The sea-diver's son who staked everything on a single Buddhist sutra
Nichiren, a Japanese monk of the Kamakura period, proudly called himself the son of a sea-diver from a remote shore. He preached that chanting the title of the Lotus Sutra was the one sure path to enlightenment in this life, demanded the state reject other schools, and was exiled twice for it.
He was born on 16 February 1222 in Kominato, in Awa Province in today's Chiba Prefecture, and named Zennichimaro, often translated as Splendid Sun. Unlike earlier founders of Japanese schools such as Hōnen, Shinran, Dōgen and Eisai, who came from noble or samurai families around Kyoto, Nichiren came from humble origins and was fiercely proud of it, though later followers credited him with grander ancestry. The spot where he was born is thought to lie underwater off the modern shore.
At 12 he began studying at Seichō-ji, a Tendai temple, and he became a monk at twenty. Between 1233 and 1253 he surveyed Japan's main traditions, including Tendai, Pure Land and Shingon, and emerged convinced that the Lotus Sutra alone held Buddhism's highest truth and was the only scripture fit for the Age of Dharma Decline. He believed the chant Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō was open to everyone regardless of class, education or ability.
He warned that Japan would suffer social collapse and natural disasters unless its ruler backed his teaching and suppressed rivals. His attacks on the Buddhist establishment brought persecution from the Kamakura shogunate; some followers were imprisoned or killed, and he treated the hardship as proof that he was right. Scholars remain divided, with critics calling him intolerant and nationalistic and admirers casting him as a reformer and prophet.
Much of what is known comes from his own letters and treatises, and one compilation lists 523 complete texts plus 248 fragments. He died on 13 October 1282, and his movement grew into one of Japan's largest Buddhist traditions, with more than forty registered organisations today, including Nichiren Shōshū and the lay movement Soka Gakkai. Emperor Go-Kōgon honoured him as Great Bodhisattva Nichiren in 1358.
Source: Nichiren
