Chih-i, in chuan one of his (Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra), likens the process by which the Buddha leads the people to enlightenment to that of “sowing, maturing and harvesting.” First the Buddha plants the seed of Buddhahood in the minds of living beings by causing them to hear the Dharma and thus form a bond with it. Then he gradually nurtures their understanding by expounding various provisional teachings suited to their individual capacities, and at last brings them the last step or the way to emancipation with a final teaching. This analogy rests on the traditional view of the attainment of Buddhahood as a linear endeavor spanning many lifetimes. Based on it, Buddhist teachings may be classified according to which stage they occupy in the process—teachings of sowing, or teachings of maturing and harvesting.

For Nichiren, there was only one precept in the Final Dharma age—to embrace the daimoku of the Lotus Sutra, thereby attaining Buddhahood in one’s present form. Firmly convinced of the essential oneness of mundane truth and the ultimate reality, he also believed that chanting the daimoku would, in and of itself, enable one to correctly understand all worldly affairs.

For Nichiren, the “five characters of Myōhō-renge-kyō” were not merely the title of a sutra but the direct manifestation of ultimate reality itself. In various writings he equates Myōhō-renge-kyō with the universal Dharma nature, the Buddha nature inherent in all sentient and insentient beings, the wisdom of all Buddhas and the original cause (hon’in) for attaining Buddhahood. “All Buddhas throughout time and space invariably attain their enlightenment with the seed of the five characters of Myōhō-renge-kyō, he wrote. In the way of recitation that he taught, Myōhō-renge-kyō is preceded by Namu, an expression of devotion. In the act of chanting Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, he asserted, the fusion of subjective individual wisdom and the absolute takes place, and the common mortal, just as he is, becomes Buddha.

Like Dogen, Nichiren taught that Buddhahood is attained in the moment of practice: In the act of chanting Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, one “simultaneously makes the cause and receives the effect of Buddhahood.” However, since one tends to revert to his ordinary deluded state when not actually engaged in practice, Nichiren also stressed the importance of strengthening the experience of enlightenment by continuing to chant Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō throughout one’s life “If you have faith in this truth (that your own mind is the Dharma) and chant Myōhō-renge-kyō, you are certain to attain Buddhahood in this lifetime,” he wrote. In his doctrine, Buddhahood thus has the elements of both instantaneous enlightenment and enlightenment-as-process. The aspect of process, however, he viewed not as linear progress toward an external goal, but as the uncovering, so to speak, of one’s already inherent Buddha nature, analogous to the way in which one brings out a mirror’s luster by repeated polishing.

In the age of mappō, Nichiren believed, people no longer had the capacity, as men had in previous ages, to attain full realization of the truth through its partial manifestations as represented by the provisional teachings. Only in the perfect mirror of truth contained in the Lotus Sutra could people perceive their innate Buddha nature.

Nichiren was not the first person to advocate the Lotus Sutra for the Final Dharma age. The sutra itself speaks of the blessings to be gained by the one who upholds it “in an evil age, at the time of the Final Dharma. Moreover, some four hundred years earlier Saichō had written: “The ages of the True and Counterfeit Dharmas have nearly passed, and the age of the Final Dharma is near at hand. Now is indeed the time when people can attain enlightenment through the One Vehicle of the Lotus Sutra.” Nichiren’s uniqueness lay rather in the practice that he established. Rejecting the traditional practices of the Lotus Sutra such as copying it and reciting its twenty-eight chapters, as well as the twofold Tendai system of doctrinal study (kyōsō) and meditation (kanjin), he instead established the universally feasible practice of chanting the sutra’s title.

Nichiren, summarizing his own view of the essential difference between the Lotus Sutra and all others, states, “The provisional sutras expound the Dharma in fragments. They do not teach it in its entirety as the Lotus Sutra does.” He held, along with Tendai tradition, that the Lotus Sutra not only surpasses all other Buddhist teachings but encompasses their partial truths within itself. Or conversely stated, the other teachings accurately reflect the truth only when based on the premise of the One Buddha Vehicle revealed in the Lotus Sutra.

Where Hōnen and Shinran had based their religious quest on their own sense of sin and personal shortcomings, Nichiren’s search for a teaching valid in the mappō era stemmed from a desire for objective truth. Contention among rival Buddhist sects—exemplifying the Ta-chi-ching’s prediction of an age when “quarrels and disputes will arise among the adherents to my teachings” — along with the glaring failure of the established religious institutions to alleviate the nation’s suffering, awoke in him a resolve to discover which, among the so-called ‘”eighty-thousand teachings,” represented the Buddha’s true intention and could benefit people in the last age. Setting aside for the moment the claims of rival teachers and turning to the texts themselves, he devoted sixteen years to exhaustive study of the sutras and commentaries. Eventually he concluded that the Lotus Sutra, and none other, represented the pinnacle of Shakyamuni’s teachings.

Nichiren (1222-1282), like Honen and Dogen, taught a single, exclusive practice for the age of mappō. However, rather than assigning absolute significance to some existing discipline, as these teachers had, Nichiren initiated a new form of Buddhist practice. In this last age, he asserted, men and women of whatever capacity could attain Buddhahood in their present form by chanting the daimoku or title of the Lotus Sutra with the invocation Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō. Nichiren’s mappō thought stands out for its striking affirmation—in contrast to conventional pessimistic sentiments—that the present, degenerate Final Dharma age is actually the most ideal time for attaining Buddhahood.

In Dōgen’s thought there is no goal as distinct from the practice to attain it:

The view that practice and enlightenment are not one is heretical. In the Buddha-Dharma they are one. Inasmuch as practice is based on enlightenment, the practice of a beginner is all of original enlightenment. Therefore, in giving instruction for practice, a Zen master advises his disciples not to seek enlightenment beyond practice, for practice itself is original enlightenment.

Thus Dogen’s teaching, even more than that of the Pure Land teachers, brings the goal of practice within certain reach.

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra states, “ ‘All existences’ without exception possess the Buddha nature” (issai shujō kotogoloku busshō o yūsu). However, in the Busshō (Buddha Nature) chapter of the Shabōgenzō, Dōgen reinterprets the Chinese in an ingenious manner to read, “All existences are the Buddha nature” (issai shujō shitsu u busshō). In this way he rejected the view, held, for example, by the Consciousness-Only school, that the Buddha nature is a “seed” or psychic potential that evolves in a linear fashion from latency to realization, and instead identifies it with the unchanging, ultimate truth, designated as Suchness (Skt. tathatā, Jap. shinnyo), Emptiness (Śūnyatā, kū), or the Dharma nature (dharmatā, hosshō). This Buddha nature, being identified with “all existences,” exists nowhere apart from the destruction and coming-into-being of the phenomenal world in the present moment, or absolute now.

Because this “now” is absolute, and because “there is no time that has not arrived,” Buddhahood is not a potential that will unfold in the future, but can be realized only in the present moment. In other words, attaining Buddhahood is not, in Dōgen’s view, a gradual evolving from potential to realization associated with a linear view of time. In this way, he was able to resolve the contradiction that had originally puzzled him. “The Buddha nature and becoming a Buddha always occur simultaneously, he concluded. This view wipes out at a single stroke any metaphysical gap between practice and enlightenment: Whenever one sits in meditation, he simultaneously enters the realm of Buddha. Dōgen called this the “kōan realized in reality,” or genjō kōan.

Viewing time and enlightenment in this way, Dōgen found himself unable to accept the historical view of three-period thought, according to which the Dharma becomes obscured with the passage of time. “Time does not pass,” he believed, and the Dharma does not decline; wherever one sits in meditation, he is contemporaneous with Buddha.