Day 1 covers the first half of Chapter 1, Introductory
Having last month concluded today’s portion of Chapter 1, Introductory, we begin again with, “Thus have I heard.”
Thus have I heard.
This is a seminal point in Nichiren’s veneration of the Daimoku. As he explains in his Essay on Gratitude:
Venerable Ānanda and Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī listened to every word of the wonderful teaching of the Lotus Sūtra for eight years and at the assembly for compilation of all the sūtras after the Buddha’s extinction, nine hundred ninety-nine arhats wrote them down. They began with “Myō, Hō, Ren, Ge, and Kyō” and chanted “Thus have I heard.” Doesn’t this prove that the five Chinese characters of “Myō, Hō, Ren, Ge, and Kyō” are the essence of the one volume Lotus Sūtra, twenty-eight chapters in eight fascicles?
Hōon-jō, Essay on Gratitude, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 3, Pages 52.