Noting that the all buddhas throughout time preach the Lotus Sūtra as the culmination of their teaching, Nichiren observed that the hostility encountered by Sadāparibhūta [Never-Despising Bodhisattva] in the age of a past buddha corresponded to the predictions of persecution made in Chapter Thirteen of the Lotus Sūtra as preached by the present buddha (Śākyamuni). One chapter tells of the past, the other foretells the future, but their content accords perfectly. When the Lotus Sūtra will be preached by buddhas in ages to come, he asserted, the present, “Perseverance,” chapter would become the “Sadāparibhūta” chapter of the future,” suggesting that its predictions would come true through his own actions, “and at that time I, Nichiren, will be its bodhisattva Sadāparibhūta.”

Based on his reading of these two chapters, Nichiren saw himself and his opponents as linked via the Lotus Sūtra in a vast soteriological drama of error, expiation, and the realization of buddhahood. Those who malign a practitioner of the Lotus Sūtra must undergo repeated rebirth in the Avici hell for countless eons. But because they have formed a “reverse connection” to the Lotus by slandering its votary, after expiating this error, they will eventually encounter the sūtra again and be able to become buddhas. By a similar logic, practitioners who suffer harassment must encounter this ordeal precisely because they maligned the Lotus Sūtra in the past, just as their tormenters do in the present. But because of those practitioners’ efforts to protect the Lotus by opposing slander of the dharma in the present, their own past offenses will be eradicated, and they will not only attain buddhahood themselves in the future, but also enable their persecutors to do the same. The Lotus practitioners and those who oppose them are thus inseparably connected through the sūtra in the same web of karmic causes that will ultimately lead both to buddhahood.

211-212