Grand Master Dengyō … stated in his Treatise on the Protection of the State: “The Ages of the True Dharma and Semblance Dharma have passed and the Latter Age, when the Lotus Sūtra is to spread, is approaching;” “In the home of the One Vehicle Lotus Teaching, the provisional teachings should never be used;” “To those who believe in the One Vehicle of the Lotus Sūtra, the Hinayāna teaching must not be given;” and “Rotten meals should not be served in jeweled dishes.” He also stated: “Even the great arhats were reprimanded by the Buddha when they adhered to Hinayāna teachings in the Buddha’s lifetime. After the death of the Buddha, how can those masters of the dharma, as imperfect and inferior as mosquitoes and horseflies, stick to the Hinayāna teaching against the intention of the Buddha?”

These are not arbitrary words that Grand Master Dengyō thought up himself, but they are based on the Buddhist scriptures. That is to say, it is stated in the Lotus Sūtra: “Honestly casting away the expedient, I am going to preach the supreme of all teachings, the Lotus Sūtra.” In the Nirvana Sūtra it is said: “Until they listened to the Lotus Sūtra, they all held onto wrong ideas.” “The wrong ideas” or “the expedient” in these passages stand for such sūtras as the Flower Garland, the Great Sun Buddha, the Wisdom and the Amitābha preached during the forty years or so before the Lotus Sūtra was preached. Grand Master T’ien-t’ai said that “casting away” meant “abandon,” that is to say, “abandon the expedient teachings.”

Shimoyama Goshōsoku, The Shimoyama Letter, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 5, Page 69