As far as Nichiren and his contemporaries were concerned, these myriad views of causality held by the non-Buddhists of India all boiled down to the following three views: (1) the effect can be found within the cause, (2) the effect cannot be found within the cause, and (3) the effect does and does not exist within the cause. These views concerning causality are important because they are denials of the law of cause and effect as taught by the Buddha, and the law of cause and effect taught by the Buddha relates to right view and right practice that leads to awakening.
In the Outline of All the Holy Teachings of the Buddha (Ichidai Shōgyō Tai-i), Nichiren associates Kapila with the view that effects are the transformations of the cause that is their substance or self-nature. This is justified in that Sāmkhya teaches that an effect exists as a potential within a cause and is produced when the cause transforms itself. For example, it is like clay (the cause) being shaped into a jar (the effect). The clay remains clay, though it has become a jar. In this view nothing is ever really created or destroyed, there are only transformations of what has always and will always exist. Cause and effect are identified as simply two different modes of an eternal unchanging substance. This is the view that Buddhism calls “eternalism.”

Uluka is associated with the view that effects are generated by external causes. This is justified in that the Vaiśeshika held that the cause gives rise to the effect; but the cause does not enter into the being of the effect. The effect then becomes a cause for something else and in turn passes away. For example, once the moist lump of clay has been shaped by the potter and fired in the kiln it is no longer clay but a jar. In this view the cause disappears when the effect comes into existence and the effect itself disappears when it becomes the cause for some other effect. Cause and effect are denied any underlying substantial identity as the former vanishes without a trace when the latter comes into being. Buddhism calls this view “annihilationism.”

Rishabha is associated with the view that effects are the product of causes external and internal to them. This is consistent with the Jain teaching of relativity in respect to conceptual statements. In other words, one should grant the relative truth of a variety of positions if one is not to fall into one-sided or partial views. Due to their teaching of relativity, the Buddhists attributed to Rishabha the position that a cause may in some respects transform into its effect but in other respects the cause and effect are distinct entities. Using the example of clay being turned into a jar: in some respects, the clay remains as the basis of the jar, but in other respects the jar has qualities the lump of clay did not have in terms of its shape, firmness, and ability to function as a container. Cause and effect are thereby identical in terms of some qualities but separate entities in terms of others.

Finally, the materialists are associated with the view that chance or fate governs the appearance and disappearance of phenomena and that there are no causal relations, that is to say no causes or effects. This is the view that things just happen without any rhyme or reason.

The Ichidai Shōgyō Tai-i passage that aligns the thinkers of India in terms of four alternatives uses the tetralemma, a Buddhist way of presenting two alternatives, their combination, and the negation of both alternatives. The tetralemma supposedly exhausts all the possible solutions to a question. The present tetralemma about the relationship between cause and effect is often taken in Buddhism to really be about the relationship between the one who acts and the one who experiences the karmic fruition of that act either within the same lifetime or in some future lifetime. In other words, is the person who makes the cause the same as the person who will experience the effect? Kapila would say yes, Uluka would say no, Rishabha would say that both Kapila and Uluka are correct in some sense, and the materialists would deny any kind of causal connection. All four alternatives, however, contain an assumption that the Buddha did not share: that causes and effects are substantial entities that do or do not endure through time. Furthermore, the Buddha denied that there is an unchanging, independent, “self” that performs causes and suffers effects. Without that assumption, none of the proposals makes any sense.

The religions and philosophies of India rate higher than the Chinese traditions
in Nichiren’s evaluation because some of them did teach the law of cause and effect, rebirth in the six paths of transmigration, and the need to strive for rebirth in the heavens through the cultivation of morality and meditative disciplines. Nichiren does not actually use the word “Brahmanism” to refer to them, but instead the Chinese character for “outside” in reference to all the teachings in India that Buddhists considered the “outside way” in contrast to the Buddha Dharma. In this outside way he is encompassing both the teachings of the brahmins who followed the Vedic revelation and the ascetics whose teachings rejected the Vedas.
Open Your Eyes, p74