I would propose that Śākyamuni Buddha, as a literary figure in the sūtras, is a personification of the ideals and insights of the Buddhist tradition. The Eternal Śākyamuni Buddha of the Original Gate therefore personifies what those Mahāyāna Buddhists who have given credence to the Lotus Sūtra believe is the ultimate message of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Nichiren believed that this message was one of the universal and immediate accessibility of buddhahood, and that this message was what the Tiantai school had been championing until it had become obscured by other messages that Nichiren saw as departures from what is taught in the Mahāyāna sūtras and particularly the Lotus Sūtra. For Nichiren, fidelity to Buddhism is fidelity to the tradition expressed in the sūtras that had inspired and guided Mahāyāna Buddhists for well over a millennium at the time he wrote Kaimoku-shō. In our present time and circumstances I think that to avoid falling into the category of “ignorant laypeople” we who wish to be inspired and guided by the Mahāyāna teachings should read these teachings for ourselves so that we will be in a position to judge whether or not a particular Buddhist group or a particular teacher is authentically representing that tradition or distorting it due to biased ideas or for less than worthy goals.