Another important implication that [the Life Span] chapter held for Nichiren was indeed this very possibility of realizing the buddha land in the present world. In the “Parable” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, Śākyamuni describes the world as a “burning house” in which there is no safe place. But now in the “Lifespan” chapter, having revealed his true identity as the primordially awakened buddha, Śākyamuni declares that, even in the fire that destroys the world at the end of the cosmic cycle, his land — the present world — is “tranquil” and “never decays”; it is a place where sentient beings are “joyful.” This is the realm depicted on Nichiren’s mandala. Alluding to this sūtra passage, Nichiren writes, “Now the Sahā world of original time is the constantly abiding pure land, liberated from the three disasters and beyond the [cycle of the] four kalpas [eons]. Its buddha has not already entered nirvana in the past, nor is he yet to be born in the future. And his disciples are of the same essence. This [reality] … is the three thousand realms of one’s own mind.”

Medieval Japanese Tendai thinkers of various teaching lineages shared a loose consensus that the enlightenment of the primordial Śākyamuni Buddha was “hidden in the depths” of the “Lifespan” chapter and could be accessed through the practitioner’s “mind contemplation” or “mind discernment” (J. kanjin). Kanjin in the Tiantai/Tendai tradition was originally a broad term for practice, in contrast to doctrinal study. Though interpretations varied, by Nichiren’s time, kanjin had come to mean the essence of the Tendai Lotus teachings and was often associated specifically with the “Lifespan” chapter. For Nichiren, now in the mappō era, the “mind discernment” that opens the primordial buddha’s awakening to all people is the chanting of Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō. He took the daimoku to be the “good medicine” that the excellent doctor leaves for his children in the “Lifespan” chapter’s narrative. In his reading, this chapter’s revelation of the primordial buddha’s constant presence in this world immediately collapses all temporal and spatial separation between the Buddha and the devotee. “Two thousand years and more have passed since the Buddha entered nirvāṇa,” he wrote. “But for those who embrace the Lotus Sūtra, at each day, each hour, each moment, the Buddha’s voice reaches them, conveying to them the message, ‘I do not die.’ ” Through chanting the daimoku, the timeless realm of the Buddha’s original enlightenment is retrieved in the present moment; ordinary people manifest buddhahood just as they are, and their world becomes the buddha land.

“In terms of realizing buddhahood with this very body,” Nichiren wrote, “the trace teaching is the gate that affords entry, while the origin teaching holds its true meaning, that is, its actualization.” Where the trace teaching presents buddhahood as a potential inherent in the nine realms of unenlightened beings, the origin teaching shows the buddha realm revealed through the Buddha’s conduct in the nine realms, represented in particular by the bodhisattva realm. The buddha realm has no separate existence or mode of expression apart from the nine realms. Rather, the nine realms, without losing their individual character, are purified, elevated, and positively redirected in the light of the realized buddha realm. This is the awakened reality of the Buddha, which Nichiren termed “the single thought-moment comprising three thousand realms in actuality” (ji no ichinen sanzen). For him, this revelation had one sole scriptural locus: it was “hidden in the depths” of the “Lifespan” chapter of the origin teaching of the Lotus Sūtra.

One can imagine how identification with the task of the bodhisattvas of the earth must have inspired and sustained those followers of Nichiren, in his own lifetime and later, who upheld their faith in the face of opposition. Its implication, that one has been born into this world to aid in a vast salvific task, could invest even the most ordinary life with immense meaning. This dimension of Nichiren’s teaching helps explain its ongoing attraction in the contemporary world. However humble one’s place in society or how limited one’s personal resources or abilities, to be a follower of Nichiren was to stand in the vanguard of history as someone who, having embraced the sole teaching leading to buddhahood in the present age, shoulders the responsibility to preserve and transmit it.

The claim that those who chant the daimoku are Śākyamuni Buddha’s disciples from the remotest past might initially seem at odds with Nichiren’s idea that people in the Final Dharma age have never before received the seed of buddhahood. The apparent contradiction resolves, however, when we recall that for Nichiren and other Buddhist thinkers of the time, the term “remotest past” (kuon) signified not merely an immensely long time ago in linear, historical terms, but also carried the meaning of timelessness, and thus, of the Buddha’s constant presence. The practice and propagation of the Lotus Sūtra in the mappō era is the juncture where the linear time of ordinary experience and the timeless realm of the Buddha intersect. In embracing the daimoku with the “same mind” as Nichiren, one immediately becomes a disciple of the ever-present primordial Śākyamuni Buddha and is encompassed in his enlightened realm.

