In the development of Tendai Buddhism after Saichō, the implications of the nāga princess’s achievement were analyzed and disputed from many angles. Was the enlightenment to be realized “with this body” full or partial? To which of the stages of bodhisattva practice did it correspond? Was this kind of immediate realization accessible to all, or only to those who had cultivated practice in prior lifetimes? With some exceptions, later Tendai thinking shifted away from Saichō’s notion of attaining buddhahood within three lifetimes to an emphasis on direct realization of buddhahood in one’s present body. By Nichiren’s time, one strand of scholastic argument held that, at least in principle, even ordinary deluded persons might be able to access buddhahood at the beginning stages of faith and practice. Nichiren taught that embracing the Lotus Sūtra would make this a reality: “The Lotus Sūtra is the Buddha’s teaching and the Buddha’s wisdom. When one puts faith in even a single character or brushstroke, one immediately becomes a buddha in one’s present body. … , so [the Lotus Sūtra] transforms ordinary beings into buddhas. That is why it is called the wonderful dharma.”

According to the “Devadatta” chapter, the relationship between Śākyamuni Buddha and his treacherous cousin was not purely a matter of this lifetime. The very fact that he has become the Buddha, Śākyamuni says, is due to Devadatta’s past “good and virtuous friendship.” “Good and virtuous friendship” here translates kalyāvamitra (J. zenchishiki, literally, “good friend”), one who teaches or encourages another on the Buddhist path. In view of the traditional accounts of his repeated betrayals, Devadatta would seem to have been no “friend” at all. Nichiren, however, took this passage as teaching not only the inevitability of meeting enemies in one’s efforts to spread the dharma — “the Buddha and Devadatta are like a form and its shadow; in lifetime after lifetime, they are never separated” — but also the importance of appreciating the opportunity for spiritual development that their hostility makes possible. “In this age as well, it is not one’s allies but one’s bitterest enemies who help one improve,” he wrote. In this context, Nichiren expressed gratitude for the clerics and government officials who had persecuted him, adding that, without them, he could not have proven himself as a votary of the Lotus Sutra.

[T]he “Devadatta” chapter underscores the Lotus Sūtra’s inclusivity by extending the possibility of buddhahood to categories of persons thought to labor under particularly heavy karmic burdens: evil men and all women. Nichiren took the Devadatta story as illustrating the unique power of the Lotus Sūtra to save even the most wicked and depraved.

Toward the end of the [Hotoge] verse passage, the Buddha declares that those who can uphold the Lotus Sūtra in a troubled age following his parinirvāṇa will be praised by all buddhas: they are courageous, persevering, and “are known as those who follow the rules of good conduct.” “The rules of good conduct” here refers to the precepts, the rules of moral discipline to be upheld by Buddhists. In Nichiren’s time, the significance of the precepts was hotly disputed. Hōnen had taught that birth in the Pure Land depends solely upon entrusting oneself to the power of Amitābha Buddha’s vow; whether one keeps or breaks the precepts has no bearing on one’s salvation. Others, such as the monk Eison (1201-1290), held that, precisely because the times were degenerate and adverse, strict observance of the precepts was more essential than ever. Nichiren, following this sūtra passage, maintained that upholding the Lotus Sūtra is itself keeping the precepts. The five characters of the daimoku, the heart of the Lotus Sūtra, he said, form the “all-encompassing wonderful precept” by which all buddhas realize their enlightenment. Nichiren generally endorsed the traditional Buddhist ethic of compassion and generosity, along with its moral principles that discourage such evils as killing, lying, theft, and sexual misconduct. However, he did not see following rules of conduct as a prerequisite to liberation in the age of the Final Dharma. Because the daimoku contains within itself all the countless practices and good acts of all past, present, and future buddhas, he taught, simply to chant it is to uphold the precepts. Nichiren also seems to have believed that this practice would foster upright conduct, for he claimed that “one who chants [the daimoku] as the Lotus Sūtra teaches will not have a crooked mind.

In the concluding verse section of [Chapter 11, Beholding the Stūpa of Treasures], now seated in midair within the jeweled stūpa beside Prabhūtaratna, Śākyamuni Buddha again stresses how difficult it will be to uphold the Lotus Sūtra after his passing, setting forth the analogy of what Nichiren summarized as the “nine easy and six difficult acts.” …

Nichiren read this passage as directly addressing his own circumstances and those of his followers, and he stressed that the sūtra was in fact speaking to them. For example, to a lay nun who had asked him a question about the sūtra, he wrote that her query itself was “a root of great good.” He continued: “Now in this Final Dharma age, those who ask about the meaning of even one phrase or verse of the Lotus Sūtra are rarer than those who can fling Mount Sumeru to the worlds of another quarter … or those who can uphold and preach countless other sūtras, causing the monastics and lay people who hear them to attain the six supernormal powers. The chapter called ‘A Jeweled Stūpa’ in the fourth fascicle of the Lotus Sūtra sets forth the important teaching of the six difficult and nine easy acts. Your posing a question about the Lotus Sūtra is among the six difficult acts. You should know thereby that, if you uphold the sūtra, you will become a buddha in your present body.”

Nichiren’s writings suggest two reasons why the Lotus Sūtra is “difficult to accept and to understand.” First, as Saichō had noted, the provisional teachings — those preached before the Lotus Sūtra — were expounded “according to the minds of others,” or in other words, the Buddha had accommodated them to the understanding of his listeners. In contrast, Śākyamuni preached the Lotus Sūtra “in accordance with his own mind,” revealing his own enlightenment. Nichiren took this to mean the Buddha’s insight into the mutual inclusion of the ten realms, or more specifically, the understanding that “our inferior minds are endowed with the buddha realm.” For many of Nichiren’s contemporaries, who believed that buddhahood was to be attained only after death in the Pure Land, this idea must have seemed deeply counterintuitive. “[Among the ten realms], the buddha realm alone is difficult to demonstrate,” he acknowledged. “But having understood that your mind is endowed with the other nine realms, you should believe that it has the buddha realm as well. Do not have doubts about this.”

Another reason why the Lotus Sūtra is “difficult to accept and to understand” is because those who propagate it may encounter antagonism. “People show great hostility toward this sūtra, even in the presence of the Tathāgata,” Śākyamuni declares in [Chapter 10]. “How much more so after the parinirvāṇa of the Tathāgata!” Although cast here in the form of a prophecy of what will happen after the Buddha’s demise, this passage may point to opposition from the Buddhist mainstream encountered by the early Lotus community. For Nichiren, it foretold the hardships that he and his followers encountered in spreading the Lotus Sūtra. Writing from his first exile, to the Izu peninsula, he confessed, “When I first read this passage, I wondered if things would really be so terrible. But now I know that the Buddha’s predictions do not err in the slightest, especially since I have experienced them personally.” For Nichiren, this sūtra passage carried a double legitimation, both of the Lotus Sūtra to which he had committed his life and of his own practice in upholding and propagating the Lotus. The passage is cited nearly fifty times in his extant writings.

At the same time, Nichiren saw the “difficulty” of embracing the Lotus Sūtra as pointing, not merely to the inevitability of hardships, but also to a guarantee of buddhahood. “To accept [the Lotus Sūtra] is easy,” he wrote. “To uphold it is difficult. But the realization of buddhahood lies in upholding faith. Those who would uphold this sūtra should be prepared to meet difficulties. Without doubt, they will ‘quickly attain the highest Buddha path’.”