NICHIREN 1222–1282 CE


The Buddha prophesied that after his death human history would be divided into three periods, usually referred to as the Former, Middle and Latter Days of the Law, the kaw being the Buddhist dharma or Truth. In the shobo, or Former period, the True Law would be dominant; in the Middle, zoho (or zobo) period, a simulated Law would be propagated, whilst the Latter or mappo period would be an age of degeneracy in which the dharma would be under real threat. Most Japanese of the thirteenth century, including Nichiren, believed that the mappo period had begun around the middle of the eleventh century CE, and that they were therefore living in an age of confusion and decline. For this belief they found confirmation in a number of natural disasters which afflicted Japan, chiefly between 1256 and 1260: in these few years the country was devastated by a succession of crop failures consequent on dire climatic conditions, epidemics, earthquakes, floods and fires, to be followed by repeated threats of invasion by the Mongols. It was during this period that the young monk Nichiren was forming his outlook. Almost a perfect exemplar of the religious enthusiast, Nichiren believed he knew exactly why Japan should be so afflicted, and further how to rescue his country from its peril. He promulgated his views fearlessly and repeatedly, never repudiating them even in the face of persecution, exile, and the threat of an execution from which he had the narrowest of escapes. Though in his lifetime the sect he founded cannot be said to have prospered, it has endured to this day, and one of its sub-sects, Nichiren Shoshu (‘The Genuine Nichiren Sect’) has in this century considerably advanced its international standing.

Nichiren (‘Sun Lotus’) is the religious name taken later in life by Zennichi Maru, by tradition humbly born in the second month of 1222 in the fishing village of Kominato (present-day Chiba prefecture).1 His life falls into three well-defined phases. The first, 1222–1253, comprises his childhood and his extensive studies of the Buddhist sects of his day. At the age of 12, Nichiren entered the temple of Seicho-ji (in Kominato), where his master Dozen-bo (d.1276) instructed him in the doctrines of the Tendai sect of Buddhism. (‘Tendai’, and other sectarian terms, are explained in what follows.) His ambition was no less than to become the wisest man in Japan, and to this end he steeped himself in Chinese and Indian classics. After some three or so years, he became dissatisfied with Dozenbo’s instruction, and set out to visit other centres of Buddhist learning, including some of the temples in the Nara area and the centre of the Tendai sect on Mount Hiei. He returned to Seicho-ji in 1253, utterly convinced of the truth of the insights arrived at in the course of his study. In the fourth month, he preached a sermon to his teacher and other priests, announcing his new views. They enraged the authorities in the area, and Nichiren was thrown out of the temple, narrowly escaping arrest. With this begins the second phase of his life, from 1253 to 1274, the period of his mission and exile.

During this period, Nichiren undertook a number of missionary journeys, and on several occasions petitioned the government to heed his religious warnings, return to the path of true Buddhism and so save the country from ruin. One of these petitions is his first major work, the Rissho Ankoku Ron (Establishment of the Legitimate Teaching for the Protection for the Country, 1260). As was to happen more than once, this essay caused only annoyance, and not only was its content ignored but it drew upon Nichiren the wrath both of certain officials and of some elements in the Buddhist establishment (it should be noted, however, that Nichiren for his part was never sparing in his criticism of other sects). In the twenty-one years of his missionary activity, Nichiren underwent exile and had a number of narrow escapes: on one occasion his cottage was burned down; on another, two of his followers were killed in an ambush and he himself narrowly escaped death when a swordstroke cut his forehead. He was also sentenced to death, only to be reprieved almost at the last moment.2

This period of his life came to an end in 1274 when, released from his last period of exile, Nichiren withdrew to a remote hermitage, Minobu, at the foot of Mount Fuji. Here he spent the third period of his life, 1274–1282, in retreat and in the greatest poverty. It was no doubt the harsh physical conditions of his life, combined with the effects of similar deprivations whilst in exile, which brought on his final illness. On his way to try to recover at a more hospitable place, Nichiren died at Ikegami (near present-day Tokyo) in the tenth month of 1282. Never once did he waver in the conviction that he had discovered the final, ultimate truth revealed by the Buddha.

