Nichiren maintained that the Lotus Sūtra enables women to attain buddhahood as women, because it embodies the mutual encompassing of the ten dharma realms. He writes: “The other Mahāyāna sūtras would seem to permit women to attain either buddhahood or birth in the pure land [of Amitābha], but that is an attainment premised on changing their [female] form, not the direct manifestation of buddhahood grounded in the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment. Thus, it is an attainment of buddhahood or pure land birth in name but not reality. The nāga girl represents the ‘one example that applies to all.’ Her attainment of buddhahood opened the way for the attainment of buddhahood … by all women of the latter age.”

Nichiren wrote that the gohonzon represents the Lotus assembly “as accurately as the print matches the woodblock.” On it, all ten realms, even the lowest ones, are represented. We find the belligerent asura king; the dragon king, representing the animal realm; the demon Hāriti (J. Kishimojin); even the Buddha’s malicious cousin Devadatta, who tried to kill him on multiple occasions; and Devadatta’s patron, King Ajātaśatru, who murdered his father and supported Devadatta in his evil schemes. As Nichiren wrote, “Illuminated by the five characters of the daimoku, all ten realms assume their inherent enlightened aspect.” We might interpret this as reflecting Nichiren’s message that, through the chanting of the daimoku, even life’s harsh, ugly, and painful parts — the most adverse circumstances, or the darkest character flaws — can be transformed and yield something of value, becoming opportunities to further religious development.

[T]he Lotus Sūtra seems to urge giving one’s life in its service. Bodhisattvas in the “Perseverance” chapter vow that they “will not be attached to our bodies or lives,” and the “Lifespan” chapter says that the primordial Śākyamuni Buddha will appear before those beings who “are willing to give unsparingly of their bodies and their lives.” How should such passages be understood?

Nichiren addresses this issue in a letter to a disciple, the lay nun Myōichi-ama, expressing sympathy on the death of her husband, who had held fast to his faith despite great difficulties: “Your late husband gave his life for the Lotus Sūtra. His small landholding that barely sustained him was confiscated on account of [his faith in] the Lotus Sūtra. Surely that equaled ‘giving his life.’ The youth of the Snow Mountains [described in the Nirvāṇa Sūtra] offered his body in exchange for half a verse [of a Buddhist teaching], and the bodhisattva Medicine King [Bhaiṣajyarāja] burned his arms [in offering to the Buddha]. They were saints, [and for them, such acts were] like water poured on fire. But your husband was an ordinary man, [and so for him, this sacrifice was] like paper placed in fire. When we take this into consideration, his merit must surely be the same as theirs.”

According to conventional Buddhist thinking, moral conduct is the beginning and foundation of the path; persons can achieve liberation only by first renouncing evil and cultivating good. It is said that one cannot control one’s mind until one first learns to control one’s body and speech. The Buddhist ethical code seeks to provide such control. However, some Buddhist thinkers in Nichiren’s time were concerned with the problem posed by evils that one cannot avoid. This concern had to do with a keen awareness of human limitations, heightened by a sense of living in an age of decline. It also spoke to the situation of warriors, who were gaining influence both as a social group and as an emergent body of religious consumers. From a Buddhist perspective, warriors were trapped in a hereditary profession that was inherently sinful, requiring them to kill animals as a form of war training and kill humans on the battlefield. Thus, they could not escape violating the basic Buddhist precept against taking life. Nichiren, who had a number of samurai among his followers, stressed that, as long as one chants the daimoku, one will not be dragged down into the hells or other evil paths by ordinary misdeeds or unavoidable wrongdoing. To one warrior, a certain Hakii (or Hakiri) Saburō, he wrote: “In all the earlier sūtras of the Buddha’s lifetime, Devadatta was condemned as the foremost icchantika in all the world. But he encountered the Lotus Sūtra and received a prediction that he would become a tathāgata called Devarāja. … Whether or not evil persons of the last age can attain buddhahood does not depend upon whether their sins are light or heavy but rests solely upon whether or not they have faith in this sūtra.”