We have already seen that Saichō saw the Lotus Sūtra as the “direct path” or “great direct path,” over and against the Hossō view of enlightenment as requiring three incalculable aeons to achieve. He was not optimistic about most people actually realizing Buddhahood with this very body, a possibility he saw as open only to those who had reached the stage of partial realization, the fifth of the six stages of identity, which corresponds to the first abode or bhūmi in the fifty-seven stages of bodhisattva practice of the perfect teaching. The fifth stage of identity and the first abode both denote the point of transition from the level of an ordinary worldling (Prthag-jana, bonbu) bound by defilements to that of the sage (ārya-sattva, shō), who has eliminated all defilements except ignorance (mumyō-waku) and begun to experience true insight. Where the birth and death of the ordinary worldling is determined by karma (bundan shōji), that of the sage is chosen in accordance with his aspiration for enlightenment and intent to benefit others (hennyaku shōji). “Realizing Buddhahood with this very body” for Saichō thus referred to the partial enlightenment of those who had already made the transition from ordinary worldling to sage. However, he also maintained that, even in the case of deluded worldlings, through the power of the Lotus Sūtra the process of enlightenment could be vastly accelerated, being fulfilled in the next lifetime or at latest the lifetime after that. This concern, even on a theoretical level, with the possibility of Buddhahood for ordinary worldlings would eventually emerge as a major characteristic of Japanese Buddhism as a whole. (Page 32)

[In considering enlightenment in this body] Saichō … drew on the episode in the Lotus Sūtra of the eight-year-old nāga princess, who in the space of a moment changes into a male, completes the eight phases of a Buddha’s life, and manifests perfect enlightenment. In his writings, the realization of Buddhahood with this very body is linked not to esoteric practices, but to the power of the Lotus Sūtra. The nāga girl, Saichō points out, had a threefold hindrance: she was born into the animal realm as a nāga (a serpent or dragon), clearly the result of unfavorable karma; she was female and of poor faculties; and she was young and therefore had not been able to devote many years to religious practice. Nevertheless, through the wondrous power of the Lotus, she was able to attain Buddhahood. (Page 31-32)

Long before the emergence of Japanese Taimitsu, or even of esoteric Buddhism in East Asia, attempts had been made to identify Śākyamuni with the Buddha Vairocana, whose name is transliterated in Chinese versions of the sūtras as either Lu-che-na (Jpn. Rushana) or P’i-lu-che-na (Birushana). Such identifications begin in the sūtra literature. The sixty-fascicle Hua-yen ching says that the names “Śākyamuni ” and “Vairocana” refer to the same Buddha. The Fo-shuo kuan P’u-hsien P’u-sa hsing-fa Ching (Sutra of the Buddha’s preaching on the method of contemplating Bodhisattva Samantabhadra), the capping sūtra to the Lotus, reads, “At that time the voice in space will speak these words [to the meditator]: ‘Śākyamuni is called Vairocana Pervading All Places, and that Buddha’s dwelling place is called Ever-Tranquil Light. The Fan-wang ching presents Vairocana as manifesting individual Śākyamuni Buddhas as his emanations in billions of worlds. Because he is said to have attained these powers as the reward of long efforts in cultivation, Vairocana in this depiction may properly be regarded as a recompense body (saṃbhogakāya, hōjin)—the wisdom and supernatural attainments of a Buddha achieved through practice, imagined as a subtle body.]

Chinese commentators advanced various theories about the relationship of these Buddhas, often in connection with discussions about the various kinds of “bodies” that Buddhas were said to possess. Chih-i, for example, citing various sources, identified P’i-lu-che-na as the Dharma body, Lu-che-na as the recompense body, and Śākyamuni as the manifested body—noting, however, that the three bodies were inseparable. Elsewhere, in a dynamic synthesis, he interpreted Śākyamuni Buddha of the “Fathoming the Lifespan” chapter as embodying all three bodies in one. When the Buddha’s wisdom grasps the ultimate reality, that which is realized is the Dharma body; and the wisdom that realizes it is the recompense body. For the sake of living beings, this wisdom manifests itself in physical form as human Buddha who teaches in the world; this is the manifested body. Since the recompense body both realizes the truth that is the Dharma body and responds to aspirations of the beings in the form of the manifested body, Chih-i regarded it as central. However, he also rejected any notion of hierarchy among the three bodies, denying that one can be seen as prior to the others. (Page 25-26)

