I, Nichiren, am the only one who knows this in Japan. If I speak out even one word of this, royal persecutions will never fail to befall my parents, brothers, and teachers. If I do not speak out, however, it would seem that I did not have compassion. Wondering whether or not I should speak out in the light of the Lotus, Nirvana and other sūtras, I came to realize that if I did not speak out, I would fall without fail into the Hell of Incessant Suffering in future lives even if nothing happened to me in this life. If I spoke out, I realized, the Three Hindrances and Four Devils would overtake me.

Vacillating between the two, that I should speak out and that I should not if I were to back down in the face of royal persecutions, I hit upon the “six difficulties and nine easier actions” mentioned in the eleventh chapter, “Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures,” in the Lotus Sūtra. It says that even a man as powerless as I can throw Mt. Sumeru, even a man with as little superhuman power as I can carry a stack of hay on his back and survive the disastrous conflagration at the end of the world, and even a man as ignorant as I can memorize various sūtras as numerous as the sands of the Ganges River. Even more so, it is not easy to uphold even a word or a phrase of the Lotus Sūtra in the Latter Age of Degeneration. This must be it! I have made a vow that this time I will have an unbending aspiration to Buddhahood and never fall back!

Kaimoku-shō, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 53