Nichiren was by no means the only person to condemn Hōnen’s exclusive nenbutsu teaching as “disparaging the dharma.” Other critics, however, based their objections on the widely held premise that the Buddha had taught multiple forms of practice for persons of different capacities; claiming exclusive validity for one practice alone was “disparaging the dharma” because it rejected the multitude of other Buddhist teachings and practices such as keeping the precepts, meditation, esoteric ritual performance, reciting sūtras, and so forth.

Nichiren’s criticism had a different thrust: namely, that the Pure Land teachings were provisional and therefore unsuited to the present time, the age of the Final Dharma. They did not set forth the mutual inclusion of the ten realms that enabled all persons to realize buddhahood here in this world, in this body, but instead deferred it to another realm after death. By his time, a generation or so after Hōnen, exclusive nenbutsu followers were specifically urging people to abandon the Lotus Sūtra, which they claimed was too profound for people in this benighted era. In Nichiren’s view, this was disparaging the dharma. To discourage people from practicing the Lotus Sūtra because it was beyond their capacity was far worse than direct verbal abuse of the sūtra, because it threatened to drive the Lotus into obscurity, closing off the one teaching powerful enough to liberate people of the present evil age. “The Lotus Sūtra is the eyes of all the buddhas,” he wrote. “It is the original teacher of Śākyamuni Buddha, master of teachings. One who discards even a single character or brush dot commits a sin graver than killing one’s parents ten million times or shedding the blood of all buddhas in the ten directions.”

Zhiyi had taught that the Lotus Sūtra has the function of “opening and integrating” (J. kaie) the three vehicles within the one vehicle. … Nichiren understood this as opening the nine realms to reveal the buddha realm. But what did it mean in terms of practice? Nichiren’s contemporaries often freely combined copying and reciting the Lotus Sūtra with nenbutsu chanting, esoteric rituals, and other modes of Buddhist devotion. For many Tendai scholars of the day, the distinction between true and provisional teachings did not mean renouncing practices other than the Lotus Sūtra. It would indeed be a mistake, they said, to recite other sūtras or chant the names of the various buddhas and bodhisattvas thinking that these represented separate truths. But the one vehicle of the Lotus Sūtra integrates all other teachings within itself, just as the great ocean gathers all rivers. Therefore, they claimed, any practice — whether esoteric ritual performance, sūtra copying, or nenbutsu recitation — in effect becomes the practice of the Lotus Sūtra when carried out with this understanding. Others, however, disagreed, and none more vocally than Nichiren. To argue his point, he inverted the “rivers and ocean” metaphor. Once integrated into the Lotus Sūtra, he said, the nenbutsu, esoteric rites, and other practices lose their identity as independent practices, just as the many rivers emptying into the ocean assume the same salty flavor and lose their original names. Precisely because provisional teachings are integrated into the all encompassing principle of the one vehicle, they are no longer to be practiced as independent forms. At the same time, however, Nichiren insisted that the daimoku contains all truth and blessings within itself. Because the daimoku is all-encompassing, chanting it would confer all the benefits that the religious practices of his day were thought to produce: this-worldly benefits such as protection and healing, assurance for the afterlife, and buddhahood itself. His aim was not to eradicate the spectrum of religious interpretations, but to undercut their basis in other traditions and assimilate them to the Lotus Sūtra alone.

Buddhist sūtras specify two approaches to teaching the dharma: shōju, or leading others gradually without criticizing their present stance, and shakubuku, or actively rebuking attachment to false views. The choice between them, Nichiren said, should depend on the time and place. In his view, in Japan at the beginning of the Final Dharma age — a time and place where the Lotus Sūtra was being rejected in favor of provisional teachings — the confrontational shakubuku method should take precedence over the more accommodating shōju approach.

In the contemporary world, where the violence and suffering brought about by religious conflict are so starkly evident, Nichiren’s emphasis on the exclusive truth of the Lotus Sūtra and his assertive mode of proselytizing sometimes provoke antipathy, as they fly in the face of ideals of tolerance and religious pluralism. Both traditional temple organizations and long-established lay groups of Nichiren Buddhism tend to be more accommodating and to take a milder approach in spreading their teachings, in keeping with Nichiren’s admonition that the method of propagation should accord with the times. Nichiren, however, lived in a very different world, where his conviction of the Lotus Sūtra’s sole efficacy in the age of the Final Dharma demanded resolute opposition to other Buddhist forms. This stance sharply differentiated him from the Buddhist mainstream of his day. Though it drew hostility, it may well have enabled his fledgling community to survive beyond his lifetime by carving out a unique religious identity.