What particularly drew Nichiren’s attention in Chapter Thirteen … was the verse section … , comprising twenty lines in Kumārajiva’s Chinese version, in which eighty myriad kotis of nayutas of advanced bodhisattvas who have gathered from other worlds all vow to Śākyamuni Buddha to preach the Lotus Sūtra throughout the worlds of the ten directions, going on to enumerate the trials they are willing to undergo in order to disseminate the sūtra in an evil age after his final nirvāṇa. Based on this passage, in his commentary on Zhiyi’s Lotus Sūtra lectures, Zhanran formulated the concept of “three kinds of powerful enemies” who will obstruct Lotus Sūtra devotees: ignorant lay people, who will speak ill of them or attack them with staves and swords; deceitful monks of false wisdom who in their conceit “think they have attained what they have not”; and prominent monks who make a show of holiness, acting like forest-dwelling saints, but are actually greedy and arrogant and who slander Lotus devotees to persons in authority, including kings, ministers, and members of the priestly caste, as well as to other monks and lay householders. Sentenced to exile for the second time, Nichiren wrote that while the three types of enemies predicted in the “Perseverance” chapter were much in evidence in his day, not one of the eighty myriad kotis of nayutas of bodhisattvas who had pledged themselves to the Lotus Sūtra’s propagation was to be seen. There was only himself. Accordingly, he resolved, “I will propagate this sūtra on behalf of those eighty myriad kotis of nayutas of bodhisattvas. May they extend to me their aid and protection.”