To understand fully what that truth was, in Nichiren’s view, it is necessary to grasp the main tenets of the Tendai sect of Buddhism in which he was initially trained, and of which his own thought is a development. Tendai is the Japanese form of T’ien-t’ai (‘Celestial Platform’), the religious name given to the Chinese thinker Chihkai (538–597 CE) who was its third patriarch and main systematizer.3 As a recent scholar has pointed out, it is a characteristic of Chinese schools of Buddhism (as opposed to Indian and Tibetan schools) to base their beliefs on one or a small number of selected sutras from the vast canon of Buddhist literature, and to derive their religious understanding from the work or works thus selected. This is done on the basis of a schema for the ranking of sutras (C: p’an chiao), from which the chosen sutra of the school in question emerges as the ultimate or highest teaching of the Buddha. Thus for example the Hua-yen (flower garland; J: Kegon) sect base their views on the very lengthy Avatamsaka Sutra. In the case of the T’ien-t’ai sect, the chosen text, held to be the repository of the ultimate religious truth, is the Saddharma pundarika sutra (literally: The Sutra of the Perfect Law of the Lotus), in Chinese Miao-fa Lien-hua Ching, this in turn rendered into Japanese as Myoho renge kyo (literally: The Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra).4 It is generally referred to as the Lotus Sutra and all Tendai Buddhists, Nichiren included, regard this work as the Christian world regards the Bible. It consists of twenty-eight chapters, and is agreed by scholars to have been composed over somewhat more than two centuries, probably completed by the end of the second century CE. Members of the T’ien-t’ai sect argue that the ultimate revelation of Buddhism is contained in chs 15–28 of the sutra, which they discriminate from chs 1–14 in ways which will become clear.

In the works of T’ien-t’ai and his fellow patriarchs are developed a number of beliefs, derived from their reading of the Lotus Sutra, which form the basis of Nichiren’s philosophical outlook and which he was finally to extend. The key passage, on which the whole Tendai philosophy is based, occurs in the sixteenth (J: juryo) chapter of the Lotus Sutra, which concerns the Life-Span of the Tathagata, i.e. the Buddha. Nichiren translates the passage and comments on it as follows:

The Juryo chapter reads ‘the time is limitless and boundless – a hundred, thousand, two thousand, hundred thousand nayuta kalpas – since I in fact attained Buddhahood’. Present within our lives is the Lord Shakyamuni who obtained the three bodies before gohyakujintengo [i.e. the inconceivably remote past], the original Buddha since time without beginning.5

The exact meaning of all the technical terms in this passage does not matter: what is of the utmost significance is the construction which Nichiren, following a venerable Tendai tradition, puts on the words of the Buddha. It is held in the Theravadin tradition that once the Buddha entered nirvana he passed beyond the reach of humankind. Here, by contrast, it is held that the Buddha has existed since ‘time without beginning’. This was taken by T’ien-t’ai (and after him Nichiren) to be equivalent to saying that the Buddha exists outside time altogether, i.e. that his mode of being is eternal. This is, in effect, to move from the view of the Buddha as a historical figure to the Buddha as God or absolute. Buddha is ultimate reality or being-as-is, and as such can be present in our lives, as Nichiren stresses. Now the Buddha is not physically present in our lives, and is to be found (as will become clearer) within our minds. Therefore, the Tendai tradition goes, reality is mental, and is one mind. This is stated plainly in a Chinese work in this tradition, the Tach’eng Chih-kuan Fa-men (Mahayana Method of Cessation and Contemplation):

That in all things which for all time has been independent of speech, terms, and mental causation, and which in the final analysis is everywhere the same, undergoes no change, and cannot be broken or destroyed: such is the one mind.6

Reality is one and mental, beyond all conceptual distinctions and indescribable in language.

