[Given Avalokiteśvara’s] popularity, Nichiren occasionally sought to disengage Avalokiteśvara from a Pure Land context and assimilate him to the Lotus Sūtra. In one rather humorous passage, he depicts Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, another bodhisattva attendant of Amitābha, as being utterly dismayed on hearing the Lotus Sūtra preached directly by Śākyamuni Buddha himself and learning that the teachings associated with Amitābha’s pure land were merely provisional. When Amitābha himself confirms this (since all buddhas assemble to testify to the Lotus Sūtra’s truth), Avalokiteśvara reflects that it would be pointless now to return to Amitābha’s land and instead joins the other eighty thousand bodhisattvas who are attending the Lotus assembly, “vowing in all sincerity to protect practitioners of the Lotus Sūtra as he, in the words of the ‘Avalokiteśvara’ chapter, ‘wanders throughout the Sahā world.’ ”

Some temples within the Nichiren tradition have incorporated Avalokiteśvara among the various protectors enshrined on their premises. In such cases, the bodhisattva is understood as representing the compassionate workings inherent in the daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, and protecting its propagation.