Nichiren emphasized, not the literal performance of self-sacrifice in offering to the sūtra as exemplified by Bhaiṣajyarāja’s [Medicine King] self-immolation, but the willingness to face abuse, ostracism, verbal and physical attacks, or indeed, any sort of hardship in order to uphold and spread the sūtra’s teachings. In his reading, the offering that ordinary people can make, done with firm resolve, is the moral equivalent of the advanced bodhisattva’s sacrifice of his body, and it yields identical merit.

From another perspective, Nichiren concluded that the acts of Bhaiṣajyarāja and other bodhisattvas in the sūtras who relinquished eyes, limbs, and life itself for the dharma’s sake were no longer appropriate to his own era. As a young man, he wrote, he had taken the statement in the “Perseverance” chapter, “We will not be attached to our bodies or our lives,” to mean heroic undertakings on the order of making the perilous sea crossing to China to study the dharma, as pioneering Japanese monks like Saichō and Kūkai had done, or offering up one’s body in self-sacrifice like the bodhisattva Bhaiṣajyarāja. But over time, he concluded that this was not the sūtra’s true intent: “At a time when the country is filled with respected persons who declare that there are other sūtras that surpass the Lotus Sūtra and join in attacking its votary, and when such persons are revered by the ruler and his ministers while the votary of the Lotus Sūtra, being poor and humble, is despised by the entire country, if he persists in his assertions as did [the bodhisattva] Sadāparibhūta or the scholar-monk Bhadraruci, it may well cost his life. [To maintain one’s resolve at such at time] is the most important thing of all.” What counts, in short, is upholding the Lotus, no matter what.

The first of the ten signs, the buddhas extending their tongues to the heavens of Brahmā, is culturally bound and may not resonate with modern readers. In the context of the sūtra’s compilation, a long and wide tongue was considered one of a buddha’s distinguishing physical marks, a sign that he never lies, and the buddhas’ act of extending their tongues was intended to verify the Lotus Sūtra’s truth. Nichiren often mentioned this act as underscoring the significance of the transmission that Śākyamuni was now about to make: “Having summoned these people [i.e., the four bodhisattvas who lead the bodhisattvas of the earth], Śākyamuni Buddha entrusted to them the five characters Myōhō-renge-kyō. This was no ordinary transmission, for the Buddha first manifested ten transcendent powers. When Śākyamuni extended his wide and long tongue to the upper limit of the world of form, all the other buddhas did likewise, their tongues reaching into the air above four million nayutas of worlds and filling the sky like billions of crimson rainbows arched together — an altogether awesome display.” Elsewhere, Nichiren would note that the Buddha sitting side by side with another buddha (in Chapter Eleven) and buddhas extending their tongues to the heavens of Brahmā appear in no other Buddhist sūtra, Hinayāna or Mahāyāna, further proof of the unique truth of the Lotus Sūtra.

215-216

Chapters Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, and Twenty-Five describe how specific bodhisattvas display their powers in the world to benefit sentient beings. As noted earlier, at one point in its compilation history, the Lotus Sūtra probably concluded with Chapter Twenty-Two, “Entrustment.” These three subsequent chapters represent a later stratum of the text, added as devotion to the bodhisattvas in question was gradually assimilated to the Lotus. From Nichiren’s standpoint, the bodhisattvas appearing in these chapters had received only the general transmission described in the “Entrustment” chapter. Either they had come from other worlds, or they were followers of Śākyamuni in his provisional guise as the Buddha of the trace teaching or shakumon portion of the sūtra. Thus, their work was chiefly confined to the True and Semblance Dharma ages. Yet, as we see, Nichiren drew on these chapters to make points about the Lotus Sūtra and its practice in the Final Dharma age.

In [Chapters 21 and 22], Śākyamuni Buddha entrusts the teachings of the Lotus Sūtra for propagation in the future. To make clear the momentousness of the occasion, he first displays his awe-inspiring transcendent powers. According to Zhanran, of the ten powers described, the first five — from Śākyamuni and all other buddhas extending their tongues to the heavens of Brahmā to the buddha worlds of the ten directions quaking in six ways — were intended for beings in his lifetime. The remaining supernatural events — from all beings in those worlds beholding the buddhas present on their lion thrones at the Lotus assembly to the worlds of the ten directions becoming pellucid, as though they were one buddha land (284) — were intended for beings of the future.

Though he acknowledged this reading, Nichiren concluded that ultimately the entire display was directed to the future, when the four leaders of the bodhisattvas of the earth would appear in order to spread the five characters Myōhō-renge-kyō. He also assimilated these extraordinary happenings to contemporary portents: “The quaking of the earth in the ‘Introduction’ chapter was limited to a single world system, but in the ‘Transcendent Powers’ chapter the lands of the various buddhas all shook violently, quaking in six different ways. The [earthquakes and other] omens of our own time are just like this. The great omens of the ‘Transcendent Powers’ chapter portend that the essence of the Lotus Sūtra will spread widely after the Buddha’s nirvāṇa, when the two thousand years of the True Dharma and Semblance Dharma ages have passed and the Final Dharma age has begun.”

The promise in this chapter that those who embrace the one vehicle will be “at peace in this world” and in the next, will be “born into a good existence” articulates what most people sought from religion in Nichiren’s day: good fortune and protection in their present existence and some sort of assurance of a happy afterlife. Traditionally, as with other religions, people expected from Buddhism not only wisdom and insight, but also practical benefits: healing, protection, and worldly success. Nichiren often cited this passage to assure followers that faith in the Lotus Sūtra does indeed offer such blessings. “Money changes form according to its use,” he wrote. “The Lotus Sūtra is also like this. It will become a lamp in the darkness or a boat at a crossing. It can become water; it can also become fire. This being so, the Lotus Sūtra guarantees that we will be ‘at peace in this world’ and be ‘born into a good existence in the future.’ “