As with Chapter Three, Nichiren’s references to this chapter focus, not on the parable from which it takes its name, but on another element entirely, in this case, the story of the buddha Mahābhijfiājfiānābhibhū [Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata].

Nichiren drew three chief conclusions from this narrative. The first is that beings of our own, Sahā world have a karmic connection solely to Śākyamuni Buddha and not to the buddhas of other words. Everything about the dharma known in this world originated with Śākyamuni. None of the great Pure Land teachers, Nichiren said, had ever actually met the buddha Amitābha or renounced the world to practice the way under his guidance. The name Sahā, from the Sanskrit word meaning “to bear or endure,” refers to the tradition that this world is an especially evil and benighted place where it is difficult to pursue the Buddhist path — quite unlike the radiant pure lands with which the Mahāyāna imagination populated the cosmos. Thus, Śākyamuni was said to have displayed exceptional compassion in appearing in this world. In the Greater Amitābha Sūtra or Sūtra of Immeasurable Life, Amitābha Buddha vows to accept into his pure land all who place faith in him except those persons who have committed the five heinous deeds or disparaged the dharma. Nichiren accordingly suggested that these most depraved of evil persons had been excluded from the pure lands of the ten directions and were gathered instead in the present, Sahā world, where Śākyamuni had undertaken to save them. This was the meaning, he said, of Śākyamuni Buddha’s statement in Chapter Three, “I am the only one who can protect them.” To forsake the original teacher Śākyamuni was a grave error, as the people of this world cannot escape samsāra by following any other buddha.