‘One Example that Applies to All’

Nichiren maintained that the Lotus Sūtra enables women to attain buddhahood as women, because it embodies the mutual encompassing of the ten dharma realms. He writes: “The other Mahāyāna sūtras would seem to permit women to attain either buddhahood or birth in the pure land [of Amitābha], but that is an attainment premised on changing their [female] form, not the direct manifestation of buddhahood grounded in the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment. Thus, it is an attainment of buddhahood or pure land birth in name but not reality. The nāga girl represents the ‘one example that applies to all.’ Her attainment of buddhahood opened the way for the attainment of buddhahood … by all women of the latter age.”

Two Buddhas, p 157