The Shingon teaching of Eternal Buddha as Dharmakaya [single bodied eternal truth principle] rather than triple bodied flesh and blood Buddha, permeates some Nichiren sects:
“I think that it is silly to view the Eternal Shayamuni Buddha as a personage that exists somewhere in the universe. Watson writes of the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha in his Introduction chapter in his translation of the LS: “as an ever-abiding principle of truth and compassion that exists everywhere and within all beings.” – “Nichiren" Buddhist
Nichiren however teaches:
"But once the principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life had been expounded, then the way was opened for all to attain Buddhahood, so what more could be lacking? Among those who have attained Buddhahood, there are none whose mouths are mute or whose limbs are paralyzed [and their words and gestures already manifest Buddhahood], so why would they need mudras or mantras?
Furthermore, most of the sutras speak of the Buddha as having gained correct enlightenment for the first time in India, and do not make clear that there is the eternal Buddha since time without beginning who is endowed with the three bodies. If this erroneous view, that originally there was no Buddha but that now he exists, is accepted, then the Thus Come One Mahāvairochana becomes a mere name that has no reality.
But in the “Life Span” chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the truth of the matter is clearly explained. Thus we see that Shakyamuni Buddha is like the single moon in the sky, while the other Buddhas and bodhisattvas are like the reflection of the moon floating in ten thousand different bodies of water. But I will not go into the details of the matter here." -- On the Relative Superiority of the Lotus Sutra and the True Word Teachings
Then, Nichiren teaches that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the eternal Buddha possesses a body:
"Finally, we come to the Nembutsu, which represents the doctrine in use by the Pure Land school. This doctrine is among the most provisional of all the provisional teachings, comparable to a dream seen within a dream. It is a name without a reality. And because there is no reality to it, it could not possibly fulfill the wishes of all living beings for rebirth in the Pure Land. The Buddha of which it speaks is Amida Buddha, who is conditioned in nature and impermanent. How, then, could he surpass a principle that is eternal and imperishable?
Therefore the Great Teacher Kompon [Dengyō] of our country states in his commentary, “The Buddha of the reward body, which exists depending on causes and conditions, represents a provisional result obtained in a dream, while the Buddha eternally endowed with the three bodies represents the true Buddha from the time before enlightenment.” Thus with these words he warns against belief in Amida Buddha, a Buddha who is conditioned and impermanent, and rejects him.
And since this Amida Buddha upon whom the Pure Land proponents rely is a name without a reality, something existing in name only, without any body, then though they may expound in great detail the doctrines that promise rebirth in the Pure Land, preaching them so that they sound as lofty as Mount Sumeru or as deep as the great ocean, such doctrines are all utterly useless." -- Questions and Answers on the Various Schools
and lastly and most importantly:
"The Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai Chih-che gave three reasons for Shakyamuni’s stopping the bodhisattvas, and three more for his summoning the Bodhisattvas of the Earth. Essentially, the great bodhisattvas taught by the Buddha in his transient status and the great bodhisattvas who gathered from the other worlds were not qualified to inherit the “Life Span” chapter that reveals the eternal Buddha’s inner truth. At the dawn of the Latter Day evil people who slander the correct teaching would fill the land, so Shakyamuni Buddha rejected the pledge of these bodhisattvas and instead summoned the multitude of great bodhisattvas from beneath the earth. He entrusted them with the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo, the heart of the “Life Span” chapter, for the enlightenment of all beings in the land of Jambudvīpa. The bodhisattvas taught by the Buddha in his transient status were also unqualified because they had not been the disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha since the time he had first set his mind on and attained enlightenment in the remote past. The Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai states, “[The Buddha said of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth,] ‘These are my disciples, destined to propagate my Law.’” Miao-lo says, “The children propagate the Law of the father, and this benefits the world.” The Supplement to “The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra” states, “The Law embodied therein [in the Lotus Sutra] is the Law that was realized countless kalpas in the past, and therefore it was entrusted to persons who had been the Buddha’s disciples from countless kalpas in the past.” -- True Object of Worship
Nichiren writes extensively on some of the myriad meanings of Myoho.
