Day 18 concludes Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra, and begins Chapter 14, Peaceful Practices.

This day’s content lends itself well to the idea of limiting myself to single topic. On this first time with the limit I’ll leave the Peaceful Practices for coming months, each one on a separate month. For today, I’ll stick to the “eighty billion nayuta Bodhisattva-mahasattvas” present at this time in the congregation.

These great bodhisattvas – they’d “already reached the stage of avaivartika, turned the irrevocable wheel of the Dharma, and obtained dharanis” – were waiting for the Buddha to tell them what to do.

If the World-Honored One commands us to keep and expound this sutra, we will expound the Dharma just as the Buddha teaches.

They also thought, ‘The Buddha keeps silence.’ He does not command us. What shall we do?

In order to follow the wish of the Buddha respectfully, and also to fulfill their original vow, they vowed to the Buddha with a loud voice like the roar of a lion:

World-Honored One! After your extinction, we will go to any place [not only of this Saha-World but also] of the worlds of the ten quarters, as often as required, and cause all living beings to copy, keep, read and recite this sutra, to expound the meanings of it, to act according to the Dharma, and to memorize this sutra correctly. We shall be able to do all this only by your powers. World-Honored One! Protect us from afar even when you are in another world!

And despite their willingness to brave the perils of the “dreadful, evil world after your extinction,” the Buddha has other plans.

To be continued…