The one practice that was the “excellent medicine” for expressing the Lotus Sutra truth for Nichiren was recitation and veneration of the syllables “Namu Myōhōrengekyō,” the homage to the name of the Lotus Sutra that Nichiren saw as a symbolic embodiment of this enduring Śākyamuni and called “the essence of the chapter, ‘Duration of the Life of the Buddha.’ ” He declared that these five characters were transmitted only to the underground bodhisattvas, who would proclaim them in the future “evil age,” which had now arrived in Kamakura-period Japan. Nichiren says, “At this time, the bodhisattvas who sprang up from the earth will appear for the first time in the world to bestow upon the children the medicine of the five characters Myōhōrengekyō.”

For Nichiren, the leap of faith expressed in the Lotus Sutra is grounded in the mappō theory, a pressing reality for him that was completely rejected by Dōgen. Nichiren believed that the importance of Śākyamuni’s remaining presence, and even more, of the proclamation of it by the underground bodhisattvas, was that the teaching was still available, even in the present evil age of mappō. Thanks only to the underground bodhisattvas and the enduring Śākyamuni, the faithful still had the opportunity to hear the teaching and to express their faith through veneration and chanting of the name of the Lotus Sutra. But Nichiren went even further: “By defining the beginning of the Final Dharma age as the precise historical moment when the Buddha’s ultimate teaching, the Lotus Sutra, shall spread, Nichiren was able to reverse the conventional gloomy connotations of the last age and celebrate it as the best possible time to be alive.

Through the all-encompassing nature of the Lotus Sutra’s Śākyamuni Buddha, as well as the persistent practice of the underground bodhisattvas, “the dharma world itself comes to be conceived as the phenomenal reality which actualizes the ultimate truth. … According to Nichiren, in the second section of the Lotus Sutra Śākyamuni speaks of this sahā world as the original land, a pure Buddha realm.” [Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity] Nichiren’s view of the beginningless and endless (practically speaking) Śākyamuni implies for him that the phenomenal world itself becomes an active locus for awakening: “Nichiren considered the assembly on Vulture Peak a symbol of those who, having received the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, are able to transform our sahā world into a ‘resplendent land.’ Since the world where humans live is also the original world in which the Buddha attained buddhahood, phenomenal reality becomes the ground of the most complete enlightenment, which opens to ultimate reality.” [Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity] Thus, for Nichiren the inconceivable visionary reaches inspired by the vastness of time of the revelation of the Buddha’s life span have liberative implications for this world, and for the conditions of this time and place.

[T]he underground bodhisattvas of chapter 15 have
special significance for Nichiren: “The countless bodhisattvas who had sprung up from underground were disciples of Lord Śākyamuni Buddha ever since the time He had first resolved to seek Buddhahood.” Although they had not visited Śākyamuni throughout his awakening under the bodhi tree and his expounding of the lesser sutras, since making their vow in the Lotus Sutra they are especially promised to appear in the mappō times, which Nichiren believed had already arrived.

Thus the underground bodhisattvas are greater for Nichiren than the familiar disciples, and even greater than the celebrated archetypal bodhisattvas such as Samantabhadra, Mañjuśrī, and Maitreya. “The numerous great bodhisattvas, who had been guided by the Original Buddha in the past, sprang out of the earth of the whole world, according to [chapter 15]. They looked incomparably superior to Bodhisattva Fugen (Samantabhadra) and Mañjuśrī, who had been regarded as ranking disciples. Even Bodhisattva Maitreya, successor to Śākyamuni Buddha, did not know who they were, not to speak of other bodhisattvas.”

Nichiren sees the underground bodhisattvas as the model for those who carry out the teaching of the enduring Śākyamuni in current conditions. And Nichiren himself personally identified with these underground bodhisattvas: “When these four great bodhisattvas, leaders of those who sprung up from underground, spread this sutra through aggressive means of propagation, they would appear as wise kings reproaching ignorant kings.” Practicing a persuasive means of propagation, they would be monks upholding and spreading the true dharma. In the final age of degenerate Dharma that Nichiren regarded as having arrived in Kamakura-period Japan, the imperative of proclaiming and propagating the Lotus Sutra teaching gained a new urgency. It was embodied for Nichiren by the enduring Śākyamuni and especially conveyed to the myriad beings by the underground bodhisattvas.

Nichiren states that the “Eternal” Śākyamuni Buddha “exists forever throughout the past, present, and future. All those who receive His guidance are one with the Eternal Buddha.” He goes on to state that the Śākyamuni Buddha of the sixteenth chapter differs from the earlier Śākyamuni Buddha of provisional sutras, and advocates that the enduring Śākyamuni, and his image, be the new object of veneration in the current Age of Decline (mappō), replacing images of the Śākyamuni who expounded the pre-Lotus sutras.

Nichiren strongly emphasizes the end of chapter 15 and chapter 16. This is the part of the sutra that “Nichiren judges to be almost exclusively representative of the meaning of the entire scripture.” Lucia Dolce describes the difference in Nichiren’s interpretation of the sutra from Zhiyi’s as Nichiren seeing the long-lived Śākyamuni Buddha as the single ultimate buddha encompassing all others. Whereas Zhiyi emphasized the sambhogakāya, or recompense body, and valued many other particular buddhas, Nichiren declares “that all Buddhas enlightened in the past are emanations of Śākyamuni” of chapter 16, based on the events of chapter 11, in which emanations arrive to witness the other Buddha in his stūpa. For Nichiren, this long-lived Buddha includes all three bodies, including the manifested transformation body, nirmāṇakāya, and even Vairocana, the reality body or dharmakāya: “Only the [chapter 16] Śākyamuni who reveals his enlightenment in the past embodies the true Mahāyāna Buddha.”

Nichiren’s view of temporality is determined by this story, as his emphasis on it “corresponds to the dilation of the temporal dimension expressed in those chapters, that is, the distant past in which Śākyamuni obtained his original enlightenment. Nichiren absolutizes this original moment and makes it the only significant time and relates it to the existence of humanity in a certain time and place.” He does not describe this Buddha as literally eternal, but “uses the expression ‘without beginning and without end,’ ” signifying “an existence not subject to temporal limitations.” Because this limitlessness includes the transformation body, “the Buddha has always abided in this world and … his soteriological activity has been constant since the original time.” [Dolce]