The Lotus Sutra  - VI. The Lotus Sutra and Nichiren Daishonin

Nichiren Daishonin’s relationship to the Lotus Sutra of Shakyamuni is based on a number of factors - the age in which he was living, the historical flow of Buddhism, and what Buddhist teachings themselves state.   

He grew up acutely aware that the decline and corruption of Buddhism in the Japan of his day, and the doctrinal disputes between the various schools, confirmed the widespread belief that the evil Latter Day of the Law had already begun; the generally held view was that it started in 1052. Through his extensive studies of the sutras and their commentaries, he was also aware that such great scholars as T’ien-t’ai and Dengyo (who lived between 767 and 822,  and founded the Tendai school in Japan), had proved the supremacy of the Lotus Sutra in the past and had for a time established it as the foremost teaching in China and Japan respectively.   

He was conscious, too, that while Shakyamuni had himself predicted that even the Lotus Sutra would lose its power in the Latter Day to enable ordinary people to achieve true happiness, he had clearly implied that there would be a ‘Lotus Sutra of the Latter Day’.  How else was one to interpret the transfer of the Law to the Bodhisattvas of the Earth in the ‘Supernatural Practices of the Thus Come One’ (twenty-first) chapter, and the Buddha’s insistence later in the sutra that ‘After I have passed into extinction, in the last five-hundred-year period you must spread it [the sutra] abroad widely throughout Jambudvipa and never allow it to be cut off’?[1] 

The question that had still to be resolved was how to recognise the person whose mission it was to establish the ‘Lotus Sutra of the Latter Day’.   

Revealing the object of worship in terms of the Person

Nichiren Daishonin again pointed to the sutra itself for evidence of this person’s identity, citing a key passage from the ‘Encouraging Devotion’ (thirteenth) chapter.[2]  This describes the persecutions that ‘the eight hundred thousand million nayutas of bodhisattvas and mahasattvas’[3] will endure after the Buddha’s death for the sake of the Lotus Sutra.

The Daishonin discusses this passage in many of his writings, including ‘The Opening of the Eyes’, the major treatise he wrote soon after his exile to Sado Island, following the Tatsunokuchi Persecution in 1271.  He states: 

The [‘Encouraging Devotion’ chapter] says: ‘There will be many ignorant people who will curse and speak ill of us, and will attack us with swords and staves, with rocks and tiles.’  Look around you in the world today - are there any priests other than Nichiren who are cursed and vilified because of the Lotus Sutra or who are attacked with swords and staves? If it were not for Nichiren, the prophecy made in this verse of the sutra would have been sheer falsehood.

   The same passage says: ‘In that evil age there will be monks with perverse wisdom and hearts that are fawning and crooked’ and ‘They will preach the Law to white-robed laymen and will be respected and revered by the world as though they were arhats who possess the six transcendental powers.’ If it were not for the teachers of the Nembutsu, Zen and Ritsu sects of our present age, then the World-Honoured One would have been a teller of great untruths.

  The passage likewise says: ‘Because in the midst of the great assembly... they will address the rulers, high ministers, Brahmans and householders...[slandering and speaking evil of us].’ If the priests of today did not slander me to the authorities and have them condemn me to banishment, then this passage in the sutra would have remained unfulfilled.

   ‘Again and again we will be banished’ says the sutra.  But if Nichiren had not been banished time and again for the sake of the Lotus Sutra, what would these words ‘again and again’ have meant?  Even T’ien-t’ai and Dengyo were not able to fulfil this prediction represented by the words ‘again and again’, much less was anyone else.  But because I have been born at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law, the ‘the age of fear and evil’ described in the sutra, I alone have been able to live these words.[4] 

In short, by pointing out that he alone has endured each of the persecutions that the Lotus Sutra predicts for its votary, Nichiren Daishonin implies that he is the person whose mission it is to establish the ‘Lotus Sutra of the Latter Day’ - the true or original Buddha.  Thus, ‘The Opening of the Eyes’ is said to reveal the object of worship in terms of the Person. 

The votary of the Lotus Sutra

It is significant that Nichiren Daishonin wrote ‘The Opening of the Eyes’ only after surviving the Tatsunokuchi Persecution and being exiled to Sado.  Up to that point, he had identified himself - albeit indirectly - with Bodhisattva Jogyo, the leader of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, who appears in the Lotus Sutra to take on the task of spreading the sutra in the Latter Day.  Until the Sado exile, as the ‘votary of the Lotus Sutra’, Nichiren Daishonin’s primary aim thus appeared to be to reassert the supremacy of Shakyamuni’s Lotus Sutra.  For example, Rissho Ankoku Ron, written in 1260 and presented to the effective ruler of Japan, Hojo Tokiyori, explains that the nation had been suffering its long series of disasters precisely because the Japanese people had turned their backs on the Lotus Sutra:  

