In developing his teachings about the daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, Nichiren drew upon and adapted earlier traditions of Lotus interpretation. Chinese exegetes had often employed a technique known as “analytic division” (Ch. fenke) or parsing that purported to uncover categories of meaning implicit within a particular sūtra, and thus, to reveal the Buddha’s true intent. Zhiyi, for example, divided the Lotus Sūtra into two sections: the first fourteen of its twenty-eight chapters, he said, represent the “trace teaching” (Ch. jimen, J. shakumon), which presents Śākyamuni Buddha as a “trace” or manifestation, that is, a historical figure who lived and taught in this world, while the second fourteen chapters constitute the “origin teaching” (benmen, honmon), which presents Śākyamuni as the primordial buddha, awakened since the inconceivably remote past. The intent of the trace teaching, Zhiyi said, lies in opening the three vehicles to reveal the one vehicle, while the intent of the origin section is to reveal the Buddha’s original awakening in the distant past. Nichiren also regarded these as the two great revelations of the Lotus Sūtra. For him, the trace teaching revealed buddhahood as a potential inherent in all beings, while the origin teaching presented it as a reality fully manifested in the Buddha’s life and conduct. Nichiren saw the core of the trace and origin teachings as Chapters Two and Sixteen, respectively, and urged his followers to recite these chapters as part of their daily practice.

Chinese commentators … typically divided sūtras into three parts: an introductory section, the main exposition, and a “dissemination” section, urging that the sūtra be transmitted to the future. Zhiyi divided the Lotus Sūtra accordingly: Chapter One of the Lotus Sūtra represents “introduction”; Chapters Two through the first part of Seventeen represent the “main exposition”; and the latter part of Chapter Seventeen and the remaining chapters represent “dissemination.” Zhiyi further divided each of the sūtra’s two exegetical divisions, the trace and origin teachings, into these three parts. Nichiren expanded this threefold analysis in two directions. Zooming out, as it were, he applied it to the entirety of the Buddha’s teachings: all teachings that preceded the Lotus Sūtra are “introduction”; the threefold Lotus Sūtra is the “main exposition”; and the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, which Tendai tradition regards as a restatement of the Lotus Sūtra, represents “dissemination.” Zooming in, he identified all the teachings of all buddhas throughout space and time, including the trace teaching of Lotus Sūtra, as preparation, and the daimoku, Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, the heart of the origin teaching, as the main exposition. Nichiren did not say explicitly what “dissemination” would mean in that case. His later disciples put forth various explanations, for example, that it referred to the spread of Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō in the mappō era.