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Reply to the Followers
Your messenger, who left on the nineteenth day of the third month, arrived here with your letter at the Hour of the Dog
(around 8:00 P.M.) on the twenty-first. Now Nichiren’s
lifelong prayer and desire will be achieved in an instant. And this fits the Buddha’s prediction
regarding the fifth five hundred years, just as one half of a tally matches the other. In the end, if the slanderous proponents
of the Shingon, Zen and other sects are summoned and brought together to confront me, and right and wrong are decided, the
people of Japan will all become my disciples and followers. Of my disciples, the priests will become teachers to the emperors
and retired emperors, while the lay believers will be ranked as the ministers of the left and right. And moreover, everyone
in the entire land of Jambudvipa will come to revere this teaching. What happiness! What happiness!
Nichiren
The twenty-first day of the third month in the first year of Koan (1278)
Reply to the Followers
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