[The concept of human capacity], often invoked in the context of mappō discourse, refers to innate receptivity or capacity for achieving salvation through a particular teaching. “Capacity” forms an element central to the exclusive nenbutsu teaching of Honen, who argued that the superiority of a teaching depends not on its depth of philosophical content but on whether or not people can actually practice it; hence he maintained that the nenbutsu, readily accessible even to those of limited capacity who predominate in this evil age, is superior. For Nichiren, as for Hōnen, “capacity” was to be understood in universal terms; being advocates of exclusive practices, neither man focused on individual differences in receptivity but maintained that all persons can be saved through a single teaching. However, Nichiren did not base his argument for the superiority of the Lotus Sūtra solely on ease of practice. The Lotus Sūtra is the seed of Buddhahood; that is, encountering the Lotus Sūtra is the condition that enables salvation. Nichiren described the people of the Final Dharma age as “not yet having good [roots]” (honmi uzen), that is, without prior connection to the Lotus Sūtra that would ensure their enlightenment. Thus, persons of this age should, he said, all be instructed in the Lotus Sūtra; whether they accept it or slander it, they will in either case receive the seed of Buddhahood and eventually become Buddhas. Nichiren vehemently rejected the position of exclusive nenbutsu adherents, that the Lotus should be set aside as too profound for the benighted people of the Final Dharma age. He maintained, with Chan-jan, that “the more true the teaching, the lower the stage [of the practitioners it can bring to enlightenment].” It was in part to stress the ability of the Lotus to save even the lowly and sinful that Nichiren would refer to himself, later in life, as “the son of lowly people” and born of a caṇḍāla family.” (Page 253)

Following the traditional T’ien-t’ai classificatory schema of the five periods and eight teachings (goji hakkyō), Nichiren assigned the Lotus Sūtra to the last period of the Buddha’s preaching life and asserted that all other, earlier sūtras are provisional (gon) while the Lotus alone is true (jitsu). For textual support, he often cited the passage from the Wu-liang-i Ching (Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings), the introductory scripture to the Lotus, which states: “In these forty years and more, I [Śākyamuni] have not yet revealed the truth,” and another from the Lotus itself: “Among all those [sūtras] I [Śākyamuni] have preached, now preach, or will preach, this Lotus Sūtra is the hardest to believe, the hardest to understand.” Nichiren, like other T’ien-t’ai/Tendai scholars before him, saw the superiority of the Lotus Sūtra as lying in two teachings unique to this scripture and identified respectively with the trace and origin teachings—specifically, with the second chapter (“Skillful Means”) and the sixteenth (“Fathoming the Lifespan of the Tathāgata”). The first is that persons of the two vehicles can attain Buddhahood (nijō sabutsu). Since those practicing the two vehicles of the Śrāvaka and the Pratyekabuddha are followers of the Hinayāna path, a number of Mahāyāna sūtras deny their capacity for the Buddhahood. The Lotus Sūtra’s pronouncement that they can become Buddhas was taken as representing the potential for the Buddhahood of all beings. Second is the revelation of the Buddha’s enlightenment in the remote past (kuonjitsujō). According to the sūtra, all other Buddhas are merely emanations or manifestations of Śākyamuni. Moreover, Śākyamuni is said to have dis played himself as entering final nirvāṇa as a “skillful means” to arouse people’s longing for his teaching, but in reality, he is “always here in this Sahā world.” As noted before, the Buddha’s enlightenment in the far distant past was also widely understood in Nichiren’s time to mean that the Buddha is eternal and constantly abides in this world. Like other Tendai thinkers of his day, Nichiren also associated these two teachings respectively with “principle” (ri) and “actuality” (ji). (Page 253-253)

In his Izu writings, Nichiren began to refer to himself as the gyōja— practitioner or votary—of the Lotus Sūtra. In contrast to the more conventional term jikyōsha, one who “holds” the sūtra and recites it as his or her personal practice, gyōja for Nichiren meant one who lived the sūtra through one’s actions, experiencing in one’s own person the great trials that it predicts. His later writings would call this “reading with the body” (shikidoku). Having been exiled, as he saw it, for the sūtra’s sake, Nichiren rejoiced that even when not specifically reciting it, he was in effect now practicing the sūtra continuously, walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, throughout all the hours of the day and night. (Page 252)

Nichiren’s writings during the Izu exile show the emergence of several new elements in his thought. One is a deepened sense of personal connection between himself and the Lotus Sūtra. The sūtra speaks of trials and difficulties that will attend its practice and propagation in the evil age after the Buddha’s nirvāṇa. “Hatred and jealousy toward this sūtra abound even during the Buddha’s lifetime; how much more so after his nirvāṇa!” Such passages, cast in the form of predictions uttered by the Buddha or great bodhisattvas, probably served to give meaning to the opposition from established Buddhist schools encountered by the Mahāyāna community that had compiled the sūtra. In exile, Nichiren began to read them as speaking specifically to his own circumstances and expressed delight that he was able to live in his own person the persecutions predicted in the sūtra. “The devotees (jikyōsha) of the Lotus Sūtra in Japan have not yet experienced these scriptural passages. I alone have read them. This is the meaning [of the statement]: ‘We do not value bodily life but cherish only the unexcelled way.’ ” (Page 251-252)