“The Nichiren Sect” in Nanjō [Bunyu]’s Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects contains the following remarks on the Kaidan.

The Kaidan, or “place for receiving instruction in śīla or moral precepts,” of the original doctrine is explained as follows: To keep the śīla is the most important matter of all the divisions of Buddha’s doctrine, whether of the great or the small vehicle of the true or of the temporary. Therefore there is in the original doctrine the first true śīla which is held by Buddha permanently. The Kaidan is the Bodhi-manda (dō jō) or “place for the way,” where the ceremony to receive instruction in the śīla is to be accomplished. The place is now mentioned instead of the law which is to be observed there.

The substance of this śīla is the title of the five characters Myō-hō-ren-ge-kyō. One who believes in this title and observes it, is said to be the holder of the excellent śīla of the original doctrine. The place where he keeps and holds it, is the Pure Land of the Calm Light (Jak-kō-jō-do), i.e. the Kaidan. (pp. 145-146)

The Kaidan of the Nichiren Sect is understood to be a practical Kaidan (ji no kaidan) and not a theoretical Kaidan (ri no kaidan) as found in the Tendai Sect. The former expresses the meaning of Hommon or the Original Teaching, the latter that of Shaku Mon or the Trace Teaching. As stated above, the Kaidan of the Nichiren Sect is the Dōjō or “place for the way” (the term “way” meaning here ”the way leading to enlightenment”) where the believer in the Hoke-kyō recites the Title and meditates on it. Upon attaining enlightenment Śākyamuni once sat in such a place, and every Bodhisattva sits down on such a seat before he becomes Buddha. It is said to be the navel or center of the earth, the terrace of enlightenment raising itself on the bodhi-site, and to be diamond-like; consequently it is also called the “diamond throne.”

Tendai Daishi taught the Three Benefits (san yaku) of planting the seed, bringing it to ripeness, and getting deliverance. The “seed” is the seed of goodness sown into the human heart by the Ancient Buddha of Original Enlightenment, and Tendai Daishi evidently believed that by virtue of this seed all men were able to become Buddhas. Though Nichiren adopted the Three Benefits, he believed that “the seed of goodness” had died. While he agreed that in the Shōbo and Zōbō Period men had the capacity of innate goodness, he maintained that in the Mappō Period men had lost their original goodness. It had to be revived again by the beneficial water of the hommon of Hoke-kyō.

It may appear contradictory that the age in which Buddhism sinks into utmost depravity and finally disappears is considered to be the same age in which the highest and purest teaching shall be made known to humanity. The principle commonly upheld in Mahāyāna is that teaching and capacity must be parallel or adapted to each other. In other words, a superior hearer needs a superior teaching and an inferior hearer an inferior teaching. Nichiren’s idea was just the opposite. According to him, the more inferior the hearer, the more superior teaching he needs. Or, the severer the sickness, the better must be the medicine. An inferior medicine cannot cure a severe sickness. In the same manner a teaching of low grade cannot bring enlightenment to men who have fallen very low. Men of high standard can turn to advantage even a low teaching, but people in deepest ignorance need the most sublime teaching to vanquish their spiritual darkness.

The most sublime teaching does of course not mean the most difficult teaching, but the most powerful and efficacious teaching. From the point of view of mental comprehensibility it may be quite easy. Nichiren does therefore not contradict himself when he says of the Mappō time and the teaching appropriate to it: “The sickness will be grievous, but the medicine light.” The most sublime teaching is a teaching of mystical essence that establishes a direct and intimate relation between the Buddha and the receiver and helps in bringing about his salvation.

In the exegesis of the Hoke-kyō, Nichiren follows the Tendai School and not the Sanron or Hossō school inasmuch as he interprets this text by taking the commentaries of Chisha Daishi (Tendai Daishi) and Myōraku Daishi (Keikei Tannen) for his foundation, and not the commentaries by Kajō Daishi or Jion Daishi. In short, he considers the Hoke-kyō from the standpoint of the One Vehicle rather than that of the Three Vehicles. Nichiren incorporates into his own system the whole Tendai philosophy. He adopts the classification of the Five Periods and the Eight Teachings; he acknowledges the doctrines of the Perfectly Amalgamated Three Truths (i.e. the Synthesis of vacuity and phenomenal reality in the Middle) and of the Identity of the One Mind and the Three Thousand (representing the totality of phenomena), and he upholds the practice of the Three Meditations in One Mind. He teaches the Oneness of the World. He proclaims that the whole universe in its essence is nothing but Buddha’s own body, so that even trees and grasses do not only attain Buddhahood, but are direct manifestations of Buddha. Similarly he maintains that the cosmos or the Tathāgata is our own body and soul; that the Buddha, Truth and Paradise are not outside of our own self; that Buddhahood can be attained in our present life and in our present body; that the Buddha, the mind and the living beings form One Unity. There is not one single important Tendai doctrine which is not a part of Nichiren’s system.