If people favour what is only incidental and forget what is primary, can the benevolent deities be anything but angry?  If people cast aside what is perfect and take up what is biased, can the world escape the plots of demons?[5]  

On reaching Sado, however, the Daishonin discarded his identity as Jogyo and revealed his true identity as the Buddha of the Latter Day of the Law.  He says:  

On the twelfth day of the ninth month of last year, between the hours of the rat and the ox (11 p.m. to 3 a.m.), this person named Nichiren was beheaded. It is his soul that has come to this island of Sado and, in the second month of the following year, snowbound, is writing this to send to his close disciples.[6]  

Of course, ‘this person named Nichiren’ was not literally beheaded. Rather, the Daishonin here is indicating the profound change of status that he went through at Tatsunokuchi, as he ‘cast off the transient and revealed the true’ (hosshaku kempon).   

Elsewhere in the same Gosho he gives further hints of his true identity - as when he states, for example, ‘I, Nichiren, am sovereign, teacher, and father and mother to all the people of Japan.’[7]  The principle of the Three Virtues of sovereign, teacher and parent derives from the verse section of the ‘Life Span of the Thus Come One’ (sixteenth) chapter of the Lotus Sutra, and describes Shakyamuni Buddha’s relationship to the people of the saha world.  The parallel the Daishonin is drawing is clear - he is the Buddha who perfectly embodies the Three Virtues in the Latter Day. 

Revealing the object of worship in terms of the Law

Having established his identity, in ‘The True Object of Worship’, the second major work he wrote in exile on Sado, Nichiren Daishonin reveals the object of worship in terms of the Law.  In other words, he explains that the ‘Lotus Sutra of the Latter Day’ is the Gohonzon of the Three Great Secret Laws.  (Significantly, he did not inscribe the Gohonzon for any of his followers until soon after the Tatsunokuchi Persecution.) 

‘The True Object of Worship’ offers a long and detailed analysis of the Lotus Sutra and T’ien-t’ai’s theory of ichinen sanzen, and explains how the Gohonzon is related to both.  Ichinen sanzen is important because, as Nichiren Daishonin points out, it provides a theoretical basis for chanting to the Gohonzon: 

Both the Buddhist and non-Buddhist scriptures permit wooden or painted images to be used as objects of devotion, but T’ien-t’ai and his followers were the first to explain the principle behind this practice.  If a piece of wood or paper lacked the cause and effect [of Buddhahood] in either the material or the spiritual aspect, it would be futile to rely on it as an object of devotion.[8] 

Thus, although from one viewpoint the Gohonzon is merely a piece of paper or wood, since these materials possess the inherent capacity ‘to manifest a spiritual nature’, they can both come to embody Buddhahood if inscribed or carved by the Buddha, and can therefore act as the external cause for Buddhahood when used as an object of worship.

The discussion of the Lotus Sutra in ‘The True Object of Worship’ reiterates the central points of Shakyamuni’s supreme teaching, but goes significantly further, explaining that the Gohonzon, the time when it is to be established, and by whom, are all implicit in the sutra itself. 

The Ceremony in the Air

Nichiren Daishonin explains that the Gohonzon is described in the ‘Ceremony in the Air’, in eight core chapters of the Lotus Sutra, from the ‘Emerging from the Earth’ (fifteenth) to the ‘Entrustment’ (twenty-second) chapters:  

The true object of devotion is described as follows:

   The treasure tower sits in the air above the saha world that the Buddha of the essential teaching [identified as the pure and eternal land]; Myoho-renge-kyo appears in the centre of the tower with the Buddhas Shakyamuni and Many Treasures seated to the right and left, and, flanking them, the four bodhisattvas, followers of Shakyamuni, led by Superior Practices.[9] 

Likewise, many of the other characters that appear on the Gohonzon represent figures who participate in the Ceremony in the Air.  The Daishonin stresses how closely the Gohonzon illustrates this ceremony in a later Gosho, ‘The Real Aspect of the Gohonzon’: 

This mandala is in no way my invention.  It is the object of devotion that depicts Shakyamuni Buddha, the World-Honoured One, in the treasure tower of Many Treasures Buddha, and the Buddhas who were Shakyamuni’s emanations as accurately as a print matches its woodblock.[10] 

It is important to understand, however, that while in one sense the Gohonzon is ‘derived’ from Shakyamuni’s Lotus Sutra, fundamentally it transcends it, since the Ceremony in the Air which the Gohonzon represents is an event unbounded by time or space.   From this perspective, Shakyamuni’s Lotus Sutra is a preparation for the revelation of the Gohonzon, in that it was used by Nichiren Daishonin to explain the fundamental object of worship.   