The Buddha of the Lotus Sūtra appears in that text in two forms. First he is presented simply as the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni, who attained enlightenment at the age of thirty under the Bodhi tree. But the eleventh chapter suggests that he is more than this: all Buddhas in the worlds of the ten directions are shown to be his emanations. This foreshadows the dramatic revelation of the sixteenth chapter, called “Fathoming the Lifespan of the Tathāgata” (Nyorai juryō-hon), in which Śākyamuni declares that countless myriads of kalpas have passed since he attained Buddhahood, and that ever since then, he has been constantly in this world, preaching the Dharma in various guises and by various skillful means. Chih-i had divided the sūtra into two parts of fourteen chapters each, according to these two presentations of the Buddha. The first fourteen chapters, called the “trace teaching” (shakumon), present the Buddha as a “manifest trace” (suijaku) or historical appearance, while the latter fourteen chapters, called the “origin teaching” (honmon), present him in his original ground (honji) as the Buddha who first attained enlightenment in the inconceivably remote past. (Page 24)

[A]mong Saichō’s later followers, the traditional T’ien-t’ai “perfect teaching” (engyō) based on the Lotus Sūtra was fused with Mikkyō in the “one great perfect teaching.” Their writings recapitulate Saichō’s move to incorporate all teachings within the Lotus, but in esoteric terms. That is, rather than encompassing Mikkyō within the framework of the one vehicle of the Lotus as Saichō had intended, Taimitsu developed an esoteric reading of the one vehicle that tended to subsume the Lotus within Mikkyō, a tendency especially evident in Annen’s writings. In any event, the two traditions became inseparably intertwined and came to share a common vocabulary. Medieval Tendai hongaku thought would emerge in large part as an attempt to reinterpret traditional T’ien-t’ai/Tendai doctrines through the lense of an esotericized sensibility. (Page 24)

Saichō did not live long enough to work out a thorough synthesis of esoteric Buddhism and the one-vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sūtra, and the task would be carried on by his disciples. The integration of Tendai/Lotus doctrine and the esoteric teachings (enmitsu itchi) would become a major feature distinguishing Taimitsu—the Mikkyō that developed within Tendai—from that of Tōmitsu, the Mikkyō of Kūkai’s Shingon tradition, and was essential to the development of medieval Tendai hongaku thought. (Page 21)

By the medieval period, notions of formless, originally inherent “perfect and sudden precepts” (endonkai), “Lotus one-vehicle precepts” (Hokke ichijōkai), or “unproduced diamond precepts” (musa kongō hōkai) came to supersede literal adherence to the specifics of the Fan-wang Ching precepts. These “formless readings” of the precepts put forth within the influential T’ien-t’ai school influenced other Buddhist traditions as well and have been seen by many scholars as contributing to a decline in monastic discipline in the latter Heian period. “Formless” understandings of the precepts, rooted remotely in Saichō’s advocacy of bodhisattva precept ordinations, were also linked to an important strand of early medieval Buddhist discourse, found in both Tendai and some of the new Kamakura Buddhist movements, which denies the validity of precepts in the Final Dharma age (mappō mukai) and makes liberation dependent on faith or insight, rather than on the cultivation of morality or the accumulation of merit through good deeds. (Page 19)

