Day 20 completes Chapter 15, The Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground, and concludes the Fifth Volume of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.
Having last month considered Maitreya’s doubts, we consider the reason for Maitreya’s doubts.
“World-Honored One! It is difficult for anyone in the world to believe this. It is as difficult as to believe a handsome, black-haired man twenty-five years old who points to men a hundred years old and says, ‘They are my sons,’ or as to believe men a hundred years old who point to a young man and say, ‘This is our father. He brought us up.’ You are like the young man. It is not long since you attained enlightenment. But it is many thousands of billions of kalpas since the great multitude of these Bodhisattvas began to practice the Way strenuously in order to attain the enlightenment of the Buddha. During that time they entered into, stayed in, and came out of many hundreds of thousands of billions of samadhis, and obtained great supernatural powers. They performed brahma practices for a long time. They learned good teachings one by one, and obtained the ability to answer questions skillfully. They are regarded as the treasures of the world of men by all the people of the world because they are rare. Today you say that, after you attained the enlightenment of the Buddha, you caused them to aspire for enlightenment, taught them, and led them into the Way to Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.
The Daily Dharma offers this:
World-Honored One! It is difficult for anyone in the world to believe this. It is as difficult as to believe a handsome, black-haired man twenty-five years old who points to men a hundred years old and says, ‘They are my sons,’ or as to believe men a hundred years old who point to a young man and say, ‘This is our father. He brought us up.’
Maitreya Bodhisattva explains his perplexity to the Buddha in Chapter Fifteen of the Lotus Sūtra. The Buddha has just revealed that all of the Bodhisattvas who have appeared from underground to continue teaching the Wonderful Dharma after the extinction of the Buddha have been taught by the Buddha in the time since he became enlightened. Maitreya realizes that his doubts are no different from the doubts of those gathered to hear the Buddha teach and asks the Buddha to explain. The Buddha says later that he sees the world differently than other living beings. But this does not mean that when our experience does not match what the Buddha teaches, we must keep silence and just accept what he tells us. It is only through sincere questioning that we find the Buddha’s mind and make it our own.
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