Nichiren maintained that those who shared his practice and commitment were also to be counted among the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth: “If you are of the same mind as me, then are you not a bodhisattva of the earth? And if you are a bodhisattva of the earth, then without doubt you have been a disciple of Śākyamuni Buddha since the remotest past. … There should be no discrimination as to men or women among those who spread the five characters Myōhō-renge-kyō in the Final Dharma age, for unless they were bodhisattvas of the earth, they could not chant the daimoku. At first, I alone chanted Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, but then gradually two, three, and a hundred began to chant and transmit it. This will happen in the future as well. Isn’t this what it means to ’emerge from the earth’?”

While chronologies differed, in Japan, widespread opinion held that the Final Dharma had begun in 1052. Thus, the bodhisattvas who emerged from underground could be expected to appear at any time. Indeed, were they not overdue? “Should they fail to appear in the Final Dharma age, they would be great liars, and the prophecies made by Śākyamuni, Prabhūtaratna, and the buddhas of the ten directions would prove as empty as foam on the waters,” Nichiren wrote. In observing that no one other than himself was enduring the great trials predicted in the Lotus Sūtra, Nichiren concluded that he himself must be the representative of the bodhisattvas of the earth, or might even be one of them, a conviction that sustained him through years of danger and privation. Usually he referred to himself only in modest terms as a forerunner or emissary of their leader, the bodhisattva Viśiṣṭacaritra [J. Jōgyō, Superior Conduct], but there is little doubt that he identified his efforts with the work of this bodhisattva. Much of the later Nichiren tradition identifies him as a manifestation of Viśiṣṭacaritra in this world.

Nichiren observed that these four bodhisattvas [who are leaders of the Bodhisattvas from beneath the earth] were not present at the Buddha’s first sermon nor at the last. They appear in no sūtra other than the Lotus, and even there, they are present only to receive the Buddha’s transmission of the sūtra and his charge to propagate it after his parinirvāṇa. Based on his understanding of the Buddha’s teaching process, Nichiren argued that these bodhisattvas could only appear in the Final Dharma age. During the two thousand years following the Buddha’s passing, that is, the True Dharma and Semblance Dharma ages, persons who had received the seed of buddhahood from Sakyamuni Buddha were led to the stages of maturation and harvesting through provisional teachings. Had the bodhisattvas from beneath the earth appeared and spread the daimoku during that time, many of those people would have reviled it, thereby destroying the merit gained through the maturing of the seeds that they had already received. During those two thousand years, Nichiren said, some of the bodhisattvas from other worlds remained to teach the Lotus Sūtra in this world. Specifically, Zhiyi and his teacher Huisi, long revered as manifestations of the bodhisattvas Bhaiṣajyarāja (J. Yakuō; Medicine King) and Avalokiteśvara (Kannon), respectively, had taught the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment from the abstract perspective of the trace teaching. But by the beginning of the Final Dharma age, those able to achieve liberation through the provisional teachings had vanished, and the bodhisattvas from other worlds had all returned to their original lands. Now, in the present, mappō era, “Hinayāna is employed to attack Mahāyāna, and the provisional used to destroy the true. East and west are confused, and heaven and earth turned upside down. … At this time, the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth will make their first appearance in the world, solely to have the children drink the medicine of the five characters Myōhō-renge-kyō.”

Willingness to give even one’s life if need be took on deep soteriological meaning for Nichiren over the course of his career. By persevering for the Lotus Sūtra’s sake, he taught, one could expiate in a single lifetime one’s evil karma from countless past lifetimes; repay one’s obligations to the Buddha and to all living beings; fulfill the bodhisattva path; and be assured of fully realizing buddhahood in this lifetime. On this theme, he wrote to his followers: “Life flashes by in but a moment. No matter how many powerful enemies may oppose us, never think of retreating or give way to fear. Even if they should cut off our heads with a saw, impale our bodies with lances, or bind our feet and bore them through with a gimlet, so long as we have life, we must chant Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō. And if we chant up until the very moment of death, Śākyamuni, Prabhūtaratna, and the buddhas of the ten directions will come to us instantly … and surely escort us to the jeweled land of Tranquil Light.”