In Nichiren’s thought, aspiration for the Pure Land of Eagle Peak assumes a particular orientation, informed by his exclusive commitment to the Lotus Sūtra. Most Lotus practitioners of the Heian and Kamakura periods recited the sūtra in hopes of achieving Amida’s western Pure Land. Nichiren, however, had so thoroughly rejected any aspect of faith in Amida that he would not have been able to represent the next life in such terms. The “Pure Land of Sacred Eagle Peak” provided him with a needed alternative image, consistent with his Lotus exclusivism, for conceptualizing what happens to believers after death. As others have suggested, Nichiren may also have begun to preach to his followers about this pure land in response to the sense of imminent danger accompanying the Mongol threat, and the concept was no doubt further stimulated by the suppressions experienced by Nichiren and his community. The “Pure Land of Eagle Peak” was thus posited in contrast to, and as recompense for enduring, the hardships occasioned by upholding exclusive faith in the Lotus in this present world. Moreover, during his reclusion on Mt. Minobu, as Nichiren himself grew older, he was also faced increasingly with the need to console followers who had lost parents, spouses, and children; the promise of reunion in the Pure Land of Eagle Peak occurs frequently in his letters on such occasions. (Page 293-294)

THE PURE LAND OF SACRED EAGLE PEAK

Shortly before his exile to Sado, Nichiren began to refer in his letters and other writings to the “Pure land of Sacred [Eagle] Peak” (ryōzen jōdo). These references increase during the Sado period and especially during Nichiren’s retirement on Mt. Minobu. “Sacred Eagle Peak” (or “Sacred Vulture Peak”) translates Ryōjusen (Chn. Ling-chiu-shan), the Chinese translation for Gṛdhrakūṭa (Vulture Peak), the name of the mountain in Rājagṛha where the Lotus Sūtra is said to have been preached. The notion of Eagle Peak as a pure land seems to arise from a conflation of this site with the sūtra’s assertion that this Sahā world is the eternal dwelling place of the original Buddha:

Throughout asaṃkhya-kalpas I am always on Sacred Eagle Peak as well as in other dwelling places. When the beings see the kalpa ending and [the world] being consumed in a great fire, this land of mine is safe and peaceful, always filled with gods and humans.

In it are gardens, groves, halls, and towers . . . wherein the beings play and amuse themselves . . . My pure land is not destroyed, yet the multitude see it consumed in flames.

Worried, they fear the torment of pains. … Those who have cultivated merit, who are gentle and agreeable, straightforward and honest, all do, however, see my body dwelling here and preaching the Dharma.

Kumārajīva (344—413), the sūtra’s translator, is said to have interpreted the lines “My pure land is not destroyed / yet the multitude see it consumed in flames” to mean “the two qualities of purity and defilement dwelling in the same place.” Since his time, “Eagle Peak” was frequently understood as representing the ontological nonduality of delusion and enlightenment, or of the present, Sahā world and the Land of Ever Tranquil Light. This reading clearly informs Nichiren’s understanding of the present world as potentially the Buddha land… . However, “Sacred Eagle Peak” was also known to be a specific place and, in the manner of many continental sacred sites, had manifested itself in Japan. Mt. Hiei, Ōmine, Kasagi, and other locations of mountain ascetic practice were all at times identified with “Eagle Peak.” Nichiren, too, occasionally equated Eagle Peak with Mt. Minobu, where he, the gyōja of the Lotus Sūtra, was living. (Page 292-293)

Thus the pure land is implicit in the ontological basis of the three thousand realms in one thought-moment but must be concretely realized through the practice and propagation of the daimoku. This aspect of Nichiren’s thought draws on apotropaic notions that the proper Buddhist prayer rituals could rid the land of misfortune, grounding them in traditional Tendai teachings concerning the immanence of the pure land in the present world and in his own exclusive practice of the Lotus. Nichiren’s idea that faith in the Lotus would materially transform the world inspired repeated memorializing of rulers throughout the medieval period and has underlain the political, activist, and millenarian aims of a number of Nichiren Buddhist movements in the modern era. (Page 292)

The immanence of the pure land in the present world had long been asserted by both Tendai and Shingon schools and was by no means unique to Nichiren’s teaching. Where Nichiren’s position differed was that, for him, the identity of the Sahā world and the Buddha’s land was not only to be realized subjectively in the moment of practice but manifested in actuality: as faith in the Lotus Sūtra spread from one person to another, there would occur an objective, visible transformation of the outer world. This vision is expressed in a letter written from Sado Island in 1273:

When all people throughout the land enter the one Buddha vehicle and the Wonderful Dharma alone flourishes, because the people all chant Namu- myōhō-renge-kyō as one, the wind will not thrash the branches nor the rain fall hard enough to break clods. The age will become like the reigns of [the Chinese sage kings] Yao and Shun. In the present life, inauspicious calamities will be banished, and the people will obtain the art of longevity. When the principle becomes manifest that both persons and dharmas “neither age nor die,” then each of you, behold! There can be no doubt of the sūtra’s promise of “peace and security in the present world.”

