Day 23 covers all of Chapter 18, The Merits of a Person Who Rejoices at Hearing This Sutra, and opens Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma.
Having last month considered benefits of encouraging others to hear the sūtra, we repeat in gāthās the merits of the fiftieth person who rejoices at hearing the Lotus sūtra.
Thereupon the World-Honored One, wishing to repeat what he had said, sang in gāthās:
Suppose a man rejoices at hearing this sūtra
Or at hearing even a gāthā of it
In a congregation,
And expounds it to a second person.The second person expounds it to a third person.
In this way it is heard by a fiftieth person.
Now I will tell you of the merits
Of the fiftieth person.Suppose there was a great almsgiver.
He continued giving alms
To innumerable living beings
For eighty years according to their wishes.Those living beings became old and decrepit.
Their hair became grey; their faces, wrinkled;
And their teeth, fewer and deformed.
Seeing this, he thought:
“I will teach them because they will die before long.
I will cause them to obtain the fruit of enlightenment.”Then he expounded the truth of Nirvana to them
As an expedient, saying:
“This world is as unstable
As a spray of water,
Or as a foam, or as a filament of air.
Hate it, and leave it quickly!”Hearing this teaching, they attained Arhatship,
And obtained the six supernatural powers,
Including the three major supernatural powers,
And the eight emancipations.The superiority of the merits of the fiftieth person
Who rejoices at hearing even a gāthā [of this sūtra]
To the merits of this [great almsgiver]
Cannot be explained by any parable or simile.The merits of the [fiftieth] person
[Who hears this sūtra] are immeasurable.
Needless to say, so are the merits of the first person
Who rejoices at hearing it in the congregation.