Day 13 covers all of Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples.

Last month I discussed what a Buddha world would look like and used Good-Purity, where Purna would preside as the Buddha Dharma-Brightness in the kalpa called Treasure-Brightness.

This time through I stumbled over this line, wondering at the meaning of it:

He will perform the Way of Bodhisattvas step by step for innumerable, asamkhya kalpas, and then attain Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi in this world.

This world as in Saha World?

The gathas section doesn’t repeat that detail:

In the future also he will make offerings
To innumerable Buddhas, protect their right teachings,
Help them propagate their teachings,
And purify their worlds.

He will always fearlessly expound the Dharma
With expedients.
He will save countless living beings
And cause them to have the knowledge of all things.

He will make offerings to many Tathagatas
And protect the treasure-store of the Dharma.
After that he will be able to become a Buddha
Called Dharma-Brightness.

But a translation used by Soka Gakkai suggests the same idea:

Little by little he will become fully endowed with the way of the bodhisattva, and when immeasurable asamkhya kalpas have passed, here in the land where he is dwelling he will attain supreme perfect enlightenment.

Does this mean anything?

Purna, like Sariputra, doesn’t ask for some explicit promise he will become a Buddha. But unlike Sariputra, who reveals his feelings of betrayal before he learned of the use of expedients, Purna simply accepts with faith the teachings he has heard:

The World-Honored One is extraordinary. What he does is exceptional. He expounds the Dharma with expedients by his insight according to the various natures of all living beings of the world, and saves them from various attachments. The merits of the Buddha are beyond the expression of our words. Only the Buddha, only the World-Honored One, knows the wishes we have deep in our minds.’

Contrast that with the “the twelve hundred Arhats, who had already obtained freedom of mind”:

We have never been so joyful before. How glad we shall be if we are assured of our future Buddhahood by the World-Honored One just as the other great disciples were!