Day 21 covers all of Chapter 16, The Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata.
Having last month heard of the need to understand the Buddha’s sincere and infallible words by faith, we pause to consider how old is really, really old.
The gods, men and asuras in, the world think that I, Sakyamuni Buddha, left the palace of the Sakyas, sat at the place of enlightenment not far from the City of Gaya, and attained Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi [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. Suppose someone smashed into dust five hundred thousand billion nayuta asamkhya worlds, which were each composed of one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, and went to the east [carrying the dust with him). When he reached a world at a distance of five hundred thousand billion nayuta asamkhya worlds [from this world], he put a particle of dust on that world. Then he went on again to the east, and repeated the putting of a particle of the dust [on the world at every distance of five hundred thousand billion nayuta asamkhya worlds] until the particles of the dust were exhausted. Good men! What do you think of this? Do you think that the number of the world he went through is conceivable, countable, or not?
Maitreya Bodhisattva and others said to the Buddha:
World-Honored One! Those worlds are innumerable, uncountable, inconceivable. No Sravaka or Pratyekabuddha could count them even by his wisdom-without-asravas. We are now in the state of avaivartika, but cannot, either. World-Honoured One! Those worlds are innumerable.
Thereupon the Buddha said to the great multitude of Bodhisattvas:
Good Men! Now I will tell you clearly. Suppose those worlds, whether they were marked with the particles of the dust or not, were smashed into dust. The number of the kalpas which have elapsed since I became the Buddha is one hundred thousand billion nayuta asamkhyas larger than the number of the particles of the dust thus produced. All this time I have been living in this Saha-World, and teaching [the living beings of this world] by expounding the Dharma to them. I also have been leading and benefiting the living beings of one hundred thousand billion nayuta asamkhya worlds outside this world.
The Daily Dharma from April 1, 2016, (no fooling) offers this:
All this time I have been living in this Sahā-World, and teaching [the living beings of this world] by expounding the Dharma to them. I also have been leading and benefiting the living beings of one hundred thousand billion nayuta asaṃkhya worlds outside this world.
The Buddha gives this explanation to all those gathered to hear him in Chapter Sixteen of the Lotus Sūtra. In the parable of the physician and his children, the Buddha explains how if he were to reveal himself explicitly to those still focused on their own suffering, they would take him for granted and not believe the Wonderful Dharma he provides for him. It is by learning to recognize the Buddha living with us here today, who is helping us all awaken from our delusions, and taking on his work of benefiting all beings, that we lose our suffering and attachment, and realize the potential for enlightenment that is at the core of our true being.
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