Unlike Gadgadasvara [Wonderful-Voice Bodhisattva], who would seem to appear only in the Lotus Sūtra, the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara [World-Voice-Perceiver Bodhisattva] features in numerous texts and has been revered throughout Asia, down to and including the present time. Avalokiteśvara has been worshipped in many guises. The Dalai Lama is regarded as an incarnation of Avalokiteśvara. In China, this bodhisattva was often represented in female form. In Japan one finds pilgrimage routes dedicated to the bodhisattva comprising thirty-three sites, one for each of his manifestations listed in this chapter of the Lotus Sūtra. He also figures prominently in the Pure Land tradition as the right-hand attendant of the buddha Amitābha, accompanying him when he descends to welcome his devotees at the moment of death and escort them to his pure land.

It was possibly because of these Pure Land connections that Nichiren makes so little mention of Avalokiteśvara, despite the pervasiveness in medieval Japan of devotion to this bodhisattva. On the mandalas he inscribed for his followers, Nichiren wrote the names of representative bodhisattvas of the trace teaching below the names of the leaders of the bodhisattvas of the earth. Usually he chose Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra as these representatives; no extant mandala in his hand bears the name of Avalokiteśvara.