In later life, Nichiren’s conviction that all the people of Japan in his day were slanderers of the Lotus Sūtra would underscore his advocacy of shakubuku (to “break and subdue”), the “stern method” of teaching the Dharma by assertively rebuking “wrong views.” To the rhetoric of rebuking slander he assimilated both the Buddhist ideal of bodhisattva conduct and the Confucian virtues of loyalty and filial piety. One rebukes another’s slander to save that person from the hells and to provide the karmic connection to the Lotus that alone enables the realization of Buddhahood; thus Nichiren regarded shakubuku as an act of bodhisattva-like compassion and the highest form of service to that person. In addition, Nichiren argued that not to obey a sovereign or parent who opposed the Lotus Sūtra was the true form of loyalty and filial devotion, thus appropriating Confucian virtues in a way that could in some cases legitimize, or even mandate, defiance of worldly authority. (Page 255-256)