Day 26 concludes Chapter 21, The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas, includes Chapter 22, Transmission, and introduces Chapter 23, The Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva.
This first time through under my single-topic rule allows me to focus on a followup to yesterday’s message and offer why the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma can be heard only once in hundreds of millions of billions of kalpas.
To sum up, all the teachings of the Tathagata, all the unhindered, supernatural powers of the Tathagata, all the treasury of the hidden core of the Tathagata, and all the profound achievements of the Tathagata are revealed and expounded explicitly in this sutra. Therefore, keep, read, recite, expound and copy this sutra, and act according to the teachings of it with all your hearts after my extinction! In any world where anyone keeps, reads, recites, expounds or copies this sutra, or acts according to its teachings, or in any place where a copy of this sutra is put, be it in a garden, in a forest, under a tree, in a monastery, in the house of a person in white robes, in a hall, in a mountain, in a valley, or in the wilderness, there should a stupa be erected and offerings be made to it because, know this, the place [where the stupa is erected] is the place of enlightenment. Here the Buddhas attained Anuttarasamyak-sambodhi. Here the Buddhas turned the wheel of the Dhanna. Here the Buddhas entered into Parinirvana.
This isn’t some ordinary sutra.
I shall not be able to tell all the merits of this sutra to those to whom this sutra is to be transmitted even if I continue telling them by my supernatural powers for many hundreds of thousands of billions of asamkhyas of kalpas.