Buddhist thinkers over the centuries have elaborated various models of the path as guidelines for practice. Early Buddhism set forth the “three disciplines” of moral conduct, meditative concentration, and wisdom as comprising the entirety of the path. Mahāyāna scriptures set forth a list of six perfections (pāramitās) … that bodhisattvas must master, which add to the original three disciplines the virtues of giving, perseverance, and effort. Specific texts enumerate ten stages, forty-one stages, or fifty-two stages of bodhisattva practice. Some models entail sequential stages; in others, elements of the path are cultivated simultaneously.

Based on the “Description of Merits” chapter (245-250), Zhiyi enumerated “four stages of faith” and “five stages of practice” of the Lotus Sūtra. The four stages of faith are (1) to arouse even a single thought of willing acceptance (also translated as “a single moment’s faith and understanding”); (2) to understand the intent of the sūtra’s words; (3) to place deep faith in the sūtra and expound it widely for others; and (4) to perfect one’s own faith and insight. The “five stages of practice” are (1) to rejoice on hearing the Lotus Sūtra; (2) to read and recite it; (3) to explain it to others; (4) to practice it while cultivating the six perfections; and (5) to master the six perfections. The “four stages of faith” apply to those living in Śākyamuni Buddha’s lifetime, while the “five stages of practice” are intended for persons living after his nirvāṇa, however, the spirit behind them is the same.

Within these two models of the path, Nichiren focused on the first stage of faith, arousing a single moment’s faith and understanding, and the first stage of practice, rejoicing on hearing the Lotus Sūtra. But to what level of practice did these stages correspond? Nichiren noted that the works of Zhiyi and Zhanran give three interpretations. Two of these equate these stages with advanced levels, either the third or fourth of the “six stages of identity” (J. rokusoku) into which Zhiyi had divided the practice of the perfect teaching. The third interpretation, however, identifies them with only the second of the six levels, “verbal identity” (J. myōji-soku), the stage of a beginning practitioner, at which one first encounters the words of the dharma and has faith in them. Nichiren thought that this third interpretation accorded most closely with the sūtra passage; for him, the stage of “verbal identity” meant embracing faith in the Lotus Sūtra and chanting its daimoku. In the Final Dharma age, he taught, advancing to later stages becomes irrelevant, because the merits of all stages are fully encompassed in the beginning stage.