This generates at once the philosophical difficulty of giving an account of the relation of the one mind or Buddha-nature and the phenomenal world of spatio-temporal individuals. In the T’ien-t’ai tradition, this is done by reference to the metaphor of a storehouse:

The Tathagata-Storehouse [another standard T’ien-t’ai way of referring to the one mind or reality] embraces the natures of all sentient beings, each of which differs from the others, thus constituting differences within what is without difference. Thus the natures of each and every one of these sentient beings, for all time, contain qualities that are immeasurable and boundless. This statement has reference to all the impure things of the mundane world [i.e. the phenomenal world of ordinary experience] . . . But because [the one mind] also contains the pure nature, it is capable of manifesting the attributes of all the Buddhas.7

Thus the one mind has ‘stored’ in it all possible natures, pure and impure. It follows further that stored within it are what we discriminate as good and evil, and this is the T’ien-t’ai account of how evil is possible. It is to be stressed, however, that such distinctions are relative only and from the point of view of the absolute or one mind correspond to nothing: ‘The storehouse in its substance is everywhere the same and in actual fact undifferentiated.’8

Further important consequences flow from this metaphysics. First, if no conceptual distinctions are ultimately real, that between the samsara and nirvana must be included. Put another way, this is the Mahayanist doctrine that samsara and nirvana are one and the same. Nichiren finds this doctrine symbolically expressed in a passage in the Hoto (eleventh) chapter of the Lotus Sutra, in which a treasure tower appears from beneath the earth, occupied by the Taho Buddha, said ordinarily to inhabit an eastern part of the universe. The Buddha Shakyamuni joins the Taho Buddha, and they sit side by side in the tower. In a letter to a samurai disciple, Nichiren comments as follows:

Taho represents all phenomena and Shakyamuni, the true aspect . . . Although these are two, they are fused into one in the Buddha’s enlightenment. These teachings are of prime importance. They mean that earthly desires are enlightenment and that the suffering of birth and death are nirvana.9

Nirvana is not a future condition or another place. Nirvana is correct understanding or enlightenment, and can be experienced here and now (cf. the Hindu concept of moksa).

Second, the thesis that reality is one mind entails two further central Tendai doctrines, those of the integration (or interpenetration) of all things, and the view that one moment of thought can encompass the whole of reality (J: ichinen sanzen: literally: one moment – the three thousand realms, i.e. all there is). The first of these doctrines is approached in the T’ien-t’ai tradition by a further reference to the unreality of all conceptual distinctions:

The fact that all things, whether mutually opposed or not, such as purity and pollution, good and bad, height and lowness, this and that, brightness and darkness, sameness and diversity, tranquillity and disorder, being and non-being, etc., can all be integrated, is because, being manifestations, they have no reality in themselves, but must depend upon mind to arise. Because in the substance of mind there is an integration, therefore in its manifestations there is also no barrier.10

Since there are no divisions in reality, everything there is is the One Mind in its totality. As Nichiren puts it, ‘since there is mutual possession of the Ten Worlds [i.e. all there is], then any one world contains all the other worlds’.11

This has a direct consequence in terms of the way in which successful meditation (J: kanjin) is to be described, and this is the doctrine of ichinen sanzen. Kanjin means to see into one’s own mind, using a correct technique. When this is done successfully, what is experienced is our real nature, which is the Buddha-nature. The Buddhanature is the one mind or reality, all there is. T’ient’ai states this doctrine in the vocabulary of the Buddhist analysis of reality in terms of Ten Realms. Nichiren quotes from a Japanese version of one of the Chinese master’s most important works, the Maka shikan (Great Concentration and Insight: C: Mo-ho chih-kuan):

The mind at each moment is endowed with the Ten Worlds. At the same time, each of the Ten Worlds is endowed with all the others [i.e. because of their mutual interpenetration], so that one mind actually possesses one hundred worlds. Each of these worlds in turn possesses thirty realms, which means that in one hundred words there are three thousand realms. The three thousand realms of existence are possessed by the mind in a single moment.12

The exact and complex details of the analysis of the phenomenal world into Ten Worlds and Thirty Realms are not of present importance. T’ien-t’ai’s main point is that by correct meditation, the whole of reality is accessible to experience.

