According to [Nichiren’s] account, people born in the Final Dharma age, by definition, have never received the seed of Buddhahood—i.e.. heard the Lotus Sutra—from Shakyamuni in prior existences. Thus no matter how assiduously they might practice, they cannot attain enlightenment through Shakyamuni’s teachings, any more than one can reap a harvest from a field that has never been sown.

Now in the age of mappō, only the teaching remains; there is neither practice nor proof. There is no longer a single person who has formed a relationship with Shakyamuni Buddha. Those who possessed the capacity to gain enlightenment through either the provisional or true Mahayana sutras have long since disappeared. In this age of impurity and evil, Namu-myōhō-renge-kyō should be planted as the seed of Buddhahood for the first time in the minds of those who commit the five cardinal offenses and slander the true Dharma.

Here we can see one reason why Nichiren established a new way of practice. He firmly believed that, as the Lotus Sutra teaches, “With  the Buddha-lands of the ten directions/There is the Dharma of only  One Vehicle”—that is, only one great truth by which all beings can attain enlightenment. Nichiren often referred to this truth as “the Lotus Sutra,” abstracting this name from its historical association with the Saddharma Pundarika. Yet this one truth must inevitably assume different forms according to the time and the people’s capacity. In Shakyamuni’s lifetime, Nichiren held. it took form as the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra, which served as the Buddhism of the harvest for people who had already received the seed of enlightenment and nurtured it through their Buddhist practice in prior lifetimes. Now in the time of mappō, however, people have never received the seed of enlightenment, let alone cultivated their capacity through practice; they are defined as people “without prior good causes” (honmi uzen). Therefore, the one vehicle of the Lotus Sutra must for their sake take form as the Buddhism of sowing, which Nichiren defined as the five characters of Myōho-renge-kyō. As he wrote:

The essential teaching of the Lotus Sutra and that intended for the beginning of the Final Dharma age are both pure and perfect teachings that lead directly to Buddhahood. But Shakyamuni’s is the Buddhism of the harvest. while this is the Buddhism of sowing.

Nichiren never denied outright the prevailing opinion that people in the time of mappō are more evil and deluded than those in previous ages and less capable of discerning true from false, or profound from shallow, in religious doctrines. In his thinking, however, the major hindrance to their enlightenment lay, not in their innate evil, but in their lack of those prior causes (i.e., practice in past lifetimes under the guidance of Shakyamuni), that would have enabled them to attain enlightenment through traditional disciplines.