For today’s pass through The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings I will quote from Nikkyō Niwano’s Buddhism for Today. This book, which I will be quoting from extensively in the future, offers a commentary on the full Three-Fold Lotus Sutra.

On this first of the three sutras, Nikkyō Niwano writes:

Of the three sutras mentioned above, the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings contains the sermon Sakyamuni delivered on the Vulture Peak (Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa) immediately before preaching the Lotus Sutra. The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, which is inseparable from the Lotus Sutra, is regarded as the introduction to the latter. This is because in the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings Sakyamuni states the reasons for the aims and the order of his preaching during the past forty years and also says that he has not yet manifested the truth. This does not mean that so far he had preached untruth but that he had not yet revealed the final truth, although all of his previous sermons were true. In other words, he had not yet manifested the full profundity of his teaching, being afraid that people would not be able to grasp it because their understanding and faith were not sufficiently developed. Therefore he made an important promise concerning his next sermon: “I am now to reveal the real truth.” His next sermon was the Lotus Sutra. For this reason, if we do not read the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings we cannot realize clearly either the position of the Lotus Sutra among all the sermons that Sakyamuni preached during his lifetime or the true sacredness of the Lotus Sutra.