Clothing defends our bodies against the cold and protects our bodies against the heat. It also hugs or adorns our bodies. It is preached in the “Medicine King” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, fascicle 7, “It is as if a naked person was given clothing.” This means that it is tantamount to a person who receives clothes after shivering in the cold without them. It refers to a happy mind.
Nanjō-dono Gohenji, Reply to Lord Nanjō, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 7, Followers II, Pages 17
In the Differences Between the Lotus School and Other Schools Such as the Mantra School (Shingon Shoshū Imoku) Nichiren wrote a clear and concise statement about his belief that he had both expiated his past misdeeds and received divine protection:
The sun and moon are clear mirrors shining on all the worlds in the universe, but do they know about Nichiren? I am sure that they know me. So, we should not doubt or worry about the protection of various heavenly beings. Nevertheless, I, Nichiren, have been persecuted because the sins that I committed in my past lives have not been completely eradicated. As I have been exiled because of my faith in the Lotus Sūtra, some of my sins may have been atoned so the Buddha may protect me under his robe. It was the protection of the Buddha that saved me from near death at Tatsunokuchi at midnight on the twelfth of the ninth month last year.
Grand Master Miaole said in his Supplemental Amplifications on the Great Calming and Contemplation that the stronger our faith is, the greater the divine protection will be. Do not doubt this. You should firmly believe in and do not doubt that there always is divine protection. (Murano 2000, p. 125 adapted)
Open Your Eyes, p517It is preached in the Lotus Sūtra, chapter 15 on “The Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground”:
“There are bodhisattvas as many as the sand of 60,000 Ganges Rivers originally in this Sahā World, and each of them is accompanied by followers also numbering 60,000 times as many as the sands of the Ganges River. They will uphold, read, recite and expound this sūtra.”
When the Buddha had said these words, the earth of the one billion countries of the Sahā World all trembled and split open and out of them emerged simultaneously immeasurable thousands, ten thousands, millions of bodhisattvas. …
These bodhisattvas had four leaders. The first was Superior Practice, the second was Limitless Practice, the third was Pure Practice and the fourth was Steadily Established Practice. These four were the foremost leaders and guiding teachers of all in the group.”
Grand Master T’ien-t’ai interprets this scriptural statement in his Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra, “These bodhisattvas are My (the Buddha’s) disciples, who will spread My dharma;” and Grand Master Miao-lê comments on this in the Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra, “Śākyamuni Buddha is the father and bodhisattvas who emerged from underground are His children, so the children are going to propagate their father’s dharma;” while Tao-hsien explains this in his Supplement to the Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra, “Speaking of entrusting the dharma, this sūtra was entrusted only to the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth. Why was this? Because it was the dharma attained by the Buddha in the eternal past, it was entrusted to those bodhisattvas guided by the Buddha in the eternal past.”
For these great bodhisattvas to deliver benefits to the people in the Latter Age of Degeneration is as easy as fish swimming in the water and birds flying in the sky. For those who were born in the evil world to meet these great bodhisattvas and have the seed of Buddhahood sown in them is like the spirit of water that faces the moon and pours out water or a peahen that becomes pregnant upon hearing the sounds of thunder. As T’ien-t’ai says of this in his Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra, “As all rivers pour into the sea, bodhisattvas are born drawn by karmic relations.”
Soya Nyūdō-dono-gari Gosho, A Letter to Lay Priest Lord Soya, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Pages 162.
Nichiren takes the description of the three kinds of enemies as a prophecy that vindicates his mission even as his persecutions fulfill the prophecy, but what should we make of this in our own lives and practice? Some people have interpreted this teaching to mean that one is only practicing the Lotus Sūtra correctly if one is arousing opposition. Consequently, these people believe that they must either identify who their enemies are or else preach the Lotus Sūtra so stridently that they will be sure to make enemies. I am not convinced that this is what the Lotus Sūtra really intends, even if it might appear to be the way Nichiren did things.
