Some might wonder: “How do you know that your banishment and death sentence are results of your sins in your past lives?” To them I would answer that copper mirrors reflect only colors and shapes, and the mirror the First Emperor of Ch’in used to test his subjects showed only present sins, but the mirror of Buddhism shows the virtues or vices of one in the past. Therefore, it is said in the six-fascicled Nirvana Sūtra (Hatsunaion-gyō): “Good men! Since you have committed numerous evil deeds and accumulated bad karma, you have to suffer in compensation for them. (…) You may be slighted, may look ugly, may suffer from lack of clothing or from insufficient food, unable to make a fortune, born to a poor family or to a heretic family, or suffer from royal persecutions, and many other difficulties. The reason you receive relatively light punishment like these in this world is due to your merit of upholding the dharma. Otherwise you might have been punished much more severely.”

This matches me, Nichiren, as perfectly as two halves of a tally. It explains why I have been persecuted, and all of my numerous doubts have faded away. Let us tally this sūtra, phrase by phrase against me. As for “being slighted,” which is phrased in the Lotus Sūtra, “A Parable” chapter, as “being slighted, despised, hated with jealousy,” I, Nichiren, have been despised for more than twenty years. “Being ugly looking,” and “suffering from lack of food and clothing,” “unable to make a fortune, being born to a poor family,” “suffering from royal persecutions,” and so on are all about me. Who can doubt it?

Kaimoku-shō, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 106