother who is a votary of the one vehicle, are you really being filial? In the end, you should resolve single-mindedly to pursue the buddha way like your brother. Your father is like King Śubhavyūha, and you brothers are like the princes Vimalagarbha and Vimalanetra. Their situation occurred in the past while yours is happening in the present, but the principle of the Lotus Sūtra remains unchanged.”

In the end, perhaps strengthened by Nichiren’s admonishment, the younger brother stood firmly by his elder brother and refused to abandon his faith. Eventually the two were even able to convert their father, and Nichiren praised them as Vimalagarbha and Vimalanetra reborn.