Joken-bo
Joken-bo
浄顕房 (n.d.)
A disciple of Dozen-bo at Seicho-ji temple in Awa Province, Japan, where Nichiren entered the priesthood in his childhood.
When Nichiren declared his teaching at that temple on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month, 1253,
Tojo Kagenobu, the steward of the area and an ardent Pure Land believer, attempted to harm him.
Joken-bo and another priest, Gijo-bo, helped Nichiren escape from Sei-cho-ji.
In 1264 Tojo Kagenobu again tried to kill Nichiren in an ambush that became known as the Komatsubara Persecution, which Nichiren survived.
On the fourteenth day of the eleventh month, 1264, three days after that attack, Joken-bo, accompanying his teacher Dozen-bo, again met Nichiren at Renge-ji temple in Hanabusa.
Though he remained at Seicho-ji, he seemed to believe in Nichiren's teachings, for in the cover letter to 'On Repaying Debts of Gratitude', Nichiren wrote, "I have inscribed the Gohonzon for you" (737).
He and Gijo-bo received several of Nichiren's writings, including On Repaying Debts of Gratitude, The Tripitaka Master Shanwuwei, and Flowering and Bearing Grain.
