As for the ten wonders of the Trace Gate they involve the causes and effects of buddhahood understood from the perspective of the teaching of the historical Buddha and are as follows:

1. The Wonder of Objects: The wondrous objective realities that the Buddha taught such as the four noble truths, the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination, the ten suchnesses from chapter two of the Lotus Sūtra, the two truths (the conventional and the ultimate), the threefold truth (of the empty, the provisional and the Middle Way), and the one truth of ultimate reality itself are all wondrous because they lead to and express the subtle and perfect teaching of the Lotus Sūtra.
2. The Wonder of Knowledges: The deepening knowledge (or gnosis) of ordinary beings, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas who awaken to the aforementioned objects are wondrous because they all ultimately lead to buddhahood.
3. The Wonder of Practices: All practices, including concentration and insight; the threefold training of morality, concentration, and wisdom; and the six perfections of the bodhisattva, are wondrous because they all lead ultimately to buddhahood.
4. The Wonder of Stages: All the stages of attainment that ultimately lead to buddhahood, from the stage of those who only strive for rebirth as a human being or in the heavens, to those stages of śrāvaka practice leading to arhatship, all the way up to the advanced stages of bodhisattva practice are wondrous.
5. The Wonder of the Threefold Dharma: All of the above leads to buddhahood, which is the wondrous fulfillment of the threefold Dharma or three tracks: the track of real nature, the track of contemplative illumination of wisdom, and the track of fulfilling potential as the accomplishment of meritorious deeds.
6. The Wonder of Receptivity and Response: The Buddha’s wholesome influence and assistance given in response to the needs of sentient beings in accord with their receptivity to his teachings is wondrous.
7. The Wonder of Supernatural Powers: The power of the Buddha to assist sentient beings with supernatural mastery over his own body, clairaudience, mind reading, past-life recall, clairvoyance, and knowledge of the destruction of the taints is wondrous.
8. The Wonder of Expounding the Dharma: The Buddha’s ability to expound the Dharma in the form of sūtras (prose discourses), verse restatements of the prose (S. gāthā), original verse teachings (S. geya), expansive discourses (S. vaipulya), prophecies to his disciples concerning their attainment of buddhahood, short sayings, tales of causality, parables, stories of his disciples past lives, stories of his own past lives, tales of auspicious occasions, and dialogues is wondrous.
9. The Wonder of Attendants: The variety of relationships that sentient beings have with the Buddha depending on either the universality of buddha-nature or specific causes or the vows they have made is wondrous.
10. The Wonder of Merits and Benefits: The final wonder of the Trace Gate is the boundless merit enjoyed by the Buddha and the great benefit he confers upon all sentient beings when they encounter the Buddha, hear the Dharma, and put it into practice so that they also may attain buddhahood.

The Tiantai school divided the Buddha’s fifty years of teaching into five periods of varying degrees of profundity. The first period occurred during the first few weeks that Śākyamuni Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi Tree. During that time, he taught the Flower Garland Sūtra, although Nichiren points out later in Kaimoku-shō that it would be more accurate to say that it was the bodhisattvas who were present that actually did the teaching. Starting with the discourse on the Four Noble Truths taught at the Deer Park to the five ascetics, Śākyamuni Buddha spent twelve years teaching the pre-Mahāyāna (aka Hinayāna) teachings found in the Āgama sūtras. After that he spent eight years teaching the preliminary Mahāyāna teachings of the Vaipulya or Expanded sūtras. He taught the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras during the twenty-two years that followed that. For the last eight years of his life, the Buddha taught the Lotus Sūtra. On the very last day and night of his life the Buddha taught the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. It should be noted that even Nichiren points out in other writings that these time spans are uncertain. In any case, modern textual scholarship would dismiss all of this as arbitrary, especially since the Mahāyāna sūtras are now seen as compositions arising after the Buddha’s lifetime. Nevertheless, Mahāyāna Buddhism accepts these sūtras as embodying the word of the Buddha in the sense that they convey the full depths of the Buddha’s insight and compassion. The Tiantai system of classifying the sūtras into five periods of teaching can still be seen as a useful way of approaching the sūtras in terms of how they build upon one another and lead those who put them into practice into deeper and subtler insights.

The Buddha was not concerned with affirming or denying any kind of God. What the Buddha constantly taught was for the purpose of helping people understand suffering, cut off the causes of suffering, realize the cessation of suffering, and follow the path to the cessation of suffering. Anything within the six worlds of transmigration, including the heavenly realms where gods of varying degrees of sublimity reside, was still within the purview of suffering and its causes. While union with God is looked upon as a worthy and attainable goal, it is not the final goal, for it is still involved in the impermanent flow of causes and conditions. Only the unconditioned peace of nirvāṇa can provide true peace according to the Buddha.

We might wonder if Buddhism itself has anything to say about monotheism or religion based upon revelation and salvation by a transcendent God. Actually, throughout the Pāli canon, the Buddha did teach a lot of things that are relevant to the claims of Western monotheism. To begin with, the three Western monotheistic traditions all base themselves upon some form of revelation wherein God speaks to humanity. The Buddha, however, saw all teachings based on revelation, tradition, hearsay, or any other system of authority not based on direct experience as doubtful. The Buddha’s teachings about this were famously expressed in the following exchange between himself and the Kalama people of the town of Kesaputta:

“There are, Lord, some ascetics and brahmins who come to Kesaputta. They explain and elucidate their own doctrines, but disparage, debunk, revile and vilify the doctrines of others. But then some other ascetics and brahmins come to Kesaputta, and they too explain and elucidate their own doctrines, but disparage, debunk, revile and vilify the doctrines of others. For us, Lord, there is perplexity and doubt as to which of these good ascetics speak truth and which speak falsehood?”

“It is fitting for you to be perplexed, O Kalamas, it is fitting for you to be in doubt. Doubt has arisen in you about a perplexing matter. Come, Kalamas. Do not go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of scriptures, by logical reasoning, by inferential reasoning, by a reflection on reasons, by the acceptance of a view after pondering it, by the seeming competence of a speaker, or because you think: The ascetic is our teacher.’ But when you know for yourselves, ‘These things are unwholesome, these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; these things if undertaken and practiced lead to harm and suffering’, then you should abandon them. “