Nichiren’s doctrine that faith in the Lotus Sutra would make the land peaceful draws on two sources. One is the old tradition of “nation protection” (chingo kokka), a belief in the magical power of Buddhism to ensure safety and prosperity in the realm. By Nichiren’s time, the Lotus had already enjoyed a long history as one of three “nation-protecting sutras,” having been transcribed, recited, and expounded for centuries in the belief that the merit of such deeds would ward off calamities and secure the country’s peace and stability. A second source for Nichiren’s risshō ankoku concept lay in Tendai metaphysical thinking about the nonduality of subjective and objective realms and the immanence of the Buddha land in this present world. In Nichiren’s reading, the nonduality of self and environment, of this world and the Buddha land, did not stop at subjective, personal insight; wherever the Lotus Sutra was embraced, he taught, the phenomenal world would actually be transformed. Thus, the Risshō Ankoku-ron states that when one has faith in the Lotus, “the threefold world will all become a Buddha land” and “the ten directions will all become a treasure realm” (Risshō 1988, 1:226).

How exactly did Nichiren envision the Buddha land that faith in the Lotus could manifest in this world? Although his extant writings contain little specific description, we can point to one passage, often cited in modern millennialist readings:

When all people throughout the land enter the one Buddha vehicle, and the Wonderful Dharma [of the Lotus] alone flourishes, because the people all chant Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, 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 people will obtain the art of longevity. When the principle becomes manifest that both persons and phenomena “neither age nor die,” then each of you, behold! There can be no doubt of the sutra’s promise of “peace and security in the present world.” (Nyosetsu shugyō shi in Risshō, 1988, 1:733).

This seems to suggest a conviction on Nichiren’s part that faith in the sutra could bring about an age of harmony with nature, just rule, and in some form, a transcending of impermanence. This conviction, that faith in the Lotus could outwardly transform the world, represents one of his most important legacies that supports the millennial thinking of modern followers.