According to Zhiyi’s parsing, Chapters Two through Nine of the Lotus Sūtra comprise the main exposition of the “trace teaching,” or shakumon, the first fourteen chapters of the Lotus Sūtra. These chapters assert that followers of the two “Hinayāna” vehicles can achieve buddhahood. For the sūtra’s compilers, this message subsumed the entire Buddhist mainstream within its own teaching of the one buddha vehicle and extended the promise of buddhahood to a category of persons — śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas — who had been excluded from that possibility in other Mahāyāna sūtras. In Nichiren’s day, however, the idea of the one vehicle, that buddhahood is in principle open to all, represented the mainstream interpretive position, and his own reading therefore has a somewhat different emphasis. For Nichiren, the sūtra’s assertion that even persons of the two vehicles can become buddhas pointed to the mutual possession of the ten realms and the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment, without which any talk of buddhahood for anyone, even those following the bodhisattva path, can be no more than an abstraction. The revelation of this universal ground, he said, especially in the “Skillful Means” chapter, constitutes the heart of the shakumon portion of the Lotus. Nonetheless, he regarded Chapter Two through Chapter Nine, the main exposition section, as having been preached primarily for the benefit of persons during the Buddha’s lifetime. The remaining chapters, Chapter Ten through Chapter Fourteen, which constituted the remainder of the trace teaching, he saw as explicitly directed toward those who embrace the Lotus after the Buddha’s passing, and therefore, as having great relevance for himself and his followers.

A third message that Nichiren drew from the story of the buddha Mahābhijfiājfiānābhibhū [Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata] and his sixteen sons was the importance of perseverance in practice. In the “Parable” chapter, Śākyamuni tells Śāriputra that he had once followed the bodhisattva path in prior lifetimes but had since forgotten it. What had caused Śāriputra, this wisest of all śrāvakas, to “forget” and abandon the bodhisattva way? The Lotus Sūtra does not tell us, but a story in the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom (Dazhi du lun) and other sources fills in the gap. It explains that in the past, Śāriputra had already practiced bodhisattva austerities for sixty eons and was cultivating the virtue of giving or generosity, the first of the pāramitās or perfections that a bodhisattva must master on the path to buddhahood. At that point, a certain beggar (in alternate versions, a brahman) asked for one of his eyes. When Śāriputra replied that his eye could not possibly benefit anyone else, the beggar rebuked him, saying that so long as Śāriputra was committed to mastering the practice of generosity, he could not refuse to give what was requested of him. Śāriputra accordingly plucked out an eye and offered it. The beggar sniffed it, flung it to the ground, and stepped on it. Disgusted, Śāriputra concluded that such people were hopeless. At that point, he abandoned the bodhisattva’s commitment to saving others and retreated to the śrāvaka’s pursuit of personal nirvāṇa. In Nichiren’s reading, Śāriputra, deceived by evil influences, had abandoned the Lotus Sūtra for provisional teachings and, as a result, had fallen into the Avici hell, languishing there for vast numbers of eons. Not until he re-encountered Śākyamuni Buddha in the present world was he again able to hear the Lotus Sūtra, regain the bodhisattva path, and receive a prediction of future buddhahood.

In terms of practice, the account of Śākyamuni Buddha’s instruction as unfolding over many lifetimes in the “Apparitional City” chapter assumes a double significance in Nichiren’s thought. On the one hand, this account teaches the need to maintain one’s own practice of the Lotus Sūtra, no matter what hardships or discouragement one might encounter. At the same time, it suggests that teaching the daimoku to others, even if they initially mock or malign it, is always a fruitful effort, establishing for them a karmic connection with the Lotus Sūtra and thus ensuring that they will one day achieve buddhahood.

By Nichiren’s time, educated people were often familiar with these stories, and the Lotus Sūtra’s message that all could attain buddhahood was widely accepted — although how that buddhahood was to be achieved and how long it might take were subjects of debate. Nichiren himself sometimes alludes to these parables in advocating the daimoku as the path of realizing buddhahood in the present age, but he rarely dwells on them at length.

Nichiren makes only limited reference to the parable of the burning house that occupies most of this chapter’s narrative. In a few passages, he refers to the great cart drawn by a white ox metaphorically as the vehicle that will carry Lotus Sūtra practitioners to “the pure land of Vulture Peak,” that is, the realm of enlightenment, or as a war chariot that he rides in a great dharma battle between true and provisional teachings. He does not provide an extended discussion of the parable itself. Rather, as we go through these initial chapters of the Lotus, we will see how Nichiren drew out the significance of other passages that might not seem central to the sūtra’s narrative but that assume considerable importance in his reading, a reading that was shaped by the sūtra’s reception history, by his contemporary circumstances, and by his own perspective.