QUESTION: How did the great earthquake of the Shōka Era and the great comet of the Bun’ei Era happen?

ANSWER: T’ien-t’ai has said, “Men of knowledge know the causes of phenomena, and only snakes know the way of snakes.”

QUESTION: What does that mean?

ANSWER: It means that when Bodhisattva Superior Practice emerged from the earth as described in the fifteenth chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, even such bodhisattvas as Maitreya, Mañjuśrī, Avalokiteśvara, and Medicine King, who had reached only one step below Buddhahood by conquering the forty-one steps of darkness of mind, did not know that he had been called upon to spread “Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō,” the essence of the “Life Span of the Buddha” (16th) chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, in the Latter Age of Degeneration. It was because they had not yet conquered the fundamental darkness of mind and therefore were still considered ignorant.

Senji-shō, Selecting the Right time: A Tract by Nichiren, the Buddha’s Disciple, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1,
Pages 195-197

This idea that Maitreya, Mañjuśrī, Avalokiteśvara, and Medicine King were lacking and therefore unsuitable for propagating the Lotus Sūtra is one measure of the importance of Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō.