The “Bhaiṣajyarāja” [Medicine King] chapter … offers ten analogies illustrating the supreme status of the Lotus Sūtra among all the Buddha’s teachings. It surpasses them just as the ocean is greater than all streams, rivers, and other bodies of water; as Mount Sumeru towers over all other mountains; and so forth. Then follow ten vivid similes illustrating the powers and blessings of the sūtra. Nichiren was deeply struck by these passages and often cited or elaborated on them to stress the merits of upholding the Lotus. Here, for example, in a personal letter to a follower called Shiiji Shirō, he expands on the statement that the Lotus Sūtra is “like a boat for a traveler.” This boat, he says, might be described as follows. Note how he weaves together Buddhist technical terms and phrases from different portions of the Lotus Sūtra:

The Lord Buddha, a shipbuilder of infinitely profound wisdom, gathered the lumber of the four flavors and eight teachings, planed it by “openly setting aside skillful means,” cut and assembled the planks, using both right and wrong in their nonduality, and completed the craft by driving home the spikes of the single truth that is like the supreme flavor of ghee. Then he launched it upon the sea of birth and death. Unfurling its sails of the three thousand realms on the mast of the single truth of the middle way, driven by the fair wind that is the “real aspect of the dharmas,” the vessel surges ahead, carrying aboard all sentient beings, who can “understand through faith.” The tathāgatha Śākyamuni takes the helm, the tathāgatha Prabhūtaratna mans the sails, and the four bodhisattvas led by Viśiṣṭacāritra strain in unison at the creaking oars. This is the vessel in “a boat for the traveler.” Those who can board it are the disciples and lay followers of Nichiren.