In considering whether or not to give public witness to the Lotus Sūtra, even though he knew he might face persecution, Nichiren found encouragement and confirmation of his chosen course of action in the simile of the “six difficult and nine easier actions” given by the Buddha in chapter eleven of the Lotus Sūtra.

Vacillating between whether I should speak out or whether I should not if I were to back down in the face of royal persecutions, I hit upon the ‘six difficult and nine easier actions’ mentioned in the eleventh chapter, “Appearance of the Stūpa of Treasures,” in the Lotus Sūtra. It says that even a man as powerless as I can throw Mr. Sumeru, even a man with as little superhuman power as I can carry a stack of hay on his back and survive the disastrous conflagration at the end of the world, and even a man as ignorant as I can memorize various sūtras as numerous as the sands of the Ganges River. Even more so, it is not easy to uphold even a word or phrase of the Lotus Sūtra in the Latter Age of Degeneration. This must be it! I have made a vow that this time I will have an unbending aspiration to buddhahood and never fall back! (Hori 2002, p. 53 adapted)

The passage that Nichiren is referring to can be found in the verses of chapter eleven. Further on in Kaimoku-shō, Nichiren cites what he calls the “five proclamations” of the Buddha in chapters eleven and twelve, of which the “six difficult and nine easy actions” are a part of the third proclamation. The five proclamations refer to the “three proclamations” of chapter eleven and two exhortations of buddhahood in chapter twelve — the prediction of buddhahood for Devadatta and the attainment of buddhahood by the dragon king’s daughter. The three proclamations are the three times in chapter eleven in which the Buddha exhorts those gathered to receive and keep, protect, read, and recite the Lotus Sūtra in the world after the passing of the Buddha.