Daily Gosho - Reply to the Mother of Ueno

Nichiren Daishonin's compassion for Ueno abounds throughout this Gosho. His sincere words are so comforting for those of us who have suffered with grief or who are experiencing it currently. We will be reunited at Eagle Peak, for sure...

"The seeds of one kind of plant are all the same; they are different from the seeds of other plants. If all of you nurture the same seeds of Myoho-renge-kyo in your hearts, then you all will be reborn together in the same land of Myoho-renge-kyo. When the three of you are reunited there face to face, how great your joy will be!"

(Reply to the Mother of Ueno - The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Volume 1, page 1074) http://www.sgilibrary.org/view.php?page=1074 Selection source: SGI President Ikeda's guidance, Seikyo Shimbun, August 9th, 2012


Background
This letter was written at Minobu in the tenth month of the third year of Koan (1280) to the lay nun Ueno, the mother of Nanjo Tokimitsu. Nichiren Daishonin acknowledges offerings that she had sent him on the occasion of the forty-ninth-day memorial service following the death of her youngest son, Shichiro Goro, and encourages her in the face of her grief.
The lay nun Ueno was the daughter of Matsuno Rokuro Saemon and the wife of Nanjo Hyoe Shichiro, the steward of Ueno Village in Fuji District of Suruga Province. The lay nun’s husband passed away in 1265, while she was pregnant with their youngest son, Shichiro Goro.Shichiro Goro visited Minobu together with his elder brother Tokimitsu to see the Daishonin on the fifteenth day of the sixth month in 1280. The Daishonin had great expectations for the young man, but he died suddenly, at the age of sixteen, on the fifth day of the ninth month of that same year. No sooner had the Daishonin received the news of Shichiro Goro’s death than he wrote a letter of condolence to the lay nun Ueno and Nanjo Tokimitsu.
This present letter is also called On Intermediate Existence. “Intermediate existence” indicates the interval of time between death and rebirth, and was widely believed to last for forty-nine days. On the basis of this belief, people conducted a memorial service on the forty-ninth day.
To reassure the lay nun Ueno that her son has attained Buddhahood, the Daishonin discusses the great benefit gained from embracing the Lotus Sutra, and asserts that a votary of the sutra will be protected by Shakyamuni, Many Treasures, and all the other Buddhas.