Monthly Archives: May 2014

Though no one else came to visit me, you, a woman, not only sent me various offerings, but personally made the journey to see me. It was almost too amazing to be true. In addition, you have now called on me here in Minobu. I know of no words with which to thank you. Certainly the heavenly gods will protect you, and the ten demon daughters will have compassion on you. The Buddha promised in the Lotus Sutra that, for women, the sutra will serve as a lantern in the darkness, as a ship when they cross the sea, and as a protector when they travel through dangerous places. ( The Supremacy of the Law, WND-1, 616)

Therefore, I entreat the people of this country: Do not look down upon my disciples! If you inquire into their past, you will find that they are great bodhisattvas who have given alms to Buddhas over a period of eight hundred thousand million kalpas, and who have carried out practices under Buddhas as numerous as the sands of the Hiranyavati and Ganges rivers. And if we speak of the future, they will be endowed with the benefit of the fiftieth person, surpassing that of one who gives alms to innumerable living beings for a period of eighty years. They are like an infant emperor wrapped in swaddling clothes, or a great dragon who has just been born. Do not despise them! Do not look on them with contempt! ( On The Four Stages of Faith and the Five Stages of Practice, WND-1, 788-89)

If, however, in the time after the Buddha’s passing, a person renounces his attachments to the four flavors and three teachings, and converts to faith in the Lotus Sutra that is true Mahayana, the heavenly gods and benevolent deities, as well as the bodhisattvas numerous as the dust particles of a thousand worlds who emerged from beneath the ground, will protect him as the votary of the Lotus Sutra. Under their protection, he will [establish and] spread abroad widely throughout Jambudvipa the object of devotion of the essential teaching, or the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo. (On the Buddha’s Prophecy, WND-1, 400)