Day 10 concludes Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, and opens Chapter 7, The Parable of a Magic City.
Having last month covered the prediction of future Buddhahood for Great Kātyāyana in prose, we continue in gāthās.
Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:
Bhikṣus!
Listen with one mind!
What I say
Is true, not false.This Kātyāyana
Will make
Wonderful offerings
To the Buddhas.After the extinction of each of the Buddhas,
He will erect a stūpa of the seven treasures,
And offer flowers and incense to the śarīras
[Of the Buddha enshrined in the stūpa].On the final stage of his physical existence,
He will obtain the wisdom of the Buddha
And attain perfect enlightenment.
His world will be pure.
He will save many billions of living beings.
All living beings
In the worlds of the ten quarters
Will make offerings to him.No light will surpass
The light of that Buddha.
The name of that Buddha will be
Jambu[nada]-Gold-Light.Innumerable Bodhisattvas and Śrāvakas
Will live in his world, and adorn that world.
They will have already eliminated
The bonds of existence.
My 32 Days of the Lotus Sūtra blogging has evolved from a daily effort to say something about the entire day’s reading to a forced march through the day, moving incrementally through the 32nd portion of the Sūtra. My original concept was to find something new each day, but that presupposed something new would appear. My current march offers an opportunity to comment on smaller segments. But even that has problems and today is a good example. I had little to say last month on this portion in prose and even less to say this month about the gāthās. When I started reading today’s portion I knew I would have this trouble. In fact, that some days I just don’t have something worth saying, is probably the reason I “forgot” to post this. Fortunately, I can back-date posts and make it appear that this fascinating contribution was originally published at 6:48 pm on June 24, rather than the reality of 9:10 am on June 25.