"The passage indicates that they requested to hear a doctrine such as they had not heard in the previous more than forty years, one that differed from the four flavors and the three teachings. With regard to the part “[they] wish to hear the teaching of perfect endowment,” it may be noted that the Nirvana Sutra states, “Sad (Myo) indicates perfect endowment.” The Profound Meaning of the Four Mahayana Treatises states, “Sad connotes six. In India the number six implies perfect endowment.” In his commentary Chi-tsang writes, “Sad is translated as perfect endowment.” In the eighth volume of his Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra T’ien-t’ai remarks, “Sad is a Sanskrit word, which is translated as myō, or wonderful.” Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna, in the heart of his thousand-volume Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, comments, “Sad signifies six.” Nāgārjuna was thirteenth in the lineage of the Buddha’s successors, the founder of the True Word, Flower Garland, and the other schools, a great sage of the first stage of development, and the person whose true identity was the Thus Come One Dharma Clouds Freedom King.
The characters Myoho-renge-kyo are Chinese. In India, the Lotus Sutra is called Saddharma-pundarīka-sūtra. The following is the mantra concerning the heart of the Lotus Sutra composed by the Tripitaka Master Shan-wu-wei:
namah samanta-buddhānām
om a ā am ah
sarva-buddha-jna-sākshebhyah
gagana-sambhavālakshani
saddharma-pundarīka-sūtra
jah hūm bam hoh vajrārakshaman
hūm svāhā
Hail to all the Buddhas! Three-bodied Thus Come Ones! Open the door to, show me, cause me to awaken to, and to enter into the wisdom and insight of all the Buddhas. You who are like space and who have freed yourself from form! Oh, Sutra of the White Lotus of the Correct Law! Cause me to enter into, to be everywhere within, to dwell in, and to rejoice in you. Oh, Adamantine Protector! Oh, empty, aspect-free, and desire-free sutra!
This mantra, which expresses the heart of the Lotus Sutra, was found in the iron tower in southern India. In this mantra, saddharma means “correct (Myo) Law (Ho).” Sad means correct. Correct is the same as myō [wonderful]; myō is the same as correct. Hence the Lotus Sutra of the Correct Law and the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law. And when the two characters for namu are prefixed to Myoho-renge-kyo, or the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law, we have the formula Namu-myoho-renge-kyo.
Myō means perfect endowment. Six refers to the six pāramitās representing all the ten thousand practices. When people ask to hear the teaching of perfect endowment, they are asking how they may gain the perfect endowment of the six pāramitās and ten thousand practices of the bodhisattvas. In the phrase “perfect endowment,” endowment refers to the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, while perfect means that, since there is mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, then any one world contains all the other worlds, indicating that this is “perfect.” The Lotus Sutra is a single work consisting of eight volumes, twenty-eight chapters, and 69,384 characters. Each and every character is endowed with the character myō, each being a Buddha who has the thirty-two features and eighty characteristics. Each of the Ten Worlds manifests its own Buddhahood. As Miao-lo writes, “Since even Buddhahood is present in all living beings, then all the other worlds are of course present, too.”
The Buddha replied to the request of his listeners by saying that “the Buddhas wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings.” The term “all living beings” here refers to Shāriputra, and it also refers to icchantikas, persons of incorrigible disbelief. It also refers to the nine worlds. Thus the Buddha fulfilled his words, “Living beings are numberless. I vow to save them all,” when he declares, “At the start I took a vow, hoping to make all persons equal to me, without any distinction between us, and what I long ago hoped for has now been fulfilled.”
All the great bodhisattvas, heavenly beings, and others, when they had heard the doctrine of the Buddha and comprehended it, said, “Since times past often we have heard the World-Honored One’s preaching, but we have never heard this kind of profound, wonderful, and superior Law.”
