Day 27 concludes Chapter 23, The Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva.

The Buddha has been explaining why it is that Medicine-King Bodhisattva won’t mind walking about this Sahā world by explaining his past life as Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings Bodhisattva, a supernatural being who could burn his body in one life for the sake of the Dharma and burn his arms in the next. Clearly he earned great merit. And yet…

But the merits to be given to the person who fills the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds with the seven treasures and offers that amount of the seven treasures to the Buddhas, to the Great Bodhisattvas, to the Pratyekabuddhas, and to the Arhats, are less than the merits to be given to the person who keeps even a single gāthā of four lines of this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.

What follows is a series of ways in which the Lotus Sutra is greater than other sutras – a sea is larger than a river, the moon is brighter than a star – the “Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma is more profound than any of the other sūtras expounded by the Tathāgatas.”

This sūtra saves all living beings. This sūtra saves them from all sufferings, and gives them great benefits. All living beings will be able to fulfill their wishes by this sūtra just as a man who reaches a pond of fresh water when he is thirsty, just as a man who gets fire when he suffers from cold, just as a man who is given a garment when he is naked … The merits to be given to the person who, after hearing this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, copies it, or causes others to copy it, cannot be measured even by the wisdom of the Buddha.

There’s no better medicine:

Protect this sūtra by your supernatural powers! Why is that? It is because this sūtra is a good medicine for the diseases of the people of the Jambudvīpa. The patient who hears this sūtra will be cured of his disease at once. He will not grow old or die.