When Buddhism was transmitted to China, the Mahāyāna concept of all things as empty of fixed, independent existence and therefore mutually interpenetrating and nondual seemed to echo indigenous Chinese notions of a holistic cosmos in which all things are interrelated. This stance proved congenial to early Chinese Buddhist thinkers. But how exactly was the ultimate principle (Ch. li, J. ri) — whether conceptualized as emptiness, mind, or suchness — related to the concrete phenomena or actualities (shi, ji) of our experience? Some teachers conceived of principle in terms of an originally pure and undifferentiated “one mind” that, refracted through deluded perception, gives rise to the phenomenal world, with its distinctions of self and other, true and false, subject and object, good and evil, and so forth. To use a famous metaphor, the mind is originally like still water that accurately mirrors all things. When stirred by the wind of ignorance, waves appear, and the water begins to reflect things in a distorted way, producing the notion of self and other as substantially real entities and thus giving rise to attachment, suffering, and continued rebirth in saṃsāra. Liberation lies in discerning that the differentiated phenomena of the world are in their essence no different from the one mind and thus originally pure. From this perspective, the purpose of Buddhist practice is to dispel delusion and return the mind to its original clarity. This idea developed especially within the Huayan (J. Kegon) and Chan (Zen) traditions.

This model explains principle and phenomena as nondual, but it does not value them equally. The one mind is original, pure, and true, while concrete phenomena are ultimately unreal, arising only as the one mind is filtered through human ignorance. From that perspective, the ordinary elements of daily experience remain at a second-tier level as the epiphenomena of a defiled consciousness. Zhiyi termed this perspective the “realm of the conceivable” — understandable, but not yet adequately expressing the true state of affairs. He himself expressed a different, more subtle view. … [H]e states: “Were the mind to give rise to all phenomena, that would be a vertical [relationship]. Were all phenomena to be simultaneously contained within the mind, that would be a horizontal [relationship]. Neither horizontal nor vertical will do. It is simply that the mind is all phenomena and all phenomena are the mind. … [This relationship] is subtle and profound in the extreme; it can neither be grasped conceptually nor expressed in words. Therefore, it is called the realm of the inconceivable.”

In Zhiyi’s understanding, phenomena do not arise from a pure mind or abstract prior principle. “Principle” means that the material and the mental, subject and object, good and evil, delusion and enlightenment are always nondual and mutually inclusive; this is the “real aspect of all dharmas” that only buddhas can completely know, referred to in the “Skillful Means” chapter (24). This perspective revalorizes the world, not as a realm of delusion, but as the very locus of enlightenment. The aim of practice, then, is not to recover a primal purity, but to manifest the buddha wisdom even amid ignorance and delusion.

Buddhist thinkers over the centuries have elaborated various models of the path as guidelines for practice. Early Buddhism set forth the “three disciplines” of moral conduct, meditative concentration, and wisdom as comprising the entirety of the path. Mahāyāna scriptures set forth a list of six perfections (pāramitās) … that bodhisattvas must master, which add to the original three disciplines the virtues of giving, perseverance, and effort. Specific texts enumerate ten stages, forty-one stages, or fifty-two stages of bodhisattva practice. Some models entail sequential stages; in others, elements of the path are cultivated simultaneously.

Based on the “Description of Merits” chapter (245-250), Zhiyi enumerated “four stages of faith” and “five stages of practice” of the Lotus Sūtra. The four stages of faith are (1) to arouse even a single thought of willing acceptance (also translated as “a single moment’s faith and understanding”); (2) to understand the intent of the sūtra’s words; (3) to place deep faith in the sūtra and expound it widely for others; and (4) to perfect one’s own faith and insight. The “five stages of practice” are (1) to rejoice on hearing the Lotus Sūtra; (2) to read and recite it; (3) to explain it to others; (4) to practice it while cultivating the six perfections; and (5) to master the six perfections. The “four stages of faith” apply to those living in Śākyamuni Buddha’s lifetime, while the “five stages of practice” are intended for persons living after his nirvāṇa, however, the spirit behind them is the same.

Within these two models of the path, Nichiren focused on the first stage of faith, arousing a single moment’s faith and understanding, and the first stage of practice, rejoicing on hearing the Lotus Sūtra. But to what level of practice did these stages correspond? Nichiren noted that the works of Zhiyi and Zhanran give three interpretations. Two of these equate these stages with advanced levels, either the third or fourth of the “six stages of identity” (J. rokusoku) into which Zhiyi had divided the practice of the perfect teaching. The third interpretation, however, identifies them with only the second of the six levels, “verbal identity” (J. myōji-soku), the stage of a beginning practitioner, at which one first encounters the words of the dharma and has faith in them. Nichiren thought that this third interpretation accorded most closely with the sūtra passage; for him, the stage of “verbal identity” meant embracing faith in the Lotus Sūtra and chanting its daimoku. In the Final Dharma age, he taught, advancing to later stages becomes irrelevant, because the merits of all stages are fully encompassed in the beginning stage.