If you don't accept the Lotus Sutra, then how can you be a Nichiren Buddhist? Was Nichiren simply using poetic license in basing his entire writings on the Lotus Sutra or did he have a grand plan to eventually dump it, once his followers were loyal? If that is true, he never got around to saying so. Did he entrust this job to the subsequent high priests of Taisekiji, via Nikko, who also never bothered to mention it? Did he only pass it on to his handpicked disciples in the manner of Tibetan lamaism or Zen transmission? But this heresy wasn't revealed until Nichi-u in the 15th Century. It requires suspending acceptance of Nichiren's works as he wrote them. It requires the re-interpretation and re-invention by later monks of the Fuji-ha. And it requires great trust in the veracity and abilities of the high priests of Taisekiji a priori, by their perverse reckoning, all other Nichiren priests have become heretics.
If you discard the Lotus Sutra and teach that Shakyamuni has no connection to it, then you have to discard your whole faith in Nichiren. Taisekiji is unraveling. It was a backwater sect of tiny proportions until the Gakkai joined forces with it after WW2. It has enjoyed fifty years of prosperity but it will soon go back to its former status, Meanwhile, Nichiren's teachings and the Lotus Sutra will endure, beyond all their revisionism and bizarre interpretations.
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