Shirato Waka has suggested a possible link between Saichō’s understanding of the Fan-wang precepts and the later emergence of Tendai original enlightenment thought. The Fan-wang ching describes its bodhisattva precepts as “the fundamental source of all Buddhas, the fundamental source of all bodhisattvas, the seeds of the Buddha nature. All sentient beings have the Buddha nature. All things with consciousness, form and mental activity, all sentient [beings] with mental activity, are all included within [the purview of] these Buddha-nature precepts. … The fundamental source of precepts for all sentient beings is pure in itself.” Here the bodhisattva precepts are said to be grounded in the Buddha nature. Since all beings have the Buddha nature, they incline naturally toward these precepts. Saichō further developed this argument: “These are the precepts which are [based on] the constantly abiding Buddha nature, the original source of all living beings, pure in its self-nature and unmoving like empty space. Therefore, by means of these precepts, one manifests and attains the original, inherent, constantly abiding Dharma body endowed with the thirty-two marks.” In this reading, the precepts are no longer an externally imposed set of regulations or moral guidelines, but an expression of innate Buddhahood and also the direct cause for its realization. Because the Buddha nature is innate, all people, clerics and laity alike, can readily practice the bodhisattva precepts, and by practicing these precepts, innate Buddhahood is naturally manifested. This theme is related to Saichō’s idea of the Lotus as opening the “direct path” (jikidō) to the speedy realization of Buddhahood. This view of practice (in this case, of the precepts) as simultaneously both the effect and the cause of Buddhahood would be developed in later Tendai hongaku thought. (Page 18)

In [Saichō’s] schemes of doctrinal classification, Saichō developed both exclusive and inclusive readings of the one vehicle that would be important to the development of medieval Tendai thought and practice. In his written debates with Tokuitsu, Saichō argued the superiority of the Lotus over all other teachings from a number of angles. For example, he asserted that the Lotus alone represents the standpoint of “effect,” or the Buddha’s enlightenment (kabun); other sūtras, such as the Avatarpsaka, reflect the standpoint of “cause,” or of those still in the stages of cultivation (inbun).49 He also distinguished the Lotus as the “direct path” (jikidō) or “great direct path” (daijikidō) to enlightenment, in contrast to both the “roundabout path” of the Hinayāna and the “path requiring kalpas” followed by bodhisattvas of provisional Mahāyāna. In Saichō’s view, a practitioner of the Lotus endowed with unusually keen faculties might even be able to realize Buddhahood with this very body (sokushin jōbutsu), though he confined this possibility to persons who had already achieved the first abode, or the fifth of the six stages of identity, which, according to T’ien-t’ai doctrine, comprise the Buddhist path. Practitioners of lesser faculties would be able to realize Buddhahood in the next lifetime, or in the lifetime after that. … [T]he doctrine of realizing Buddhahood with this very body, as interpreted by Saichō’s disciples, was crucial to the development of medieval Tendai original enlightenment thought. Saichō also interpreted the Lotus Sūtra as particularly suited to the time and to the capacities of the Japanese people, claims that would be further developed in the thought of Nichiren (1222-1282).

From the perspective of this Hossō doctrine [Dharma Characteristics school], called “the distinction of five natures” (goshō kakubetsu), Tokuitsu argued that the division of the Dharma into three vehicles represented the Buddha’s true intent: some people really were destined to become arhats, pratyeka-buddhas, or bodhisattvas. On the other hand, the Lotus Sūtra’s teaching of the one vehicle was a provisional expedient set forth to encourage those of the undetermined group, some of whom might be capable of practicing the bodhisattva path and becoming Buddhas. For Saichō, however, it was just as the Lotus declared: the three vehicles were provisional and the one vehicle, true; Buddhahood was the final destiny of all. In support of his position, Saichō drew on a variety of sources. One was Fa-tsang’s commentary on the Awakening of Faith, specifically, its distinction between suchness that is unchanging (fuhen shinny) and suchness that accords with conditions (zuien shinny). Like Fa-tsang, Saichō argued that suchness has a dynamic as well as a quiescent aspect. In its dynamic aspect, it expresses itself as all phenomena and also has the nature of realizing and knowing (kakuchi shō). Thus there is no need to postulate seeds in the ālaya consciousness as the source of the phenomenal world or as the cause, in some individuals, for achieving Buddhahood. Saichō equated suchness in its dynamic aspect with gyō-bussō; since suchness is universal, he argued, everyone has the potential to realize Buddhahood. (Page 13-14)