Nichiren states that the “Eternal” Śākyamuni Buddha “exists forever throughout the past, present, and future. All those who receive His guidance are one with the Eternal Buddha.” He goes on to state that the Śākyamuni Buddha of the sixteenth chapter differs from the earlier Śākyamuni Buddha of provisional sutras, and advocates that the enduring Śākyamuni, and his image, be the new object of veneration in the current Age of Decline (mappō), replacing images of the Śākyamuni who expounded the pre-Lotus sutras.

Nichiren strongly emphasizes the end of chapter 15 and chapter 16. This is the part of the sutra that “Nichiren judges to be almost exclusively representative of the meaning of the entire scripture.” Lucia Dolce describes the difference in Nichiren’s interpretation of the sutra from Zhiyi’s as Nichiren seeing the long-lived Śākyamuni Buddha as the single ultimate buddha encompassing all others. Whereas Zhiyi emphasized the sambhogakāya, or recompense body, and valued many other particular buddhas, Nichiren declares “that all Buddhas enlightened in the past are emanations of Śākyamuni” of chapter 16, based on the events of chapter 11, in which emanations arrive to witness the other Buddha in his stūpa. For Nichiren, this long-lived Buddha includes all three bodies, including the manifested transformation body, nirmāṇakāya, and even Vairocana, the reality body or dharmakāya: “Only the [chapter 16] Śākyamuni who reveals his enlightenment in the past embodies the true Mahāyāna Buddha.”

Nichiren’s view of temporality is determined by this story, as his emphasis on it “corresponds to the dilation of the temporal dimension expressed in those chapters, that is, the distant past in which Śākyamuni obtained his original enlightenment. Nichiren absolutizes this original moment and makes it the only significant time and relates it to the existence of humanity in a certain time and place.” He does not describe this Buddha as literally eternal, but “uses the expression ‘without beginning and without end,’ ” signifying “an existence not subject to temporal limitations.” Because this limitlessness includes the transformation body, “the Buddha has always abided in this world and … his soteriological activity has been constant since the original time.” [Dolce]