The Buddhism of the Sowing and the Buddhism of the Harvest

The relationship between Nichiren Daishonin’s teachings and Shakyamuni’s Lotus Sutra can also be understood by an analogy that compares the relationship between the Buddha and those who receive his teachings to the development of a plant - from sowing, through maturity, to harvest.  Sowing is when the Buddha teaches the Law to an ordinary person for the first time; maturity is when that person develops his or her potential for Buddhahood; harvest is the time when he or she actually becomes a Buddha. 

According to this view, the essential teaching of Shakyamuni’s Lotus Sutra relates to the harvest, while Nam-myoho-renge-kyo ‘hidden in the depths’ of the ‘Life Span of the Thus Come One’ chapter, and expounded by Nichiren Daishonin, relates to sowing.  As he states: 

Shakyamuni’s…is the Buddhism of the harvest, and this [my teaching] is the Buddhism of sowing.  The core of his teaching is one chapter and two halves,[11] and the core of mine is the five characters of the daimoku[12] alone.[13] 

This is because, as Shakyamuni explains in the ‘Parable of the Phantom City’ (seventh) chapter, his Lotus Sutra is the teaching through which his disciples from the past, when he was the sixteenth and youngest son of the Buddha Great Universal Wisdom Excellence, can finally attain Buddhahood.  It follows from this that the ordinary people of the Latter Day of the Law, who did not receive that ‘seed’ from him in the past, cannot attain Buddhahood through the teachings of the Lotus Sutra.  This is the fundamental doctrinal reason why the Lotus Sutra loses its power in the Latter Day.

 By contrast, Nichiren Daishonin’s teaching is called the Buddhism of sowing because it enables the ordinary people of the Latter Day of the Law, who have formed no relationship with Shakyamuni, to sow, mature and harvest their seed of Buddhahood - Nam-myoho-renge-kyo - within a single lifetime.  He states: 

Shakyamuni’s practices and the virtues he consequently attained are all contained within the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo. If we believe in these five characters, we will naturally be granted the same benefits as he was.[14]

The Bodhisattvas of the Earth

Who, then, are the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, who appear in the ‘Emerging from the Earth’ (fifteenth) chapter?  They pre-date the disciples Shakyamuni had when he was the sixteenth son of the Buddha Great Universal Wisdom Excellence, because when they appear Shakyamuni declares that ‘Ever since the long distant past/I have been teaching and converting this multitude.’[15]  This declaration stuns the assembly that has gathered to hear him preaching, since they had previously believed that Shakyamuni had become enlightened only some forty years earlier, and their questions prompt him to expound the ‘Life Span of the Thus Come One’ (sixteenth) chapter.   

As Nichiren Daishonin explains in ‘The True Object of Worship’, however, this chapter is taught not to reassure the listeners in the assembly, but those who hear the Buddha’s teaching after his death.  As Bodhisattva Maitreya says, ‘for the sake of future ages we beg the Buddha/To explain and bring about understanding.’[16] 

This is a crucial point, for, as the Daishonin goes on to explain, this means that the parable of the excellent physician, which is related in this chapter, is also told ‘for the sake of future ages’.  Specifically, he says,  ‘According to the “Distinctions in Benefit” chapter, [the good medicine of the “Life Span” chapter is left for those] “in the evil age of the Latter Day of the Law”’,[17]  while the messenger mentioned in the parable refers to the Bodhisattvas of the Earth who will appear in the beginning of the Latter Day.  He further explains that ‘“This good medicine” is the heart of the ‘Life Span’ chapter, or Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.’[18] In a specific sense, therefore, the Bodhisattvas of the Earth refers to Nichiren Daishonin, whose mission it was to gives the teaching for this age.  As he states: 

At this time the countless Bodhisattvas of the Earth will appear and establish in this country the object of devotion, foremost in Jambudvipa, that depicts Shakyamuni Buddha of the essential teaching attending [the eternal Buddha].[19] 

In a more general sense, though, the term ‘Bodhisattvas of the Earth’ refers to the Daishonin’s disciples, who work to spread his teaching in the Latter Day.  He makes this point in another important Gosho he wrote while on Sado, ‘The True Aspect of All Phenomena’: 

Now, no matter what, strive in faith and be known as a votary of the Lotus Sutra, and remain my disciple for the rest of your life.  If you are of the same mind as Nichiren, you must be a Bodhisattva of the Earth.  And if you are a Bodhisattva of the Earth, there is not the slightest doubt that you have been a disciple of Shakyamuni Buddha from the remote past.[20] 

In conclusion, then, Nichiren Daishonin uses the Lotus Sutra to validate Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as the essential law of life and the Gohonzon as the object of worship of the Latter Day; to establish his identity as the true Buddha of this age, and to identify his followers as the Bodhisattvas of the Earth.  

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