The distinctions between shakumon and hommon are by no means a settled point, either between the two schools of Tendai and Nichiren or within the Nichiren School itself. In fact, soon after Nichiren’s death, an argument exploded within the school as to whether the shakumon, because of its inferiority, should be discarded and the hommon only retained; or whether both shakumon and hommon ought to be made use of to enhance the Hoke-kyō. The argument finally brought about a split into two schools. The Itchi or Union School harmonized shakumon and hommon by interpreting the former in the light of the latter; and the Shōretsu or Superiority and Inferiority School acknowledged only hommon and discarded shakumon. But the difficulty did not end here, since the Shōretsu School could come to no uniform opinion as to which chapters constituted the hommon.

Nichiren scholars, in their discussions of the relative characteristics of their own school and the Tendai School, concede that both are based on the same Hoke-kyō of pure perfect teaching. But the two schools are said to differ fundamentally in the following point. The Tendai Sect stands pre-eminently on the principle that “all Dharmas are True Form” (sho hōjissō), as taught in the Shakumon part of the Hoke-kyō, and on the philosophical principle of “reason-norm” (ri hō), that “the Trichiliocosm in a Moment of Consciousness” (ichi nen san zen). These two views imply the shakumon-standard (shakumon hon i). The doctrine of the Tendai School may therefore be characterized to be “Shakumon on the Face, hommon behind” (shaku men hon ri). The Nichiren Sect on the contrary considers as more important the concrete fact that “the Original Buddha had really become a Buddha long, long ago” (kuon jitsujō no hombutsu). This view is taught in the hommon part of the Hoke-kyō and implies the hommon-standard (hommon hon i). The doctrine of the Nichiren School may therefore be said to be “hommon on the Face, shakumon behind” (hon men shaku ri). Nichiren scholars conclude that from this it is very clear which of the two schools is the superior and which the inferior—the one standing on the shallow shakumon, the other on the profound hommon! Needless to say, this problem does not even exist for the Tendai Sect, since they acknowledge no difference of degree between shakumon and hommon.

Nichiren identified reason or theory (ri) with the shakumon, and substance or practice (ji) with the hommon. In other words, the first fourteen chapters were to him mere abstract teaching, while the last fourteen chapters constituted for him the concrete teaching. According to him, ri or abstract teaching was congenial with the Tendai School, while ji or concrete teaching was appropriate to the Nichiren School. This identification of shakumon with ri and of hommon with ji is another instance where Nichiren’s teaching differs from Tendai Daishi’s teaching. Though both agreed on the division of the sūtra into shakumon and hommon, Tendai Daishi emphasized the identical nature of both parts. He maintained that the Ten Mysteries of each coincided; that both parts contained the Three Dharmas, in which the Law of the Living Beings was the standard for shakumon, and the Law of the Buddha the standard for hommon. He says textually: “Notwithstanding hon and shaku being different, they are the same in being incomprehensible.” Incomprehensible (fushigi) is to be here understood as wonderful or mysterious (myō), i.e. transcending all relative understanding and mental capacity.

Nichiren opposed these theses, restating his belief that shakumon, instead of being identical with hommon, was inferior to it. In the fivefold “Classification of the Five Gradual Contrasts” (Go-jū sō-tai), the Contrast of Origin and Trace is the fourth of five contrasts. Here the Origin (hon) is the fundamental teaching of the Hoke-kyō, while the Trace (shaku) is that which is not considered as fundamental. In his Jippōkai ji, Nichiren further condenses the evolution of Buddhism into four stages:

1. ni zen—teaching before Hokke
2. shakutnon—teaching of Trace
3. hommon—teaching of Origin
4. kanjin—meditation on mind

Thus the whole teaching by Śākyamuni proceeds from shallow to deeper and deeper levels: Nichiren says in this book: “When the great teaching of shakumon arises, then the teachings before it perish. When the great teaching of hommon arises, then shakumon and the teachings before it perish. When the great teaching of kanjin arises, then all hon and shaku and all teachings before it perish.” The real meaning of hommon appears therefore in kanjin, in intuition. It is this hommon of higher potence which Nichiren calls “the great white doctrine among the great white doctrines”, “the mystical medicine among the mystical medicines.”