The Great Teacher Dengyō comments: “‘Since times past often we have heard the World-Honored One’s preaching’ refers to the fact that they had heard him preach the great doctrines of the Flower Garland Sutra and other sutras in the time previous to the preaching of the Lotus Sutra. ‘We have never heard this kind of profound, wonderful, and superior Law’ means that they had never heard the teaching of the one vehicle of Buddhahood propounded in the Lotus Sutra.”
They understood, that is, that none of the previous Mahayana sutras—which are as numerous as the sands of the Ganges and include those of the Flower Garland, Correct and Equal, and Wisdom periods, such as the Profound Secrets and Mahāvairochana sutras—had ever made clear the great principle of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, the core of the Buddha’s lifetime teachings. Nor had they clarified the bone and marrow of those teachings, the doctrines that persons of the two vehicles can attain Buddhahood and that the Buddha attained enlightenment in the remote past."
and from The Entity of the Mystic Law, we read:
Question: How do we know that these two interpretations can be used and that the title can be taken as both entity and metaphor? When the Great Teacher Nan-yüeh explained the five characters Myoho-renge-kyo, he said, “Myō indicates that all living beings are myō, or mystic. Hō indicates that all living beings are hō, or the Law. Renge, or lotus, is a metaphor that is employed here.” It would seem, then, would it not, that both Nan-yüeh and T’ien-t’ai interpreted the lotus as a metaphor?
Answer: Nan-yüeh’s interpretation is like that of T’ien-t’ai. While it is not entirely clear from the sutras that there can be two interpretations, that is, taking the lotus as both entity and metaphor, Nan-yüeh and T’ien-t’ai discerned these two meanings through the treatises of Vasubandhu and Nāgārjuna.
That is to say, in The Treatise on the Lotus Sutra we read: “The words Myoho-renge have two meanings. First, they signify the lotus that appears on the surface of the water. . . . The way in which the lotus emerges from the muddy water is used as a metaphor to explain that, when the Thus Come One joins the multitude of listeners, seats himself on a lotus in the same manner as the various bodhisattvas, and expounds on the unsurpassed wisdom of the Thus Come One and on the enlightened state of purity, the various voice-hearers, hearing this, are able to obtain the secret storehouse of the Thus Come One. Second, the words Myoho-renge signify the lotus opening up. [This is a metaphor explaining that] ordinary beings, though exposed to the Mahayana teachings, are timid and fearful in mind and incapable of taking faith in them. Therefore, the Thus Come One ‘opens’ or reveals his Dharma body in its purity and wonder, awakening in them the mind of faith.”
In this passage, the word “various” in the phrase “the various bodhisattvas” refers to the fact that the bodhisattvas of both the Mahayana and Hinayana teachings, upon arriving on the scene when the Lotus Sutra is preached, are able, for the first time, to understand the lotus of the Buddha. This is clear from the above passage in Treatise on the Lotus Sutra. Therefore, we know that the statement that the bodhisattvas had already gained entrance [to enlightenment] through the various sutras was no more than an expedient.
T’ien-t’ai explains this passage of Treatise on the Lotus Sutra as follows: “If we are to explain the meaning of the treatise, we would say that, when the Thus Come One causes ordinary beings to see the Dharma body in its purity and wonder, he is showing them the lotus that opens through a mystic cause. And when the Thus Come One enters the multitude of listeners and seats himself on a lotus, he is indicating that the land produced as a mystic reward is itself the lotus.”