(Page 291-292)

“Original time” (honji) differs from linear time. It has no distinction of past, present, and future, and no proceeding from a deluded to an enlightened state; the Buddha and the ordinary worldling–the Buddha realm and the nine realms–are always one. This “original time” is the “actuality” of the three thousand realms in one thought-moment of the original Buddha and is accessed in the “now” (ima) of embracing the daimoku. In the single thought-moment of faith, the three thousand realms of the practitioner are those of the original Buddha. And because the person and the land are nondual, in the moment of faith and practice, the Sahā world is the eternal Buddha land. In the words of Chan-jan, a passage Nichiren quotes in this context: “You should know that one’s person and the land are [both] the single thought-moment comprising three thousand realms. Therefore, when one attains the Way, in accordance with this principle, one’s body and mind in that moment pervade the dharma realm.” (Page 291)

We have already seen that Nichiren saw the Buddha’s pure land as immanent in the present world, based on the “Fathoming the Lifespan ” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, which says, “I [Śākyamuni] am always in this Sahā world.” In the Kanjin honzon shō, Nichiren developed this idea specifically in terms of the origin teaching and the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment:

Now (ima) the Sahā world of the original time (honji) [of the Buddha’s enlightenment] is the constantly abiding pure land, freed from the three disasters and transcending [the cycle of] the four kalpas [formation, stability, decline, and extinction]. Its Buddha has not already entered nirvana in the past, nor is he yet to be born in the future. And his disciples are of the same essence. This [world] is [implicit in] the three realms, which are inherent in the three thousand realms of one’s mind.

In a manner very similar to that of the Sanjū shika no kotogaki and other medieval Tendai writings, this passage conveys the sense of the moment of enlightenment as accessing a timeless, “constantly abiding” realm in which all change is suspended. (Page 290-291)

In its most specific sense, the place of practice is understood in terms of the “ordination platform of the origin teaching” (honmon no kaidan), the third of the three great secret Dharmas entrusted by the original Śākyamuni to Bodhisattva Superior Conduct for the sake of persons in the Final Dharma age. However, as rules governing conduct, neither the ssu-fen lü precepts nor the bodhisattva precepts receive much attention in Nichiren’s thought. Although he maintained celibacy, refrained from meat-eating, and generally observed the standards of monastic conduct, he described himself as “a monk without precepts.” Like Hōnen, Nichiren saw the Final Dharma age as an age without precepts, when “there is neither keeping the precepts nor breaking them.” From a very early period, he held that “merely to believe in this [Lotus] sūtra is to uphold the precepts,” a statement based on the sūtra’s claim that one who can receive and keep the sūtra after the Buddha’s Nirvāṇa is “a keeper of the precepts.” A later writing explains this in terms of the all-inclusiveness of the daimoku:

Myōhō-renge-kyō, the heart of the origin teaching of the Lotus Sūtra, assembles in five characters all the merit of the myriad practices and good (acts] of the Buddhas of the three time periods. How could these five characters not contain the merit of [upholding] the myriad precepts? After the practitioner has once embraced this perfectly endowed, wonderful precept, it cannot be broken, even if one should try. No doubt this is why it has been called the vajra precept of the jeweled receptacle (kongō hōki kai). By embracing this precept, the Buddhas of the three time periods realized the Dharma, recompense, and manifested bodies, becoming Buddhas without beginning or end. … Because so wonderful a precept has been revealed, the precepts based on the pre-Lotus Sūtra teachings and on the trace teaching are now without the slightest merit.

[A]nother form of honzon possibly adopted during Nichiren’s lifetime is known as the “one Buddha and four attendants” (isson shishi). It probably derives from passages in Nichiren’s writings such as the following, in a letter to his follower Toki Jōnin (1216-1299), dated 1279:

You say in your letter: “I have heard before that an object of worship should be made of the Lord Śākyamuni of the origin teaching, who attained enlightenment in the remotest past, and that, as attendants, [images] should be made of the four leaders of the bodhisattvas emerged from the earth who are his original disciples. But when [is this object of worship to be established] as I have heard?”

… Now in the Final Dharma age, in accordance with the Buddha’s golden words, [an object of worship] should be made of the original Buddha and his original attendants.

And in fact, Toki Jōnin’s index of the writings, icons, and ritual implements preserved at the temple he established after Nichiren’s death includes “a standing image of Śākyamuni and also the four bodhisattvas (in a small shrine).” The presence of the four bodhisattvas signals that the central icon is the original or eternal, rather than the merely historical, Śākyamuni. The “one Buddha and four attendants” came into fairly widespread use among Nichiren’s followers as a honzon almost immediately after his death. There was also a more complex configuration consisting of the two Buddhas, Śākyamuni, and Many Jewels, seated together in the jeweled stūpa and flanked by the four bodhisattvas (ittō ryōson shishi). The earliest attested grouping was made by Jōgyōin Nichiyū (1298-1374) of the Nakayama lineage in 1335. (Page 275)

Śākyamuni is lord of this threefold world; all lesser rulers hold their territories in fief from him. With this concept of the Buddha, Nichiren asserted the superior authority of the Lotus Sūtra over that of worldly rule. Śākyamuni also presides over a pure land, the Pure Land of Eagle Peak (ryōzenjōdo), and Nichiren often assured his followers that their deceased relatives were with Śākyamuni there. In short, Nichiren’s concept of the object of worship not only posits a Buddha who encompasses all things, but itself attempts to encompass all views of the Buddha. (Page 274)

Nichiren’s writings as a whole … present a spectrum of concepts of the Buddha, drawing on the implications, not only of the Dharma body, but of the recompense and manifested bodies as well. Nichiren’s Buddha is at once both immanent and transcendent. He is “our blood and flesh”; his practices and resulting virtues are “our bones and marrow.” Yet at the same time, he is “parent, teacher, and sovereign” to all beings of this, the Sahā world. In this connection, Nichiren also stressed that Śākyamuni was only the Buddha who, out of compassion for its beings, had actually appeared in this world—a frequent point in Nichiren’s criticism of devotion to Amida. (Page 274)