[I]n another extravagant illustration of the Lotus Sūtra’s inconceivable liberative powers, the Buddha asks his hearers to imagine that one person, hearing the Lotus Sūtra, rejoices and teaches it to another, who similarly rejoices and teaches it to another, and so on. The merit gained by the fiftieth person in succession on merely hearing the sūtra and rejoicing in its message, Śākyamuni says, is incalculably, inconceivably greater than that of someone who over an eighty-year period first gives immeasurable gifts to beings in billions of worlds and then leads them to the liberation of an arhat.

Today we are inclined to read these statements with attention to their rhetorical function in “constructing” the Lotus Sūtra as inconceivably wonderful. Nichiren and his contemporaries, however, would not have seen this as a rhetorical device. For them, the sūtras faithfully recorded the words of the Buddha, who is by definition both omniscient and free from falsehood. In short, they were statements of literal truth. “What other sūtra,” Nichiren asks, “teaches that incalculable merit accrues to one who arouses even a single thought of willing acceptance, or to the fiftieth person who rejoices upon hearing it? Other sūtras do not claim such merit for even the first, second, third, or tenth hearer, let alone the fiftieth!”

As he had with the notions of the first stage of faith and the first stage of practice that are based on the “Description of Merits” chapter, Nichiren employed the analogy of “transmission to the fiftieth person” from the “Merits of Joyful Acceptance” chapter to counter claims from Pure Land devotees that the Lotus Sūtra, being extremely profound, was too difficult to practice for deluded persons of the Final Dharma age. If ease of practice were to be a criterion, he said, no practice could be easier than spontaneously rejoicing on hearing the Lotus Sūtra. Nichiren argued that, far from excluding the ignorant, it is precisely because the Lotus Sūtra is so profound that it can save beings of any capacity whatsoever. In this connection, he often cited Zhanran’s remark: “The more true the teaching, the lower the capacity [of the persons it can bring to liberation.]” However limited one’s capacity might be, that person is ennobled by their Lotus Sūtra practice. Therefore, Nichiren wrote, his followers were not to be despised: “If one looks into their past, they are great bodhisattvas who have made offerings for eight billion eons to buddhas numerous as the sands of the Hiraṇyavatī and Ganges rivers. And in terms of the future, they will be endowed with the merit of the fiftieth person [to hear the sūtra], which surpasses that of one who gives gifts to incalculable sentient beings for a period of eighty years. They are like a crown prince wrapped in swaddling clothes or a newborn dragon. Do not look down on them. Do not hold them in contempt!”