Both self power (the Power of Faith and the Power of Practice) and other power (the Power of the Law and the Power of the Buddha) are necessary in this latter degenerate age in order to attain Buddhahood.

Chris: Note he is referring to Shakyamuni Buddha, the Lord of Teachings. This is not the same as his "transient status". You could say that this "Lord of Teachings" is the Well of Wisdom from which each of us draws our water. Nichiren calls him Shakyamuni, but the members of the Fuji School were not totally remiss to call the "Buddha of this well" Nichiren. Where they were remis was in calling each other names over the nomenclature rather than seeking to understand the point of the teaching -- which is that the Buddha Wisdom is available to all.

Response: Nomenclature? Nichiren called Shakyamuni Buddha of the Juryo Chapter Ri-Butsu or the very real Buddha, the Father, Teacher, and Parent of all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and beings. This Buddha's Law (teaching) is Myoho renge kyo.

Nichiren taught this reality extensively, only secondary to the the Daimoku (Namu Myoho renge kyo. SGI and the Nichiren Shoshu alter and diminish his (and the Lotus Sutra's) teachings on Shakyamuni Buddha.

Nichiren said that, because the times are severe [as predicted in the Daijuku Sutra and others], self power is not enough to attain the fruits of Buddhist practice or Buddhahood. We need, by necessity, to take refuge in the Law of Namu Myoho renge kyo (the Law to which the Eternal Buddha was originally and eternally Enlightened) by chanting it repeatedly and believing in the Original Eternal Buddha (Shakyamuni Buddha of the Juryo Chapter of the Lotus Sutra). Our lack of concentration, memory, volition, fortitude and compassion is so attenuated merely by having been born in this age, we may not by our power alone attain the same unsurpassed Enlightenment as the Original Buddha. Nichiren teaches:

"To illustrate, suppose that a person is standing at the foot of a tall embankment and is unable to ascend. And suppose that there is someone on top of the embankment who lowers a rope and says, “If you take hold of this rope, I will pull you up to the top of the embankment.” If the person at the bottom begins to doubt that the other has the strength to pull him up, or wonders if the rope is not too weak and therefore refuses to put forth his hand and grasp it, then how is he ever to get to the top of the embankment? But if he follows the instructions, puts out his hand, and takes hold of the rope, then he can climb up.

If one doubts the strength of the Buddha when he says, “I am the only person who can rescue and protect others”; if one is suspicious of the rope held out by the Lotus Sutra when its teachings declare that one can “gain entrance through faith alone”; if one fails to chant the Mystic Law which guarantees that “such a person assuredly and without doubt [will attain the p.60Buddha way],” then the Buddha’s power cannot reach one, and it will be impossible to scale the embankment of enlightenment." - Questions and Answers on Embracing the Lotus Sutra

The Buddha, by virtue of his limitless compassion, leaves for us, the people of this Latter Age, the Great Medicine of his Supreme and Perfect Enlightenment so that we may gain the very same inconceivable field of cognition as he. All we have to do is chant and believe in Namu Myoho renge kyo, the Buddha's excellent medicine. By virtue of the vast merit power of the Law and Eternal Buddha, the power to perceive and manifest Supreme and Perfect Enlightenment is transferred to us. Another way to put it is that we are perfected by the Buddha's limitless Enlightenment, mercy, and  teaching  of Namu Myoho renge kyo.

To attempt to separate The Eternal Buddha Shakyamuni's Enlightenment (Myoho renge kyo) from the Eternal Buddha Shakyamuni is as futile as attempting to separate carbon from diamond. Namu Myoho renge kyo is the essential element of the Eternal Buddha's enlightenment. Without the Eternal Buddha Shakyamuni there is no Namu Myoho renge kyo and without Namu Myoho renge kyo there is no Eternal Buddha.

There would be no proof of the unsurpassed utility and beauty of elemental carbon were it not for the diamond. There would be no proof of the supreme benefit of Namu Myoho renge kyo were it not for the Eternal Buddha Shakyamuni.

Nichiren wrote in the True Object of Worship, in the section, The Pure Land of the Eternal Buddha:

"Now, when the Eternal Buddha was revealed in the essential section of the Lotus Sutra, this world of endurance (Saha-World) became the Eternal Pure Land, indestructible even by the three calamities of conflagration, flooding, and strong winds which are said to destroy the world. It transcends the four periods of cosmic change: the kalpa of construction, continuance, destruction, and emptiness. Sakyamuni Buddha, the Lord-preacher of this pure land, has never died in the past, nor will He be born in the future. He exists forever throughout the past, present, and future. All those who receive His guidance are one with this Eternal Buddha...."

And in the section, The Form of the true Object of Worship, he writes:

"The object of worship (honzon) at the scene of this transmission of "Namu Myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo" from the Eternal Buddha to his original disciples is: Suspended in the sky above the Eternal Buddha Sakyamuni's Saha-world is a stupa of treasures, in which Buddhas Sakyamuni and Taho sit to the left and right of "Myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo". They are waited on by four bodhisattvas such as Jogyo (Superior Practice) representing the original disciples of the Eternal Buddha called out from underground. Four more bodhisattvas including Manjusri and Maitreya, take lower seats as followers, other great and minor bodhisattvas, those converted by the Buddha in the theoretical section and those who came from other lands, resemble numerous people sitting on the ground and looking up at court nobles. Also, lined up on the ground, are Buddhas in manifestation (funjin Buddhas) who gathered together from all the worlds in the universe in praise of the Buddha's preaching who represent provisional Buddhas in their respective lands.

The true object of worship (honzon) such as this was not revealed anywhere else by Sakyamuni Buddha during the more than fifty years of His preaching in this life. Though He spent eight years preaching the Lotus Sutra, the scene was limited to the preaching in the air above Mt. Sacred Eagle conveyed in eight chapters, from the fifteenth to the twenty-second chapters. During the two millenium after the death of Sakyamuni Buddha, the ages of the True Dharma and the Imitative Dharma, some worshipped Sakyamuni Buddha accompanied by Kasyapa and Ananda as described in the Hinayana sutras; others worshipped Him accompanied by such bodhisattvas as Manjusri and Samantabhadra as he appeared in quasi-Mahayana sutras, the Nirvana Sutra, and the theoretical section of the Lotus Sutra. Many wooden statues and portraits were made of Sakyamuni as He preached Hinayana or quasi-Mahayana sutras, but statues and portraits of the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha revealed in the Duration of Life of the Buddha" chapter of the Lotus Sutra were never made. Now in the beginning of the Latter Age of the Decadent Dharma, is it not the time that such statues and portraits are made?"