The SGI definition: "A demoness said to be a daughter of a yaksha demon in Rājagriha. She had five hundred children (one thousand or ten thousand by other accounts). According to the Mother of Demon Children Sutra and The Monastic Rules on Various Matters, she killed other people’s babies to feed her own children. Terrified and grieving, the people begged Shakyamuni Buddha for help. The Buddha then hid Priyankara (also known as Piyankara or Pingala), the youngest son of Mother of Demon Children. She sought him desperately for seven days, but to no avail. In despair, she finally asked the Buddha where he was. Shakyamuni rebuked her for her cruel and evil conduct and made her vow never to kill another child. Then he returned her son to her. According to The Record of Southern Countries, I-ching’s record of his travels to India and Southeast Asia in the late seventh century, Mother of Demon Children was revered in India as a goddess who could bestow the blessings of childbirth and easy delivery. Worship of her became popular in Japan in the Kamakura period (1185–1333). In the “Dhāranī” (twenty-sixth) chapter of the Lotus Sutra, she pledges before the Buddha to safeguard the votaries of the sutra."
Kishimojin, (known in India as Hārītī) is a former demon mother who converted to Buddhism after the Buddha hid one of her many children to teach her the pain of loss. Along with her ten daughters—the Ten Rākṣasīs or Jūrasetsunyo—she took a solemn vow in the Lotus Sutra to protect children, pregnant women, and those who practice and uphold the Buddhist teachings.
In Nichiren's writings, he refers to Kishimojin a few times, and in all of them he mention's her ten demon daughter; in one instance he refers to the ten rāksasis as “the mothers of all demons in the four continents,” and Kishimojin as “the mother of the ten rāksasis,” thus suggesting her power.
In other teachings, Kishimojin is often worshipped independently of the Lotus Sūtra, for example, in esoteric prayer rites to quell disasters and increase good fortune. After Nichiren’s time, as his tradition spread during Japan’s later medieval period and drew followers from a range of social groups, its protector deities diversified, and statues and paintings of Kishimojin began to be enshrined as independent images at some Nichiren temples. Represented in both fierce and gentle forms, Kishimojin was revered as a guardian of Lotus devotees, a destroyer of false views, and a grantor of prayers for this-worldly benefits, such as healing, safe childbirth, and the protection of children. Devotion to Kishimojin within the Nichiren tradition reached its height in Japan’s early modern period (roughly, seventeenth through nineteenth centuries) and drew both on her specific associations with the Lotus Sūtra as well as broader traditions of Kishimojin worship.
That's my knowledge on Kishimojin.
As many of you know, I have cancer again. I'm glad Kishimojin and her ten daughters are in this with me.
Here's a fun video I made imagining a non-Budhist reporter doing the interview. Could happen.
~~ Eso Terry
