Nichiren … read the story of Sadāparibhūta [Never-Despising Bodhisattva] in a way that reflected — and perhaps inspired — his understanding of his own ordeals as a form of redemptive suffering. The prose portion of the “Sadāparibhūta” chapter says that those who mocked the bodhisattva suffered for a thousand eons in the Avici hell, but after expiating this offense, they were again able to meet him and were led by him to attain “the highest, complete enlightenment.” The verse section, however, suggests that the bodhisattva himself had “expiated his past errors” by patiently bearing the insults and mistreatment he received in the course of his practice. Nichiren focused on this second reading, encouraging his followers, and himself as well, by explaining that hardship encountered for the Lotus Sūtra’s sake would eradicate one’s past slanders against the dharma. “The bodhisattva Sadāparibhūta was not reviled and disparaged, and assailed with sticks and stones, for no reason,” Nichiren suggested. “It would appear that he had probably slandered the true dharma in the past. The phrase ‘having expiated his past errors’ seems to mean that because he met persecution, he was able to eradicate his sins from prior lifetimes.”

Nichiren took Sadāparibhūta [Never-Despising Bodhisattva] as a personal model and strongly identified with him. First, there were obvious parallels in their practice. “Sadāparibhūta was a practitioner at the initial stage of rejoicing,” Nichiren wrote, “while I am an ordinary person at the level of verbal identity. He sowed the seeds of buddhahood with twenty-four characters, while I do so with just five characters [Myō-hō-ren-ge-kyō]. The age differs, but the buddhahood realized is exactly the same.” This passage suggests that Nichiren saw Sadāparibhūta, like himself, as someone at the initial stages of practice who was carrying out shakubuku, planting the seeds of buddhahood in the minds of people who had never before received them. He saw other similarities as well. Both Nichiren and Sadāparibhūta lived long after the passing of the respective buddhas of their age, in an era of decline when there was much hostility. And both persevered in the face of emnity, enabling their persecutors to form a “reverse connection” (J. gyakuen) with the Lotus Sūtra. In short, Sadāparibhūta was for Nichiren an exemplar of practice for the latter age, and in this sense, he wrote, “The heart of the practice of the Lotus Sūtra is found in the ‘Sadāparibhūta’ chapter.”

Nichiren’s assertion that, for Lotus practitioners of the mappō era, the daimoku replaces cultivation of the traditional three disciplines in effect opened the merits of the sūtra to persons without learning or insight. Here he used the analogies of a patient who is cured by medicine without understanding its properties, or of plants that, without awareness, bloom when they receive rainfall. In like manner, he said, beginning practitioners may not understand the meaning of the daimoku, but by chanting it, “they will naturally accord with the sūtra’s intent.” In making such claims, Nichiren was not taking an anti-intellectual stance that would deny the importance of Buddhist study. Nor was he negating the need for continuing effort in practice or the value of the qualities that the six perfections describe: generosity, self-discipline, forbearance, diligence, and so forth, even though he rejected the need to cultivate them formally as prerequisites for enlightenment. It is important to recall that Nichiren often framed his teaching in opposition to Pure Land teachers who insisted that the Lotus Sūtra should be set aside as too profound for ignorant persons of the Final Dharma age. As we have seen, this assertion appalled Nichiren, who saw it as blocking the sole path by which the people of this age could realize liberation. In response, he argued passionately that the Lotus Sūtra’s salvific scope embraces even the most ignorant persons; in chanting the daimoku, all have full access to the merits of buddhahood, without practicing over countless lifetimes or seeking liberation in a separate realm after death.