The doctrine of the one mind has a further consequence to which Nichiren draws attention repeatedly, because he expects most people to find it hard to understand or accept. This is the doctrine that everything there is, every sentient being (including icchantikas or non-believers in Buddhism) and every inanimate object, possesses the Buddha-nature. As has been noted above, it follows from the monistic metaphysics of the Tendai school that all conceptual distinctions have reference to the phenomenal world only, not to reality, and this applies to the distinction between sentient and non-sentient beings as it does to every other distinction. Whatever there is has the Buddha-nature. This startling but logically legitimate consequence of Tendai thought was worked out in detail by the ninth T’ien-t’ai patriarch, Chan-jan (711–782 CE), who delighted in expressing it in the most dramatic way: ‘Therefore we may know that the single mind of a single particle of dust comprises the mind nature of all sentient beings and Buddhas.’13

All these beliefs, the core of the Tendai tradition and derived from the Lotus Sutra, were accepted by Nichiren. His own original contribution to Buddhist thought was to extend and adapt these views to suit the circumstances in which he found himself, i.e. the period of mappo or decline. In a degenerate age, the human spirit needed a simple but powerful and sure restorative to lead it back to the truth of Buddhism, and this Nichiren believed he had found in what he calls the Three Great Secret Laws (J: sandai hiho).14 These are: the title (J: daimoku); the true or fundamental object of worship (J: honzon or gohonzon); and the Seat of Ordination or place of worship (J: kaidan).

The daimoku or title is the Japanese translation of the title of the Lotus Sutra, preceded by the word namu (pronounced ‘nam’) meaning ‘adoration to’ or ‘devotion to’. Thus the complete title is Nam’ Myoho renge kyo (Adoration to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra). This is to be chanted rhythmically as a mantra, often to the accompaniment of a drum. Each of the words of the daimoku is invested by Nichiren with a number of profound significances, such that the title as a whole epitomizes the teaching of the Lotus Sutra, and therefore the truth of Buddhism. For example, myoho is made up of the syllables myo and ho, which can be taken to denote reality and appearance, and a view of the relation between these two is at the core of Tendai philosophy. Again, renge means ‘lotus flower’, a central symbol in Buddhism. The lotus produces its flower and seed-pod simultaneously, and so can symbolize the doctrine of the simultaneity of cause and effect. Kyo means a sutra or a teaching of the Buddha. Nichiren argues that, once we realize that our own lives are the Mystic Law, we realize that so too are the lives of all others: ‘our lives – both our bodies and our minds, ourselves and our surroundings, are the entity of ichinen sanzen and the Buddha of absolute freedom.’15

The daimoku is to be chanted whilst contemplating the honzon or true object of worship. In one sense, the honzon is Shakyamuni conceived as the cosmic Buddha or one mind, but the term is also used by Nichiren to refer to a mandala which he designed in 1279 as a representation of the cosmos and aid to worship.16 By comparison with other Buddhist mandalas, it is spartan in appearance, consisting only of names written in black ink. At the centre are the five characters for Myoho renge kyo, and around it the names of the Ten Worlds. The recitation of the daimoku while contemplating the honzon is Nichiren’s method for meditation: though the goal is the same, the method is much simpler than had been advocated by T’ien-t’ai. Nichiren had no difficulty in finding a sanction for such a change in the Lotus Sutra, one of whose principal doctrines is that the means chosen to bring the world to see the truth of Buddhism must be varied as appropriate to the standing conditions of the day, notably the spiritual capacity of those alive at the time.

The third element in Nichiren’s teaching is that of the kaidan or Seat of Ordination. Whilst this term has its original sense of the (physical) place where those wishing to join the sangha or Buddhist community come to be ordained (i.e. to receive the Buddhist precepts and to vow to keep them), it is also invested by Nichiren with a much wider and profounder significance:

As for the Seat of Ordination, when the Law of the Sovereign and the Law of the Buddha are united and become one, and sovereign and subjects become one in their faith in the doctrine of the Three Great Mysteries . . . At that time an imperial edict and a decree from the shogun will be granted; a most exalted place – similar to Vulture Peak [the location of one of the most celebrated of all the gatherings held by the Buddha and so a sacred place] – will be found, and there the Seat of Ordination will be erected.17

Not only does Nichiren here suggest a union of church and state in the service of true religion, but also, consistently with his view that the Lotus Sutra is the ultimate religious truth, so the place where vows are made to live by it becomes no less than the religious centre of the whole world:

To this Seat of Ordination will come not only all the people of the three countries – India, China and Japan – to repent their sins and be saved, but even Brahma and Indra and the other gods will come and gather round it.18

