The accent on the world of enlightenment represented by chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra seems at first to concentrate on the Buddha and on the nature of buddhahood. Yet, the exegesis elaborated within the T’ien-t’ai/Tendai tradition develops a religious view which, in various ways, addresses the position of humanity: a true Buddha cannot exist without human beings (because it is from among humans that a Buddha emerges) and human beings cannot exist without a Buddha (because the Buddha represents the essence of humanity).

Nichiren asserts that the Buddha-world is the only reality and at the same time restores the historical perspective as the only context in which the dimension of the absolute open to human beings is concretized. The Buddha’s enlightenment, that is, “the merits acquired by Śākyamuni through his practice,” is epitomized in the five characters of the title of the Lotus Sutra. Therefore, if someone “receives and keeps” the sutra and obtains access to its meaning through the recitation of the title, they will be endowed with these merits. “The Śākyamuni of subtle enlightenment is our blood and our flesh. The merits of his practice, are they not our bones and marrow?” Nichiren writes. Buddhahood becomes a reality of history, not just in history. Nichiren’s emphasis is not on the absolute per se, but on the relative which has to change to become absolute. A shift occurs from the three worlds of universal time (past-present-future) to the actual historical moment, and this gives a social dimension to Nichiren Buddhism. The endowment with the Buddha-world, however, is the exclusive prerogative of the “practitioner of the Lotus”: “One who keeps the sutra is endowed with the Buddha-bodies and performs Buddha’s acts.” The emphasis on a concrete realization of original time leads to the interpretation of the truth represented by the discourse of the Lotus Sutra as a truth which does not exist beyond the confines of history.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity: Hermeneutics of the ‘Ancient Buddha’ of the Lotus Sutra in Chih-i and Nichiren, Page 235