Day 17 covers all of Chapter 12, Devadatta, and opens Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra.

Having last month concluded Chapter 12, Devadatta, we begin Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra, and hear Medicine-King Bodhisattva-mahāsattva and Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva-mahāsattva, along with Arhats and Śrāvakas, vow to uphold the Lotus Sūtra.

Thereupon Medicine-King Bodhisattva-mahāsattva and Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva-mahāsattva, together with their twenty-thousand attendants who were also Bodhisattvas, vowed to the Buddha:

“World-Honored One, do not worry! We will keep, read, recite and expound this sūtra after your extinction. The living beings in the evil world after [your extinction] will have less roots of good, more arrogance, more greed for offerings of worldly things, and more roots of evil. It will be difficult to teach them because they will go away from emancipation. But we will patiently read, recite, keep, expound and copy this sūtra, and make various offerings to it. We will not spare even our lives [in doing all this].”

At that time there were five hundred Arhats in this congregation. They had already been assured of their future attainment [of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. They said to the Buddha, “World-Honored One! We also vow to expound this sūtra [but we will expound it] in some other worlds [rather than in this Sahā-World].”

There were also eight thousand Śrāvakas some of whom had something more to learn while others had nothing more to learn. They had already been assured of their future attainment [of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. They rose from their seats, joined their hands together towards the Buddha and vowed:

“World-Honored One! We also will expound this sūtra in some other worlds because the people of this Sahā-World have many evils. They are arrogant. They have few merits. They are angry, defiled, ready to flatter others, and insincere.”

See Holding Firm