Nichiren’s interpretation of the Śākyamuni of the Lotus Sutra, although it took as its point of departure Chih-i’s theories, was definitively influenced by various hermeneutical patterns that developed in the Japanese exegetical tradition of the Lotus Sutra, and by Nichiren’s personal experience of the reality disclosed in the scripture.

Nichiren reread the entire sutra focusing on the “section of the origin.” From this perspective, he constructed an image of Śākyamuni Buddha as the only true Buddha of all Buddhist systems, and eventually produced an interpretation of the Lotus Sutra very different from that of Chih-i. In Nichiren’s writings we find a sort of dilation of the chapters constituting the second half of the Lotus Sutra, especially the end of chapter 15 and chapter 16, which Nichiren judges to be almost exclusively representative of the meaning of the entire scripture. This 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 writes:

The true attainment of buddhahood in the far distant past is the original ground of all the Buddhas. To use a metaphor, if the vast sea is the true enlightenment in the past, the fishes and birds are the thousand two hundred and more Venerables. Had the enlightenment in the past not occurred, the thousand two hundred and more Venerables would be without roots like duckweed. …

When the past [of Śākyamuni] and [his] eternal abiding are disclosed, all Buddhas become Śākyamuni’s emanations. At the time of the earlier sutras and of the first part of the Lotus Sutra, the various Buddhas performed each practice and each discipline side by side with Śākyamuni. … Now it is manifest that the various Buddhas [of other sutras] all are followers of Śākyamuni. … When the Buddha is the Buddha of the far distant past, even the great bodhisattvas of the “trace section” and the great bodhisattvas of other realms are disciples of the Lord of the Doctrine Śākyamuni.