Let us review the process of the Buddha’s entrustment of the Lotus Sūtra from this twofold perspective. In the “Jeweled Stūpa” chapter, Śākyamuni Buddha calls for persons willing to spread the sūtra in an evil age after his nirvāṇa. Right before the concluding verse section, Śākyamuni announces: “The Tathāgata will enter parinirvāṇa before long and the Buddha wants to transmit this Lotus Sūtra to you.” Zhiyi says that this implies both a “near” transmission, to those bodhisattvas who have already assembled, and a “distant” transmission, to the bodhisattvas who will emerge from the earth several chapters later and to whom the Buddha will transfer the essence of the sūtra. In the “Perseverance” chapter, a great throng of bodhisattvas from other worlds vow to spread the Lotus Sūtra throughout the ten directions. But in the “Bodhisattvas Emerging from the Earth” chapter, Śākyamuni rejects their offer and instead summons his original disciples, the bodhisattvas from beneath the earth led by Viśiṣṭacaritra. Their appearance at the assembly in open space provides the occasion for Śākyamuni, in the “Lifespan” chapter, to cast off his provisional guise as someone who first realized enlightenment in the present lifetime and reveal his true identity as the primordially awakened buddha who “constantly resides” here in this world. Now in the “Transcendent Powers” chapter, he formally transfers the Lotus Sūtra to the bodhisattvas of the earth, who in the next chapter solemnly vow to uphold and disseminate it as the Buddha directs.

But what was transferred to the bodhisattvas of the earth? Śākyamuni declares that in the Lotus Sūtra he has “clearly revealed and taught all the teachings of the Tathāgata, all the transcendent powers of the Tathāgata, all the treasure houses of the hidden essence of the Tathāgata, and all the profound aspects of the Tathāgata.” Based on this passage, Zhiyi formulated five major principles of the Lotus Sūtra — its name, essence, purport, function, and position among all teachings — principles that he also understood as inherent in the five characters that comprise the sūtra’s title. Nichiren too spoke of “Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō endowed with the five profound principles,” drawing on the Tiantai commentarial tradition to assert that what Śākyamuni Buddha transferred to the bodhisattvas of the earth was none other than the daimoku, the heart or intent, of the Lotus Sūtra:

As for the five characters Myōhō-renge-kyō: Śākyamuni Buddha not only kept them secret during his first forty-some years of teaching, but also refrained from speaking of them even in the trace teaching, the first fourteen chapters of the Lotus Sūtra. Not until the “Lifespan” chapter did he reveal the two characters renge, which [represent the five characters and] indicate the original effect and original cause [of the Buddha’s enlightenment]. The Buddha did not entrust these five characters to Mañjuśrī, Samantabhadra, Maitreya, Bhaiṣajyarāja, or any other such bodhisattvas. Instead he summoned forth from the great earth of Tranquil Light the bodhisattvas Viśiṣṭacāritra, Anantacāritra, Vlśuddhacāritra, and Supratiṣṭhitacāritra along with their followers and transmitted the five characters to them.