Daily Gosho - Reply to the Mother of Ueno

Timely reminder for me to not to suffer with my sadness (anniversary of my mum's death was yesterday) and remember that our daimoku penetrates the three existences of past, present and future and her life is being protected by the Buddhas of the ten directions. It's not easy, but this practice does give me the hope and courage to move forward with my life and use my daimoku to create value, rather than be overcome with feelings of grief and sadness...


"They [the Buddhas of the ten directions] will be seated side by side like the stars in the heavens, or the rows of rice and hemp plants on the earth, and will guard and protect the votaries of the Lotus Sutra"

(Reply to the Mother of Ueno - The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Vol. I, page 1074) Selection source: "Myoji no Gen", Seikyo Shimbun, September 2nd, 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.