Day 5 begins Chapter 3, A Parable.

Last month I discussed the Buddha’s explanation to Sariputra that “I always taught you in order to cause you to attain unsurpassed enlightenment.” And, more important to today’s discussion, “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.’ ”

I will confess to a certain perplexity at the Buddha’s description of Sariputra in the far, far distant future as a Buddha called Flower-Light.

Sariputra! Although the world in which he appears will not be an evil one, that Buddha will expound the teaching of the Three Vehicles according to his original vow. The kalpa in which he appears will be called Great-Treasure-Adornment. Why will it be called Great-Treasure-Adornment? It is because in that world Bodhisattvas will be regarded as great treasures. The number of the Bodhisattvas [in that world] will be countless, inconceivable, beyond any mathematical calculation, beyond inference by any parable or simile. No one will know the number except the Buddha who has the power of wisdom. When those Bodhisattvas wish to go somewhere, jeweled flowers will receive their feet and carry them. Those Bodhisattvas will not have just begun to aspire for enlightenment. A long time before that they will have already planted the roots of virtue, performed the brahma practices under many hundreds of thousands of billions of Buddhas, received the praises of the Buddhas, studied the wisdom of the Buddhas, obtained great supernatural powers, and understood all the teachings of the Buddhas. They will be upright, honest, and resolute in mind. The world of that Buddha will be filled with such Bodhisattvas.

Why does the Buddha say Flower-Light Buddha “will expound the teaching of the Three Vehicles according to his original vow”? Why would he not teach the Lotus Sutra? And why would the world of this Sravaka-turned-Buddha be set up as a world where Bodhisattvas will be regarded as great treasures? This appears to be a prediction unique to Sariputra. Why?