According to the three great works of T’ien-t’ai (Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra, Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra, and Great Concentration and Insight ) and Miao-lê’s annotations on them, the Lotus Sūtra is to save the ignorant, evil, and women, whom other sūtras are unable to save, as well as icchantika, who are eternally drowned in the sea of life and death. Yet, teachers of other sects, who do not know this aim of the Buddha, consider the Lotus Sūtra either equal to other sūtras, good only for much-practiced bodhisattvas above the ranks of shoji and shojū, or promising Buddhahood to the ignorant merely as a means of encouragement.

T’ien-t’ai and Miao-lê refuted these erroneous doctrines, declaring that those wandering in the six realms of illusions are exactly whom the Lotus Sūtra aims to address. They preached the two doctrines of shurui seed and sōtai seed, recognizing both merits and demerits of the past as the seed of Buddhahood. They also declared that those born into the realms of heavenly beings or human beings must have accumulated in the past the merit of keeping the five precepts or the ten virtuous acts enabling them to become Buddhas.

Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 41