Backwards

Easy Delivery of a Fortune Child

I have heard that you will soon give birth. In compliance with your request for the gohifu of easy delivery, I have prepared one, choosing from among the lore I have inherited. However, you must have firm faith in order to receive its benefits. Even a medicine of rare virtue will have little effect if poison is added to it. Of what use will a sword be to a coward?

Above all, you and your husband are both followers of the Lotus Sutra. You will surely bear a jewel of a child who will carry on the seed of the propagation of the Lotus Sutra. I wholeheartedly congratulate you. The child will inherit both the physical and spiritual aspects of your lives. How could you suffer prolonged labor? The child will surely be delivered easily. If you take this gohifu, there can be no doubt. The darkness becomes bright when a lamp is lighted, and muddy water becomes clear when the moon shines on it.

Is there anything brighter than the sun and the moon? Is there anything purer than the lotus flower? The Lotus Sutra is the sun and the moon and the lotus flower. Therefore, it is called Myoho-renge-kyo (the Sutra of the Lotus Sutra of the Mystic Law). Nichiren is also like the sun and the moon, and also like the lotus flower.

If the water of one's faith is clear, the moon of blessings will cast its reflection on it and, without a doubt, protect one. You are assured of an easy delivery. A passage from the Lotus Sutra states, "A wondrous Law such as this ...," and another says, "With easy labor they shall bear a fortune child." I have explained in detail to Ben-ko about the orally transmitted instructions regarding the gohifu. Thus, Ben-ko is the envoy of the Buddha. Be earnest in your faith.

The sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami bestowed a gem upon the storm god Susanoo no Mikoto, who in turn obtained a gem of a boy child. For this reason, she called the child her own son and named him Masaya Akatsu [Truly I Conquer]. Because I, Nichiren, have provided your child with the seed for an easy birth, the child will be like my own. The Lotus Sutra says that there is "a precious gem whose value is that of a major world system," and also proclaims: "We have gained the supreme cluster of jewels without expecting it." Shakyamuni Buddha declares, "The living beings in it [the threefold world] are all my children." My intention also accords exactly with what the Buddha expressed in these passages. How happy and how auspicious is the approaching birth of your child! I will write again on another occasion.

Respectfully,

Nichiren

The seventh day of the fifth month in the eighth year of Bun'ei (1271).