Following the traditional T’ien-t’ai classificatory schema of the five periods and eight teachings (goji hakkyō), Nichiren assigned the Lotus Sūtra to the last period of the Buddha’s preaching life and asserted that all other, earlier sūtras are provisional (gon) while the Lotus alone is true (jitsu). For textual support, he often cited the passage from the Wu-liang-i Ching (Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings), the introductory scripture to the Lotus, which states: “In these forty years and more, I [Śākyamuni] have not yet revealed the truth,” and another from the Lotus itself: “Among all those [sūtras] I [Śākyamuni] have preached, now preach, or will preach, this Lotus Sūtra is the hardest to believe, the hardest to understand.” Nichiren, like other T’ien-t’ai/Tendai scholars before him, saw the superiority of the Lotus Sūtra as lying in two teachings unique to this scripture and identified respectively with the trace and origin teachings—specifically, with the second chapter (“Skillful Means”) and the sixteenth (“Fathoming the Lifespan of the Tathāgata”). The first is that persons of the two vehicles can attain Buddhahood (nijō sabutsu). Since those practicing the two vehicles of the Śrāvaka and the Pratyekabuddha are followers of the Hinayāna path, a number of Mahāyāna sūtras deny their capacity for the Buddhahood. The Lotus Sūtra’s pronouncement that they can become Buddhas was taken as representing the potential for the Buddhahood of all beings. Second is the revelation of the Buddha’s enlightenment in the remote past (kuonjitsujō). According to the sūtra, all other Buddhas are merely emanations or manifestations of Śākyamuni. Moreover, Śākyamuni is said to have dis played himself as entering final nirvāṇa as a “skillful means” to arouse people’s longing for his teaching, but in reality, he is “always here in this Sahā world.” As noted before, the Buddha’s enlightenment in the far distant past was also widely understood in Nichiren’s time to mean that the Buddha is eternal and constantly abides in this world. Like other Tendai thinkers of his day, Nichiren also associated these two teachings respectively with “principle” (ri) and “actuality” (ji). (Page 253-253)