Nichiren Daishonin was born on February 16, 1222, at the beginning of the Latter Day of the Law to fulfill Shakyamuni's prophesy that this Buddha would appear and teach the Great Pure Law to enable all people to attain enlightenment. The date of the Daishonin's birth has a mystic connection with Shakyamuni's Buddhism because Shakyamuni died on February 15. This indicates that the Daishonin's Buddhism began at the point where the power of Shakyamuni's Buddhism ceased. http://www.buddhistcentre.net/ http://www.buddhistcentre.org/

When the autumn evening draws on, lonesomely, the surroundings of the thatched hermitage are bedewed, and the spiders' webs hanging from the eaves are transformed into garlands of jewels. Noiselessly, deeply-tinged maple leaves come floating on the water that pours from the bamboo pipes, and the water, colored in pattern, seems to stream forth from the fountain of Tatsuta where the Brocade weaving Lady is said to abide. Behind the hermitage, the steep peaks rear their heads aloft, where on the slopes the trees bear the fruits of '' the Unique Truth,'' and the singing crickets are heard among the branches. In front, two clear rivulets are making music like drums and flutes, and the pools reflect the moonlight of '' reality as it is.'' When the limitless sky of '' the true entity '' is cloudless and the moon shines bright, it seems as if the '' darkness of the shrouding delusion '' is gone forever.

In the hermitage thus situated, throughout the day we converse, and discuss the truths of the Unique Scripture, while in the evening and late into the night is heard the gentle murmur of the recitation of passages from the sacred text. Thus, we deem that to this place has been transferred Eagle Peak, where Lord Shakymuni lived.-

"The ultimate principle originally had no name. But when the sage was pondering this principle as he was giving names to all things, he realized that this principle was the single mystic law of the simultaneity of cause and effect. He named this law Myoho-Renge. This single law of Myoho-Renge encompasses without flaw or provision all phenomena within the ten worlds and the three thousand realms. One who practices this law simultaneously engenders within himself the causes and effects of the Buddha. When the sage adopted this law as his master, his practice awakened him to the path of the Buddha, as a result of which he simultaneously experienced the mystic cause and the mystic effect. In this way, he became a Buddha fully endowed with mystic enlightenment." (Gosho, p. 695)

Ultimately, all phenomena are contained within one's life, down to the last particle of dust. The nine mountains and the eight seas are encompassed by one's body; the sun, moon and myriad stars are contained within one's mind. However, [common mortals do not perceive this,] just as the blind do not see images reflected in a mirror or as an infant fears neither flood nor fire.

During the first forty and more years of his teaching life, the Buddha did not make clear the doctrine of the lotus of unsurpassed enlightenment that reveals the replacement of the three vehicles with the one vehicle. That is why the Sutra of Infinite Meaning says: "They will in the end never gain unsurpassed enlightenment," by which it means that the lotus of the replacement of the three vehicles with the one vehicle, which the Buddha revealed in the theoretical teaching, was never expounded in the period before the preaching of the Lotus Sutra. Much less, then, did he reveal the lotus of the entity, that of "opening the near and revealing the distant," of "the true identity that is difficult to conceive," of "the fusion of reality and wisdom," and of "originally inherent and not created." How could Miroku and the others, who were taught and converted by the Buddha in his transient status, have had any understanding of such things.