We cannot know for certain, but the story of Sadāparibhūta [Never-Despising Bodhisattva] may reflect the experience of the Lotus Sūtra’s compilers in encountering anger and contempt from mainstream Buddhist monastics. The Sanskrit name Sadāparibhūta actually means “Always Despised.” As an ordinary monk without any particular accomplishments, Sadāparibhūta had no obvious authority for delivering predictions of future buddhahood, and monastics who looked askance at the nascent Mahāyāna movement may have found his words presumptuous and offensive. Hence, he was “always despised.” Dharmaraksa, who first rendered the Lotus Sūtra into Chinese, translated the bodhisattva’s name in this way. But Kumārajīva instead adopted “Never Despising,” shifting emphasis to the bodhisattva’s attitude of reverence for all. As Nichiren expresses it: “In the past, the bodhisattva Sadāparibhūta carried out the practice of veneration, saying that all beings have the buddha nature; that if they embrace the Lotus Sūtra, they are certain to attain buddhahood; and that to slight another is to slight the Buddha himself. He bowed even to those who did not embrace the Lotus Sūtra, because they too had the buddha nature and might someday accept the sūtra.”