Nichiren believed with unshakeable firmness that these doctrines constituted the ultimate truth of Buddhism, the final religious truth, adherence to which was the only possible way to salvation. It follows that those who advocated other doctrines were leading humankind astray and must be stopped, and it is no surprise to find that the fervour with which Nichiren preached his own views is matched by an equal fervour in his lengthy and repeated condemnations of those with other convictions. The chief target of his attack, no doubt because it was the most popular Japanese Buddhist sect of the day and so the most dangerous form of heresy (in his view), was the Jodo or Pure Land sect. This sect has a history reaching back to China in the fourth century CE, but had been extremely successful in Japan as a result of the work of Honen (1133–1212) and his disciple Shinran (1173–1262). The chief doctrine of Jodo is that salvation can be attained only by calling on the name of Amida Buddha by the use of the mantra Namu Amida Butsu (Reverence to Amida Buddha), referred to as the Nembutsu. Those who do this will be reborn in Amida’s Pure Land.19 In the growth of Jodo Nichiren saw the cause of the calamitous times in which he lived. The Jodo sect do not acknowledge the authority of the Lotus Sutra, and anyone who does this is lost: ‘There can be no doubt that the Nembutsu leads to the hell of incessant suffering.’20

Equally dangerous in Nichiren’s view was Zen, which recognizes no sutras but contends that the Buddha’s true doctrine was transmitted directly to the mind of his disciple Mahakasyapa and then in an unbroken line of Zen masters. Again, Zen does not involve preaching, and thus disregards the practice of Shakyamuni. Zen, too, (Nichiren contends) had played its part in bringing Japan to the edge of ruin, appealing to the unfilial, lazy and immoral,

to young priests who are too lazy to apply themselves to their studies, and to the disreputable nature of prostitutes . . . [Zen followers] are not more than swarming locusts feeding upon the people of the nation. That is why Heaven glares down and the gods of the earth shudder.21

These are the words of a man utterly convinced of the truth of his beliefs and of his mission to propagate them, as Nichiren undoubtedly was. Besides his passionate moral conviction, the purely philosophical difficulties of the relation of one and many in Tendai thought, with its implications for the problem of evil, were of little concern to him. Nichiren is best regarded as a prophet. His goal was to save Japan and, indeed, all humankind from ruin by means of the Three Great Secret Laws. In comparison with this, his own comfort, even his own life, he held to be of little account. Nichiren suffered greatly, and was prepared to die for the sake of what he believed.


Notes


P. Yampolsky (ed.), Selected Writings of Nichiren, New York, Columbia University Press, 1990, is cited as Y.

1 The Nichiren Shoshu sect always refer to him as Nichiren Daishonin (Great Sage Nichiren); other sub-sects generally use the title Shonin (sage).

2 Much of this is known to us from Nichiren’s autobiographical work, Shuju Onfurumai Gosho (On Various Actions of the Priest Nichiren, 1276), Y, pp. 319–342.

3 Chih-kai lived and taught in the T’ien-t’ai mountains; hence the later title. Nichiren had the greatest respect for him, and always refers to him as Tendai Daishi (Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai). Tendai Buddhism was introduced into Japan by Saicho (767–882 CE), a Japanese monk who travelled to China. Saicho is often referred to by a title conferred later, Dengyo Daishi (Great Teacher Dengyo). Saicho established the Tendai centre on Mount Hiei.

4 On the main tendencies of Chinese Buddhism, cf. Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, London, Routledge, 1989, pp. 116–166. The most widely used Japanese version of the Lotus Sutra is translated from the Chinese translations completed by the great scholar Kumarajiva in 406 CE.

5 Kanjin no Honzon Sho (The True Object of Worship, 1273), Y, p. 165.

6 Quoted in Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2 vols, Vol. 2, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1953, pp. 361–362. This work is usually attributed to T’ien-t’ai’s predecessor Huissu (515–555), though Dr Fung doubts if it is his work. (It does not matter, in the present context.)

7 Ta-ch’eng Chih-kuan Fa-men, in Fung, op. cit., p. 362. The metaphor of the storehouse is one instance of the influence on the T’ien-t’ai school of the Yogacarin analysis of the eight consciousnesses. See the essay on Vasubandhu in this book, pp. 58– 64.

