Sectarian students, confused with doctrines of their own schools or not knowing the sixteenth chapter on “The Life Span of the Buddha” of the Lotus Sūtra, mistake the moon in the water for the real one; they try to go into the water to grasp this illusion or tie it up with a rope. In T’ien-t’ai’s words “they look at only the moon in the pond, without knowing the moon in the sky.”

Kaimoku-shō, Open Your Eyes to the Lotus Teaching, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 49