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)

Śākyamuni is lord of this threefold world; all lesser rulers hold their territories in fief from him. With this concept of the Buddha, Nichiren asserted the superior authority of the Lotus Sūtra over that of worldly rule. Śākyamuni also presides over a pure land, the Pure Land of Eagle Peak (ryōzenjōdo), and Nichiren often assured his followers that their deceased relatives were with Śākyamuni there. In short, Nichiren’s concept of the object of worship not only posits a Buddha who encompasses all things, but itself attempts to encompass all views of the Buddha. (Page 274)

Nichiren’s writings as a whole … present a spectrum of concepts of the Buddha, drawing on the implications, not only of the Dharma body, but of the recompense and manifested bodies as well. Nichiren’s Buddha is at once both immanent and transcendent. He is “our blood and flesh”; his practices and resulting virtues are “our bones and marrow.” Yet at the same time, he is “parent, teacher, and sovereign” to all beings of this, the Sahā world. In this connection, Nichiren also stressed that Śākyamuni was only the Buddha who, out of compassion for its beings, had actually appeared in this world—a frequent point in Nichiren’s criticism of devotion to Amida. (Page 274)