If we look at chapter twenty, “Never Despising Bodhisattva,” of the Lotus Sūtra we will find a story that illustrates what the sūtra intends. In that chapter the Buddha tells a story of a past life when he was known as the Never Despising Bodhisattva. That bodhisattva’s whole practice consisted of bowing to all he met and greeting them with the words, “I do not despise you because you can become buddhas.” (Murano 2012, p. 292) This practice of showing respect to all people and assuring them that they could attain buddhahood aroused the opposition of the arrogant monastics and laity who did not believe that ordinary people could attain buddhahood. They mocked him and even attempted to strike him with sticks and to throw stones at him. Never Despising Bodhisattva, however, did not return their abuse but moved to a safe distance and continued to regard them with respect and to assure them of their future buddhahood. This story seems to be a dramatization of the description given in the twenty stanzas of chapter thirteen. This story tells us two important things. The first is that Never Despising Bodhisattva did not seek to make enemies. All he did was respectfully share the message of the Lotus Sūtra, even if it contradicted the preconceived ideas of those who believed they had nothing more to learn about Buddhism. The second is that even when he was abused, he continued to maintain a respectful attitude and did not compromise his mission to preach the Lotus Sūtra. Nichiren himself equates his mission to teach Odaimoku with that of Never Despising Bodhisattva in Testimony to the Prediction of the Buddha (Kembutsu Mirai-ki):
Nevertheless, if there is a man after the death of the Buddha who breaks the attachment to the false doctrines of the “four tastes and three teachings” of the pre-Lotus sūtras and puts faith in the True Dharma of the Lotus Sūtra, all the virtuous gods and numerous bodhisattvas who sprang up from underground will protect such a practitioner of the Lotus Sūtra. Under such protection, this practitioner would be able to spread over the world the focus of devotion (honzon) revealed in the Original Gate and the five-word daimoku of Myō, Hō, Ren, Ge, and Kyō,” the essence of the Lotus Sūtra.
He is just like Never Despising Bodhisattva, who, in the
Age of the Semblance Dharma after the death of
Powerful Voice King Buddha, spread in the land of this Buddha the twenty-four character passage in the Lotus Sūtra (chapter twenty) saying: “I respect you deeply. I do not despise you. Why is this? It is because you all will practice the way of bodhisattvas and will be able to attain buddhahood.” With such propagation, the bodhisattva was severely persecuted by all the people in the land, who beat him with sticks and threw stones at him.
Although the twenty-four characters of Never Despising Bodhisattva differ in wording from the five characters which I, Nichiren, spread, they are the same in meaning. We both appeared in the world under the same conditions: he toward the end of the Age of the Semblance Dharma after the death of Powerful Voice King Buddha, and I at the beginning of the Latter Age after the death of Śākyamuni Buddha. (Hori 2002, p. 174 adapted)
Open Your Eyes, p508-509I would propose that Śākyamuni Buddha, as a literary figure in the sūtras, is a personification of the ideals and insights of the Buddhist tradition. The Eternal Śākyamuni Buddha of the Original Gate therefore personifies what those Mahāyāna Buddhists who have given credence to the Lotus Sūtra believe is the ultimate message of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Nichiren believed that this message was one of the universal and immediate accessibility of buddhahood, and that this message was what the Tiantai school had been championing until it had become obscured by other messages that Nichiren saw as departures from what is taught in the Mahāyāna sūtras and particularly the Lotus Sūtra. For Nichiren, fidelity to Buddhism is fidelity to the tradition expressed in the sūtras that had inspired and guided Mahāyāna Buddhists for well over a millennium at the time he wrote Kaimoku-shō. In our present time and circumstances I think that to avoid falling into the category of “ignorant laypeople” we who wish to be inspired and guided by the Mahāyāna teachings should read these teachings for ourselves so that we will be in a position to judge whether or not a particular Buddhist group or a particular teacher is authentically representing that tradition or distorting it due to biased ideas or for less than worthy goals.
Open Your Eyes, p504“Honestly” in the phrase of “honestly casting away the expedient” stated in the sūtra means that when a beginner practices the Lotus Sūtra, the beginner should be devoted to practicing solely the Lotus Sūtra, casting away all the other sūtras mentioned before; such is a really honest practicer. If, on the contrary, a beginner practices the various sūtras and the Lotus Sūtra simultaneously, just like highly trained bodhisattvas, this person would surely be regarded as a dishonest practicer. As the proverbs say: “A sage never served two rulers;” and “A virtuous wife does not remarry;” they describe the honest practicer.
