As in much of medieval Tendai thought and various schools of Kamakura Pure Land, Zen, and other traditions, no direct causal connection is drawn in Nichiren’s thought between good deeds or the cultivation of virtue and the realization of enlightenment. … Nichiren did not stress observance of the precepts as necessary to liberation: the merit of keeping precepts is already contained within the daimoku. Moreover, he claimed that one who chants the daimoku cannot be drawn by evil acts into the lower realms of transmigration. Nichiren also participated in the discourse of the “realization of Buddhahood by evil persons” (akunin jōbutsu), usually in teachings to his warrior followers:

Whether or not evil persons (akunin) of the last age attain Buddhahood does not depend on whether their sins are light or heavy but rests solely upon whether or not they have faith in this sūtra. You are a person of a warrior house, an evil man involved day and night in killing. Up until now you have not abandoned the household life [to become a monk], so by what means will you escape the three evil paths? You should consider this well. The heart of the Lotus Sūtra is that [all dharmas] in their present status are precisely the Wonderful [Dharma], without change of original status. Thus, without abandoning sinful karma, one attains the Buddha Way.

This does not mean that Nichiren’s teaching legitimates evildoing, or that his community lacked for moral guidelines. His letters and other writings show that, in making personal decisions or advising his followers, Nichiren drew on a variety of ethical sources. Prominent among these is Confucian social morality, with its emphasis on the virtues of benevolence, righteousness, good faith, loyalty, and filial piety. Other ethical sources for Nichiren were generic Buddhist morality, including the virtues of almsgiving, forbearance, and equanimity; and the emerging warrior ethos, with its emphasis on courage and personal honor. However, such values are not central to Nichiren’s formal doctrine, which does not explicitly articulate a set of ethical principles. Only faith in the Lotus Sūtra and the rebuking of “slander of the Dharma” are specifically enjoined as necessary to salvation.

While [Nichiren’s] single-practice orientation is itself open to criticism for the ease with which it can translate into dogmatic self-assertion, such observations miss the underlying logic of Nichiren’s aim. This appears to have been not to eradicate the spectrum of religious interpretations current in his day, but to undercut their bases in other traditions and assimilate them to the Lotus Sūtra. This is illustrated in the following passage:

Once they enter the great ocean of the Lotus Sūtra, the teachings preached before the Lotus are no longer shunned as provisional. It is the mysterious virtue of the great ocean of the Lotus Sūtra that, once they are encompassed in the single flavor of Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, there is no longer any reason to refer to the distinct names “nenbutsu, ” “precepts,” “shingon, ” or “Zen.” Thus the commentary states, “When the various rivers enter the sea, they assume the same unitary salty flavor. When the various kinds of wisdom [represented by the provisional teachings] enter the true teaching, they lose their original names.

Nichiren’s teaching is no less exclusivistic for its attempt to be all-encompassing, but it should be understood as one of a number of contemporaneous attempts at subsuming all teachings, virtues, and possibilities within a single formulation. (Page 297)

As we have seen, the five characters of the daimoku are said to contain all teachings and to encompass all phenomena. They also contain the merit of all the good practices of the Buddhas, such as the six Pāramitās, and the virtues of enlightenment in which they result. However, this is not the only sense in which the daimoku is claimed to be all-inclusive. By the logic of the single-practice position, being by definition the only practice a true devotee should uphold, the daimoku is also said to produce all possible benefits. Nichiren’s teaching assimilates to the daimoku all the goods that religion in medieval Japan was thought to provide. In his various writings, faith in the Lotus is said to offer the realization of Buddhahood in this body, healing and other worldly benefits, protection of the nation, repentance or expiation of sin (sange), and birth after death in a pure land. Similarly, Nichiren’s idea of the Buddha of the Lotus Sūtra encompasses all conceptions of the Buddha that were current in his day. Śākyamuni is “our blood and flesh,” “our bones and marrow.” But at the same time he is ruler of the world, compassionate parent, and wise teacher to all beings. Nichiren’s use of hongaku ideas is also assimilated to this polemic of the all-inclusiveness of the Lotus Sūtra. The Lotus is presented as the only sūtra to reveal that the enlightened state of the Buddha and the nine realms of deluded beings are mutually encompassing and originally inherent; this is what makes the Lotus uniquely true and superior. (Page 296)