Day 5 begins Chapter 3, A Parable

Sariputra is happy to learn he will become a Buddha but he wants everyone to know that he felt betrayed:

I walked about mountains and valleys,
Or sat under a tree in a forest, thinking this over.
I reproached myself with a deep sigh:
‘Why was I deceived?
We also are sons of the Buddha
[Just as the Bodhisattvas are].
We entered the same [ world]
[Of the] Dharma-without-asravas.
But we shall not be able to expound
Unsurpassed enlightenment in the future.
We are in the same [ world of the] Dharma.
But we shall not be given
The golden body with the thirty-two marks,
The ten powers, and the emancipations [of the Buddha].
We are deprived of the hope
To have the eighty wonderful marks,
The eighteen unique properties
And the other merits [of the Buddha].”

But Sakyamuni is having none of it:

Now I will tell you in the presence of this great multitude including gods, men, sramanas, and brahmanas. Under two billion Buddhas in the past, I always taught you in order to cause you to attain unsurpassed enlightenment. You studied under me in the long night. I led you with expedients. Therefore, you have your present life under me.

Sariputra! I caused you to aspire for the enlightenment of the Buddha in your previous existence. You forgot all this, and thought that you had already attained extinction. In order to cause you to remember the Way you practiced under your original vow, I now expound to the Sravakas this sutra of the Great Vehicle called the “Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, the Dharma for Bodhisattvas, the Dharma Upheld by the Buddhas.”

If only we could remember.