Shimoyama Goshōsoku, The Shimoyama Letter, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 5, Page 69
“Myō” means revival. For example, when a mother crane calls out to her dead child, “Shian,” the dead crane will come back to life. When a poisonous bird called chinchō enters the water, fish and clam will die from the bird’s poison, but the touch of a rhinoceros horn will bring them back to life. Similarly, when the Two Vehicles of śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha, (who were nearly dead because their seeds of Buddhahood were roasted in various sūtras,) icchantika, women and others who uphold the character “myō,” their dead seeds will be revived and they will all be resuscitated.
Hokke Daimoku Shō, Treatise on the Daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 46
It is stated in the first fascicle of the Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight, “It is impossible to interpret the teaching in the verses of the Flower Garland Sūtra without knowing all the Perfect Teachings of the T’ien-t’ai School.” It preaches also in the fifth fascicle “Without understanding the Lotus Sūtra, how can we interpret the sentence of the Flower Garland Sūtra that there is no difference among the mind, the Buddha, and people since mind creates everything in the world like a skillful painter.” The seventh fascicle of the Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra states that the term “inherent evil” had never been heard anywhere except in the T’ien-t’ai School. According to these statements it is impossible to understand the meaning of the verses of the Flower Garland Sūtra without mastering the teaching of Grand Master T’ien-t’ai. Then it follows that among Chinese teachers no one but Grand Master T’ien-t’ai explained the term of “inherent evil” and it is impossible to discuss the teaching of “Three Thousand Existences Contained in One Thought” without the Lotus Sūtra.
Nijō Sabutsu Ji, Obtaining Buddhahood by the Two Vehicles, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Page 231-232
The Mahāyāna response … to the question as to when a teaching can be considered to have been taught by the Buddha is that it does not matter whether or not it was taught by the historical Buddha, but whether it conforms to the truth, to those teachings we know the historical Buddha did teach, to the renunciation of defilement, and to revealing the praiseworthy qualities of nirvāṇa, the unconditioned. Of course, this criteria comes down to the subjective judgment of those who are evaluating a given teaching, but this is certainly in line with the Buddha’s advice to the Kālāmas when he told them that they should not depend upon external authorities, traditions, or even their own speculations, but rather to depend upon what they come to know for themselves directly is wholesome and praiseworthy and to be put into practice. Mahāyānists may consider the Śākyamuni Buddha who speaks in the Mahāyāna sūtras as the personification of a wisdom tradition whose initial inspiration is found, but not limited to, the life and teachings of the historical Gautama Buddha.
In the case of Nichiren and those who follow him, there is certainly the conviction that the Lotus Sūtra is an inspired teaching, and furthermore that it expresses the ultimate intent of the Buddhist tradition as a whole — the buddhahood or perfect and complete awakening of all people without exception. To bring this point home, Nichiren adds to the three proclamations two additional proclamations from chapter twelve of the Lotus Sūtra: the prediction of buddhahood given to Devadatta and the transformation of the dragon king’s daughter into a buddha. Based on these two exhortations or additional proclamations, Nichiren asserts that the Lotus Sūtra guarantees that all men and women can attain buddhahood. This universal guarantee of buddhahood is where Nichiren, basing himself on the Lotus Sūtra, believes that all the teachings of all the other sūtras, Mahāyāna and pre-Mahāyāna, are leading. It is, therefore, up to us to accept this with trust and joy, put it into practice, and find out for outselves.
Open Your Eyes, p498-499[I]t is stated in the Lotus Sūtra (chapter four, “Understanding by Faith”) that four great Śrāvakas such as Kāśyapa rejoiced in their understanding of the teaching of the Lotus Sūtra enabling śrāvakas to attain Buddhahood, and reported to the Buddha that they had been given invaluable jewels without asking for them. This represents the attainment of Buddhahood by the śrāvaka realm contained in our minds.
Not only the śrāvaka but also Śākyamuni Buddha is within us. For, we encounter such a statement like this in the second chapter of the Lotus Sūtra: “It was My (Śākyamuni’s) original vow to let all beings become like Myself. My vow has now been fulfilled. I have helped them all enter the way of the Buddha.” Does this not mean, that Śākyamuni Buddha, who has attained Perfect Enlightenment, is our flesh and blood, and all the merits He has accumulated before and after attaining Buddhahood are our bones?
Kanjin Honzon-shō, A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and the Most Verable One, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 146