At the beginning of Chapter 16, “The Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata,” Śākyamuni Buddha asks his listeners three times to pledge their faithful reliance on what he is about to teach. Maitreya and the others assembled pronounce their firm conviction in response. Having completed this cautious procedure, the Buddha tells them:

Listen to me attentively! I will tell you about my hidden core and supernatural powers. The gods, men and asuras in the world think that I, Śākyamuni Buddha, left the palace of the Śākyas, sat at the place of enlightenment not far from the City of Gayā, and attained Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi forty and odd years ago. To tell the truth, good men, it is many hundreds of thousands of billions of nayutas of kalpas since I became the Buddha.

This means: “You all think that Śākyamuni left the Śākya palace, practiced hard, and achieved buddhahood forty-odd years ago near Gayā. But you’re wrong. An infinite amount of time has passed since I became a Buddha.” Thus Śākyamuni Buddha revealed that he had not achieved buddhahood recently, but is the Eternal Buddha who achieved buddhahood in the infinite past. This is referred to as “opening the near to reveal the far,” in Japanese kaigon-kennon, or “opening the traces to reveal the origin,” in Japanese kaishaku-kenpon. This means opening a temporary figure of the Buddha achieving buddhahood recently, and manifesting a original figure of the Buddha achieving buddhahood in the infinite past. In the Japanese characters, kai, is opening, ken, is manifesting.