Nichiren
1222-1282 · East Asian Buddhism · Prominent
Nichiren was a Japanese monk who told his country's rulers that the earthquakes, famine and threat of invasion they faced were punishment for false teaching, and he was exiled for saying so. Only the Lotus Sutra holds the whole truth, he taught, and chanting its title is the one practice fit for the Latter Day of the Law, the degenerate age he believed had arrived. An ordinary person becomes a Buddha in this very body.
Signature
The position Nichiren is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Conviction
- leans Certain
- End of Things
- Age of Decline / Transfiguration
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (85 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (95 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (86 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Nichiren refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Confessional State
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Other
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Age of Decline / Transfiguration
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Agency
- Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Eschatological / Kairotic
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Language
- Sacred Speech
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Sacred Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Karmic Cycle
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Innate Good
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?