8 Fung, op.cit., p. 364.

9 Shijo Kingo-dono Gohenji (Earthly Desires are Enlightenment, 1272). (Shijo Kingo is the name of the addressee.)

10 Ta-ch’eng Chih-kuan Fa-men, in Fung, op. cit., p. 374.

11 Kaimoku Sho (The Opening of the Eyes, 1272 – the eyes to be opened are those of humanity as a whole, and they are to be opened to the truths of Buddhism), Y, p. 95.

12 Quoted by Nichiren in Kanjin no Honzon Sho, Y, p. 150. Nichiren claims that the doctrine of ichinen sanzen is found only in one place in all the literature of Buddhism, namely, the juryo chapter of the Lotus Sutra, cf. Kaimoku Sho, Y, p. 57.

13 Chan-jan, Chin-kang pi (Diamond Stick), in Fung, op.cit., p. 385. A further consequence of the same view is that women can attain buddhahood (cf. Kaimoku Sho, Y, p. 121). This was denied in many versions of Buddhism, where it was claimed that reincarnation as a man was a necessary precondition for enlightenment.

14 First referred to in this way by Nichiren in the essay ‘Hoon Sho’ (Repaying Debts of Gratitude, 1276), and developed in later works, cf. Y, p. 315.

15 Letter to Jakunichi-bo Nikke, 1279, Y, p. 358. For a detailed interpretation of the daimoku from the standpoint of the Nichiren Shoshu sub-sect, cf. R. Causton, Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism: An Introduction, London, Rider, 1988, pp. 96–222.

16 cf. e.g. Kanjin no Honzon sho, Y, pp. 166–167; Hoon sho, Y, p. 315; for the cosmic Buddha as Honzon, cf. Sandaihiho Sho, tr. P.P. del Campana, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 26, nos 1–2, 1971, p. 218.

17 Sandaihiho Sho, p. 220.

18 ibid.

19 These views Honen set out in his Senchaku Hongan Nembutsu Sho (Selection of the Nembutsu of the Original Vow, 1198). Pure Land Buddhism takes as basic three sutras: the Larger and Smaller Sukhavativyuha, and the Amitayurdhyana Sutra. For a brief outline of Amidism, cf. Williams, op.cit., pp. 251 sqq.

20 Senji Sho (The Selection of the Time, 1275), Y, p. 241. The attack on Jodo begins with Nichiren’s first major essay, the Rissho Ankoku Ron, 1260, cf. Y, pp. 24 sqq., and is a constant theme of his work.

21 Senji Sho, Y, p. 218.


Major works


By common consent, the most important of Nichiren’s many works are:

Rissho Ankoku Ron (Treatise on the Establishment of the Legitimate Teaching for the Protection of the Country), 1260

Kaimoku Sho (Essay on the Opening of the Eyes), 1272

Kanjin no Honzon Sho (Essay on the True Object of Worship), 1273

Senji Sho (Essay on the Selection of the Time), 1275

Hoon Sho (Essay on Repaying Debts of Gratitude), 1276

Shuju Onforumai Gosho (literally: The Letter on Various Actions; usually called: On Various Actions of the Priest Nichiren), 1276

Sandaihiho Sho (Essay on the Three Great Secret Laws), 1281


See also in this book


the Buddha


Sources and further reading


NSIC = Nichiren Shoshu International Center, Tokyo

Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, 4 vols, Tokyo, NSIC, 1979; 1981; 1985; 1986

Causton, R., Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism: An Introduction, London, Rider, 1988

Del Campana, Pier P., ‘Sandaihiho Sho by Nichiren’, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 26 nos 1–2, 1971, pp. 205–224

Petzold, B., The Buddhist Prophet Nichiren – A Lotus in the Sun, 1977, no place but published in Japan

Williams, P., Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, London, Routledge, 1989

Yampolsky, P. (ed.), Selected Writings of Nichiren, New York, Columbia University Press, 1990 (contains nos 1–6 above, with some letters)

On the Tendai/T’ien-t’ai background, cf.

Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. D. Bodde, 2 vols, Vol. 2, Princeton University Press, 1953, pp. 360 sqq.

Swanson, P. L., The Foundations of T’ien-t’ ai Philosophy, Berkeley, CA, Asian Humanities Press, 1989

There are a number of English versions of the Lotus Sutra, notably:

Soothill, W.E., The Lotus of the Wonderful Law or the Lotus Gospel, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1930 and subsequent editions