Nichiren's Declaration at Seicho-ji

On April 28, 1253, a monk named Nichiren climbed a hill near Seicho-ji temple in Japan's Awa province and, before dawn, chanted Nam Myoho Renge Kyo aloud for the first time. Myoho renge kyo is the Japanese title of the Lotus Sutra, and nam, drawn from the Sanskrit namas, means to devote or dedicate oneself. Nichiren's claim was that the sutra's title already contains the whole of what the text teaches, so that chanting the title with sincere faith conveys the same benefit as reading, copying or memorizing its entire text, a far more demanding practice the older Buddhist schools of his day still expected of practitioners. He placed this practice inside a larger claim about time itself, the doctrine that history had entered mappo, the Latter Day of the Law, an era he and other Buddhist thinkers of the period dated from roughly 1052, in which the contemplative and meditative disciplines of earlier ages had lost their power to lead people to enlightenment. Daimoku, he taught, was the one practice suited to this degenerate age precisely because it required no scholarly training and was open to any person regardless of standing. His first sermon that same day opened with a direct attack on the popular Pure Land, or Nembutsu, teaching of calling on Amida Buddha, a challenge that cost him exile and two attempts on his life within the following decade.