Although there is no mind in the lotus flower, it blossoms in response to the sunlight. A Japanese banana plant has no ears, but its growth is influenced by thunder. Likewise, we are able to become Buddhas by the virtue of the daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, which is like the sunlight and the thunder for a lotus flower and a banana plant. When one enters the water carrying a rhinoceros horn, the water will be kept away by 5 feet. When a leaf of sandalwood opens, the bad odor of eraṇḍa will disappear as far as 40 yojana (distance covered by a traveling man in 40 days). The evil karma of ordinary people is like the water and the eraṇḍa and the daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra is like the rhinoceros horn and leaf of sandalwood. A diamond is so hard that nothing can break it except the horn of a sheep and the shell of a tortoise. Large birds cannot snap the branch of a large tree called nyagrodha though the wren, a small bird said to nest on the eyelashes of mosquitoes, can. The evil karma of ordinary people like us, is as hard as a diamond and as big as nyagrodha. The daimoku of the Lotus Sutra, on the contrary, can easily break and snap the karma of ordinary people, like the horn of a sheep and the beak of a wren. As an amber jewel removes dust and a magnet attracts iron, so are our dust and iron of evil karma removed by amber and the magnet of the daimoku. You should always think this way and continuously chant Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō.

Hokke Daimoku Shō, Treatise on the Daimoku of the Lotus Sūtra, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Faith and Practice, Volume 4, Page 37-38