Nichiren spoke of his object of worship as embodying “the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment as actuality,” a statement that may be understood in two ways. First, as underscored by recent studies in Buddhist art history, icons and mandalas in premodern Japan were seen not as merely symbolic or representational but as participating in and actively embodying the sacred powers of the beings or principles they depicted. Nichiren explains this idea in terms of the concept of the Buddhahood of grasses and trees (sōmoku jōbutsu), or more broadly, of insentient beings, a principle encompassed by the doctrine of the three thousand realms in one thought-moment:

Both inner and outer writings permit the use of wooden and painted images as objects of worship, but the reason for this has emerged [only] from the T’ien-t’ai school. If plants and trees did not possess cause and effect [i.e., the nine realms and the Buddha realm] in both physical and mental aspects, it would be useless to rely on wooden and painted images as objects of worship. … Were it not for the Buddha-seed which is the three thousand realms in one thought-moment, the realization of Buddhahood by sentient beings and [the efficacy of] wooden and painted images as objects of worship would exist in name but not in reality.

For this reason, Nichiren insisted that only the Lotus Sūtra, the textual source of the ichinen sanzen principle, was efficacious in the eye-opening ritual for consecrating Buddha images. (Page 276-277)

“In the precept lineage [kaike],” Kōen writes, “the profound Ultimate is transferred by means of concrete ritual forms (jisō).” The most distinctive ritual form of the kai kanjō is its elaborations of the mūdra of the palms placed together (gasshō). This mūdra, says Kōen, was performed by Śākyamuni and Many Jewels in the jeweled stūpa and represents the fusion of the object of contemplation and the wisdom that realizes it (kyōchi myōgō), as well as the supramundane truth and the worldly truth being a single suchness (shinzoku ichinyo). Cause and effect, dependent and primary recompense, the single thought-moment and the three thousand realms, yin and yang–all dharmas are encompassed in the gesture of gasshō, which is called the “mūdra of the true aspect” (jissō no in). The Enkai jūroku chō elaborates three kinds of gasshō corresponding to the “three kinds of Lotus Sūtra,” the classification of the Buddha’s teachings employed by Saichō to subsume them within the One Vehicle. (Page 136)

The present study has approached hongaku thought as representative of a new paradigm or “reimagining” of liberation that emerged and became influential in the early medieval period. This paradigm was characterized by nonlinearity, that is, by the conviction that enlightenment is directly accessible in the present moment, and that practice represents the expression of enlightenment, not merely the means to achieve it. This way of thinking about Buddhist liberation also stressed dependence upon a single factor, whether faith, insight, or a specific practice; access ibility, at least in theory, to all persons, even (or especially) those of limited capacity; and a deemphasis on moral cultivation as a causal factor necessary to salvation. This paradigm was shared by both Tendai and the new Kamakura schools. Given the difficulties of chronology, and the fact that the doctrines of medieval Tendai and of the new schools continued to undergo elaboration throughout the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, it is difficult to say that this paradigm simply and unproblematically “emerged” from Tendai. It developed within both Tendai and the new schools and was influenced by their interaction. By the latter medieval period, it had become an orthodoxy. (Page 362)

In medieval Tendai thought, the nonduality of the ordinary worldling and the Buddha forms the focus of argument; the particular form of practice one adopts is less important. In the new movements, this “nondual” standpoint is assimilated to claims for the sole validity of a particular form of faith or practice, which itself becomes the polemical touchstone, as the exclusive validity of the Lotus Sūtra does in the case of Nichiren. But this shift in focus is neither a rejection nor a fundamental transformation of the hongaku stance: Acceptance or denial of original enlightenment thought was not the fault line along which the “old”/”new” divide occurred. Far more important to the emergence of the new movements were such factors as their success in forming new institutions or kyōdan (including, as Matsuo Kenji has noted, the adoption of ordination procedures independent of the state-sponsored kaidan); their grounding in social and economic bases different from those of the Tendai temple-shrine complexes of the capital; and the particular ideological orientation inherent in their commitment to single practice, which served to define them over and against other Buddhists. (Page 361-362)

Chih-i’s own thought stresses that delusion and enlightenment, the nine realms and Buddha realm, are inherent in any phenomenon; thus, those who live in evil circumstances and have no opportunity to contemplate the perfections are not excluded from the Way but can make that evil the subject of liberative contemplation. Nevertheless, he was extremely careful to clarify that the ontological nonduality of good and evil did not obviate the need to make firm conventional distinctions between them; he also inveighed against monks who interpreted the teaching of nonduality as legitimizing antinomian behavior or who taught it irresponsibly without regard for their listeners’ ability to understand. (Page 361)