A Note on Sources

All quotations from the Lotus Sūtra are taken from the transla- tion done by Tsugunari Kubo and Akira Yuyama. See The Lotus Sūtra, rev. 2nd ed., trans. by Tsugunari Kubo and Akira Yuyama, BDK English Tripiṭaka Series (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2007). For the reader’s convenience, we have provided in-text­ page references to this translation after each quotation. Please note that the pagination of the printed version of the text (used here) differs from the pagination of the version presently available online. Kubo and Yuyama based their translation on the celebrated Chinese version of the sūtra produced by the Central Asian scholar-­monk Kumārajīva in 406. In several places, however, they chose not to follow traditional Sino-­Japanese interpreta- tion but have instead consulted the Sanskrit and, in a few instances, the Tibetan versions of the Lotus (see their “Transla- tors’ Introduction,” xiv). One way in which their English ver- sion departs from Kumārajīva’s Chinese lies in the handling of proper names. Where Kumārajīva translated many names of figures appearing in the Lotus Sūtra, Kubo and Yuyama give them in the original Sanskrit. We have followed suit, not to give primacy to the Sanskrit text, but for consistency with the Kubo-­ Yuyama translation. However, some of the longer Sanskrit names can prove daunting to readers unfamiliar with that lan- guage. We have accordingly provided in parentheses with the first occurrence of such names the English rendering given by Leon Hurvitz in his translation of the Lotus Sūtra: Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma (the Lotus Sūtra), xii • A Note on Sources published by Press (1976; rev. 2009), or a translation of our own. We have rendered the daimoku, the invocation of the Lotus Sūtra’s title taught by , as Namu Myōhō-­renge-­kyō, which represents the proper romanization for scholarly writing. However, actual pronunciation may vary slightly according to the practice community; some groups collapse the second and third syllables, giving Nam Myōhō-­renge-­kyō (sometimes writ- ten without diacritics in their publications). The difference is not one of correct versus incorrect but simply reflects variations among the traditions of individual Nichiren Buddhist lineages. Two extensive collections of Nichiren’s writings have ap- peared in English translation, both intended for practitioners. One, supervised by Kyōtsū Hori with the assistance of other translators and editors, is Writings of Nichiren Shōnin (2003–­ 2015), now numbering seven volumes, published by the Nichirenshū Overseas Propagation Promotion Association (NOPPA). At the time of this writing, limited previews of two of these volumes are available at Google Books. A second collec- tion of Nichiren’s works in English is the two-­volume Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, translated by the Gosho Translation Committee and published by Sōka Gakkai. The entirety of this translated collection is available online as a searchable database (http://www.sgilibrary.org/writings.php). During much of the translation process, Sōka Gakkai had the assistance of the late , professor emeritus of Columbia University and an accomplished translator of Chinese and Japanese literature. Two volumes of these translations, edited by Watson’s col- league, the late Philip Yampolsky, have also been published by Columbia University Press. In translating passages from Nichi- ren’s writings for this volume, we have referred to existing A Note on Sources • xiii translations and sometimes followed them quite closely. Often, however, we have modified them either to meet the demands of the present study (for example, to bring terminology in line with the Kubo and Yuyama Lotus Sūtra translation that we are using) or to reflect our wording preferences. In still other cases we have produced our own translations. These modifications do not imply criticism of existing English versions, to which we are indebted, but rather reflect the principle that there is never only one “correct” or definitive translation; multiple possibili- ties exist and some may be more appropriate in different con- texts. References to Nichiren’s writings in this volume refer to the four-­volume Shōwa teihon Nichiren Shōnin ibun (Shōwa-­era Critical Edition of Nichiren Shōnin’s Writings), edited by the Reseach Institute for Nichiren Doctrinal Studies of Risshō Uni- versity (Risshō Daigaku Nichiren Kyōgaku Kenkyūjo) and pub- lished at Minobu-­san Kuonji in Yamanashi Prefecture, (1952–­1959; rev. 1988).

TWO BUDDHAS Seated Side by Side