[T]he Title or Daimoku is the five or seven characters which make up the full name of the Hoke-kyō. The title of the Sūtra, says Nichiren doctrine, is the essence of the whole sūtra, the holy teaching of the Buddha’s life, the principle of all things, and the truth of eternity; the fullest implications of the title are inexplicable and inconceivable, understood not even by subordinate Buddhas. The title of the original doctrine is to be believed in, not understood.

Tendai Daishi had already considered that the title of the Hoke-kyō included the essence of the whole sutra, but this was in accordance with the general view that the titles of the holy texts proclaimed by Buddha contained, in a condensed and abbreviated way, the full text. It was Tendai Daishi who used the “five profound meanings” (gojū gengo to explain the sūtras, a system which we remember as containing:

l. myō—the name
2. tai—the substance
3. shū—the principle
4. yū—the action
5. kyō—the teaching

The first concerns the title of the sūtra; the second its philosophical essence, the third its practical import; the fourth its efficiency or the effect gained by it; the fifth the respective rank which the particular sūtra, on account of its doctrine holds among all sūtras.

Tendai Daishi found a justification for his method in Chapter XXI of the Hoke-kyō, which says:

In fact, all the truths possessed by the Tathāgata, all the sovereign, divine powers of the Tathāgata, all the stocks of mysteries of the Tathāgata, all the profound things of the Tathāgata are proclaimed, displayed, revealed, and expounded in this Sūtra.

Basing himself on this passage, he interpreted the truths possessed by the Tathāgata as the title of the Hoke-kyō and that all the sovereign, divine powers of the Tathāgata corresponded to its “essence”; that all the stocks of mysteries of the Tathāgata were to be understood as its “principle”; that all the profound things of the Tathāgata signified its “action”; and that the revelation and promulgation coincided with its “teaching.”

Nichiren merely adopted Tendai Daishi’s method in dealing with the Hoke-kyō. His identification of the term myō (wonderful) with death, of hō (dharma) with birth, and the equalization of these two with renge (lotus) conforms to Tendai Daishi’s view in which the title involves the whole life-process within the ten states of existence.