The immanence of the pure land in the present world had long been asserted by both Tendai and Shingon schools and was by no means unique to Nichiren’s teaching. Where Nichiren’s position differed was that, for him, the identity of the Sahā world and the Buddha’s land was not only to be realized subjectively in the moment of practice but manifested in actuality: as faith in the Lotus Sūtra spread from one person to another, there would occur an objective, visible transformation of the outer world. This vision is expressed in a letter written from Sado Island in 1273:

When all people throughout the land enter the one Buddha vehicle and the Wonderful Dharma alone flourishes, because the people all chant Namu- myōhō-renge-kyō as one, the wind will not thrash the branches nor the rain fall hard enough to break clods. The age will become like the reigns of [the Chinese sage kings] Yao and Shun. In the present life, inauspicious calamities will be banished, and the people will obtain the art of longevity. When the principle becomes manifest that both persons and dharmas “neither age nor die,” then each of you, behold! There can be no doubt of the sūtra’s promise of “peace and security in the present world.”

(Page 291-292)

“Original time” (honji) differs from linear time. It has no distinction of past, present, and future, and no proceeding from a deluded to an enlightened state; the Buddha and the ordinary worldling–the Buddha realm and the nine realms–are always one. This “original time” is the “actuality” of the three thousand realms in one thought-moment of the original Buddha and is accessed in the “now” (ima) of embracing the daimoku. In the single thought-moment of faith, the three thousand realms of the practitioner are those of the original Buddha. And because the person and the land are nondual, in the moment of faith and practice, the Sahā world is the eternal Buddha land. In the words of Chan-jan, a passage Nichiren quotes in this context: “You should know that one’s person and the land are [both] the single thought-moment comprising three thousand realms. Therefore, when one attains the Way, in accordance with this principle, one’s body and mind in that moment pervade the dharma realm.” (Page 291)

We have already seen that Nichiren saw the Buddha’s pure land as immanent in the present world, based on the “Fathoming the Lifespan ” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, which says, “I [Śākyamuni] am always in this Sahā world.” In the Kanjin honzon shō, Nichiren developed this idea specifically in terms of the origin teaching and the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment:

Now (ima) the Sahā world of the original time (honji) [of the Buddha’s enlightenment] is the constantly abiding pure land, freed from the three disasters and transcending [the cycle of] the four kalpas [formation, stability, decline, and extinction]. Its Buddha has not already entered nirvana in the past, nor is he yet to be born in the future. And his disciples are of the same essence. This [world] is [implicit in] the three realms, which are inherent in the three thousand realms of one’s mind.

In a manner very similar to that of the Sanjū shika no kotogaki and other medieval Tendai writings, this passage conveys the sense of the moment of enlightenment as accessing a timeless, “constantly abiding” realm in which all change is suspended. (Page 290-291)

In its most specific sense, the place of practice is understood in terms of the “ordination platform of the origin teaching” (honmon no kaidan), the third of the three great secret Dharmas entrusted by the original Śākyamuni to Bodhisattva Superior Conduct for the sake of persons in the Final Dharma age. However, as rules governing conduct, neither the ssu-fen lü precepts nor the bodhisattva precepts receive much attention in Nichiren’s thought. Although he maintained celibacy, refrained from meat-eating, and generally observed the standards of monastic conduct, he described himself as “a monk without precepts.” Like Hōnen, Nichiren saw the Final Dharma age as an age without precepts, when “there is neither keeping the precepts nor breaking them.” From a very early period, he held that “merely to believe in this [Lotus] sūtra is to uphold the precepts,” a statement based on the sūtra’s claim that one who can receive and keep the sūtra after the Buddha’s Nirvāṇa is “a keeper of the precepts.” A later writing explains this in terms of the all-inclusiveness of the daimoku:

Myōhō-renge-kyō, the heart of the origin teaching of the Lotus Sūtra, assembles in five characters all the merit of the myriad practices and good (acts] of the Buddhas of the three time periods. How could these five characters not contain the merit of [upholding] the myriad precepts? After the practitioner has once embraced this perfectly endowed, wonderful precept, it cannot be broken, even if one should try. No doubt this is why it has been called the vajra precept of the jeweled receptacle (kongō hōki kai). By embracing this precept, the Buddhas of the three time periods realized the Dharma, recompense, and manifested bodies, becoming Buddhas without beginning or end. … Because so wonderful a precept has been revealed, the precepts based on the pre-Lotus Sūtra teachings and on the trace teaching are now without the slightest merit.

[A]nother form of honzon possibly adopted during Nichiren’s lifetime is known as the “one Buddha and four attendants” (isson shishi). It probably derives from passages in Nichiren’s writings such as the following, in a letter to his follower Toki Jōnin (1216-1299), dated 1279:

You say in your letter: “I have heard before that an object of worship should be made of the Lord Śākyamuni of the origin teaching, who attained enlightenment in the remotest past, and that, as attendants, [images] should be made of the four leaders of the bodhisattvas emerged from the earth who are his original disciples. But when [is this object of worship to be established] as I have heard?”

… Now in the Final Dharma age, in accordance with the Buddha’s golden words, [an object of worship] should be made of the original Buddha and his original attendants.

And in fact, Toki Jōnin’s index of the writings, icons, and ritual implements preserved at the temple he established after Nichiren’s death includes “a standing image of Śākyamuni and also the four bodhisattvas (in a small shrine).” The presence of the four bodhisattvas signals that the central icon is the original or eternal, rather than the merely historical, Śākyamuni. The “one Buddha and four attendants” came into fairly widespread use among Nichiren’s followers as a honzon almost immediately after his death. There was also a more complex configuration consisting of the two Buddhas, Śākyamuni, and Many Jewels, seated together in the jeweled stūpa and flanked by the four bodhisattvas (ittō ryōson shishi). The earliest attested grouping was made by Jōgyōin Nichiyū (1298-1374) of the Nakayama lineage in 1335. (Page 275)