Is it because of the karma in your past lives that you sent me this robe or are you trying to be a particle of soil on a fingernail? It is stated in the Nirvana Sutra: “It is much more difficult to meet a practicer of the Lotus Sūtra in the Latter Age of the Decadent Dharma than putting a thread hanging from the sky into the eye of a needle standing on ground during a windy day.” The Lotus Sūtra tells of a tortoise who lives at the bottom of the ocean and surfaces once in 3,000 years, finds a floating piece of sandalwood with a hole in it, and rests in the hole. This tortoise, moreover, is one-eyed and squints so it sees the west as the east, and the east as the west. It is likened to men and women who are born in the Latter Age of the Decadent Dharma; and the hole in the sandalwood is likened to the Lotus Sūtra and the “Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō.” It must have been caused in the past for you to donate this robe to me.

Myōhō Bikuni Go-henji, A Reply to Nun Myōhō, Nyonin Gosho, Letters Addressed to Female Followers, Page 222