Nichiren classifies the Hoke-kyō in the Kanjin Honzon shō according to Kumārajīva’s translation, where the first fourteen chapters form the shakumon part, and the remaining fourteen the hommon part. The shakumon consists of:

1. The Introductory Part, composed of the Muryōgi-kyō [Innumerable Meanings Sutra] and Chapter 1 of the proper Hoke-kyō, dealing with “The Assembly and the Illumination.”
2. The Main Part, formed by the eight chapters from Chapter 2 on “Tactful Revelation” to Chapter 9, narrating the “Prediction of the Future Destiny of Ānanda, Rāhula and the Two Thousand Monks.”
3. The Concluding Part, comprising the five chapters from Chapter 10 on “The Preacher” to Chapter 14 on “The Serene Life.”

The hommon consists of:

1. The Introductory Part, including the first half of Chapter 15 on “The Hosts of Bodhisattvas issuing from the Earth.”
2. The Main Part, containing the second half of Chapter 15, Chapter 16 on “The Eternal Life of the Tathāgata,” and the first half of Chapter 17 on “The Merit and Reward of Faith.”
3. The Concluding Part, consisting of the second half of Chapter 17, the remaining eleven chapters of the proper Hoke-kyō, and in addition the Fugen kan-gyō [Sutra of Meditation on the Bodhisattva Universal-virtue].

This classification coincides with Tendai Daishi’s classification with only one exception—this being that Tendai Daishi does not include the Muryōgi-kyō and the Fugen kan-gyō. Nichiren considered that the main part of the sūtra as a whole was the doctrinal parts of Chapter Il , which maintains that the adherents of the Two Vehicles can become Buddha, and Chapter 16, which says that Śākyamuni is the absolute Buddha since eternity.

All Buddhas of the subordinate state are like the images of the moon reflected upon many waters. Only the Buddha of the original state is like the real moon in the sky.

The original state of Buddha means the Original Enlightenment or hon gaku. The subordinate state of Buddha means the Enlightenment that has a Beginning or shi gaku. Shi gaku is understood as historical, hon gaku as absolute; the first is rather intellectual, connected with instruction and learning, the latter purely intuitive. However the original enlightenment presupposes the enlightenment that has a beginning. No original enlightenment is manifested unless the first enlightenment has been attained. The subordinate state is shown by the original one, and vice versa. Though they are different from each other, their virtue is one and the same.

In accordance with the division of the Hoke-kyō into Shakumon and hommon, the Nichiren Sect distinguishes two lines of transmission of the teaching, external and internal. The external transmission is the line of teachers in India, China and Japan who expounded the doctrine of the Lotus Sūtra. These are:

• Śākyamuni Buddha and Yakuō Bosatsu (Medicine King) from India
• Tendai Daishi from China
• Dengyō Daishi and Nichiren Dai Bosatsu from Japan

The internal transmission is the line of those who understood the truth of the Original Doctrine or hommon. These are Śākyamuni Buddha, Jogyō Bosatsu, Nichiren Dai-Bosatsu. …

Jōgyō Bosatsu (Viśiṣṭacāritra Bodhisattva), with his innumerable followers issued from the gaps of the earth, appears prominently in Chapter XV and XXI and is ordered by Śākyamuni in preference to all other Bodhisattvas, to propagate after his decease the most perfect teaching. Therefore, Nichiren not only regards Jōgyō Bosatsu as the proper transmitter of the hommon of the Hoke-kyō, but considers himself as a reincarnation of the Bodhisattva. Nichiren found his life in perfect harmony with Śākyamuni’s prophecy that Jōgyō Bosatsu would reappear and propagate the hommon teaching in the Mappō time.

It is clear from this that though the outer form of the doctrine depends on the Tendai School, the internal transmission, considered more correct, is entirely independent of any other doctrine.

The style of writing the Sacred Title is also significant. On the Mandala, where it occupies the center, and wherever it is used by the Nichiren people, such as on tombstones, banners or books, always the characters forming the Title show curly and projecting strokes, symbolizing radiant rays emitted by it. Here once more we meet a similarity — although admittedly only a formal similarity — with the Nembutsu cult, where the portrait of Amida is usually shown with rays emitting from his body. Nichiren originated this style of writing the Sacred Title, it seems, to convey to the five characters the same divine holiness which Nembutsu worshippers conveyed to the likeness of Amida.

At the same time, obvious Tantric reminiscences are interwoven in the repetition of the Title. The utterance of the Title, similar to a Tantric incantation or mantra, releases the secret powers involved in word and name, and brings into effect the original connection existing between word and name and the creative energies of the universe. According to the Tantric view, there is a magic power in the formulas spoken by the priest during his performance of religious rites. This view, in fact, is not confined to the Tantric Sects, but in a lesser degree is shared by almost all sects of Mahāyāna, as the dhārāṇi used by them, show. The Hoke-kyō itself contains a whole “Dhārāṇi Chapter.” No wonder, then, that Nichiren attached such importance to the recitation of the Title!