Again, when T’ien-t’ai wishes to give a detailed explanation of the dual interpretation of the lotus as both entity and metaphor, he quotes the passage in the Great Collection Sutra that reads, “I now bow in reverence before the lotus of the Buddha,” and the passage in Treatise on the Lotus Sutra that has just been quoted, to support his argument. As he explains: “According to the Great Collection Sutra, the lotus is both the cause and the effect of religious practice. When the bodhisattvas seat themselves on the lotus, this is the lotus of the cause. But the lotus of the Buddha that one bows before in reverence is the lotus of the effect. Or, according to Treatise on the Lotus Sutra, the land surrounding one is the lotus. That is, the bodhisattvas, by practicing the Law of the lotus, are as a result able to obtain the land of the lotus. Thus we should understand that the objective realm and the subjective being who depends upon it, the cause [that is the bodhisattva] and the effect [that is the Buddha], are all the Law of the renge, or lotus. Therefore, what need is there to employ metaphors? But because dull-witted people cannot understand the lotus of the essential nature of phenomena, an ordinary lotus is introduced as a metaphor to assist them. What harm is there in that?”
And elsewhere he says, “If we do not use a lotus, then what are we to p.426employ as a metaphor for all the various teachings that have been described above? It is because the Law and the metaphor are expounded side by side that we refer to them by the phrase Myoho-renge.”
Next, we come to Great Perfection of Wisdom by Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna, which states, “The lotus represents both the Law itself and a metaphor for it.” The Great Teacher Dengyō, explaining the above passages from the treatises of Vasubandhu and Nāgārjuna, writes as follows: “The passage in Treatise on the Lotus Sutra says that the lotus of what is called Myoho-renge-kyo has two meanings. It does not say that an ordinary lotus has two meanings. On the whole, what is admirable here is the fact that the Law and the metaphor that is used for it resemble each other. If they did not resemble each other, then how could the metaphor help people understand the meaning? That is why Great Perfection of Wisdom says that the lotus is both the Law itself and a metaphor for it. A single mind, the entity of Myoho-renge, simultaneously brings to maturity both the blossom of cause and the calyx of effect. This concept is difficult to understand, but through the use of a metaphor, it can be made easy to understand. The teaching that fully sets forth this principle is called Myoho-renge-kyo.”
These passages from the treatises and their explanations quoted here will make the matter clear, and one should therefore examine them carefully. Nothing is hidden or held back, and hence the dual explanations of the lotus as both entity and metaphor are fully expounded.
In the final analysis, the meaning of the Lotus Sutra is that the metaphor is none other than the entity of the Law and that the entity of the Law is none other than the metaphor. That is why the Great Teacher Dengyō in his commentary says: “The Lotus Sutra contains a great many metaphors and parables. However, when it comes to the major parables, we find that there are seven of them. These seven parables are none other than the entity of the Law, and the entity of the Law is none other than these metaphors and parables. Therefore, there is no entity of the Law outside of the metaphors and parables, and there are no metaphors and parables outside of the entity of the Law. In other words, the entity of the Law refers to the entity of the truth of the essential nature of phenomena, while the metaphors and parables represent the entity of the Mystic Law as manifested in actual phenomena. The manifestations are none other than the entity of the truth, and the entity of the truth is none other than the manifestations. Therefore, it can be said that the Law and its metaphors constitute a single entity. This is why the passages from the treatises and the Annotations by the Tendai school all explain the lotus as both the Law itself and a metaphor for it.”
This passage is perfectly clear in meaning, and therefore I need say nothing further."
In another writing, Nichiren teaches:
"The three bodies are as follows: first, the Dharma body of a Thus Come One; second, the reward body of a Thus Come One; and third, the manifested body of a Thus Come One. These three types of bodies of a Thus Come One are invariably possessed by all Buddhas. If we use the moon as an illustration, we may say that the moon itself is comparable to the Dharma body, its light to the reward body, and its reflection to the manifested body. Just as a single moon has these three different aspects, so a single Buddha possesses the virtues of these three different bodies." - Nichiren
and in another writing:
"The word “wonderful” in the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law has two meanings. One is comparative myō, or wonderful, which indicates refuting the rough teachings and revealing the wonderful teaching. The other is absolute myō, which indicates opening up the rough teachings and merging them in the wonderful teaching." - Nichiren
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