Day 27 concludes Chapter 23, The Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva.
Having last month considered how this sūtra saves all living beings, we consider the merits given to a woman who hears and keeps this chapter of the Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva.
“Star-King-Flower! Anyone who hears [especially] this chapter of the Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva also will be able to obtain innumerable merits. The woman who hears and keeps this chapter of the Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva will not be a woman in her next life. The woman who hears this sūtra and acts according to the teachings of it in the later’ five hundred years after my extinction, will be able to be reborn, after her life in this world, [as a man sitting] on the jeweled seat in the lotus flower blooming in the World of Happiness where Amitayus Buddha lives surrounded by great Bodhisattvas. He [no more she] will not be troubled by greed, anger, ignorance, arrogance, jealousy, or any other impurity. He will be able to obtain the supernatural powers of a Bodhisattva and the truth of birthlessness. When he obtains this truth, his eyes will be purified. With his purified eyes, he will be able to see seven billion and two hundred thousand million nayuta Buddhas or Tathāgatas, that is, as many Buddhas as there are sands in the River Ganges. At that time those Buddhas will praise him, saying simultaneously from afar, ‘Excellent, excellent, good man! You kept, read and recited this sūtra, thought it over, and expounded it to others under Śākyamuni Buddha. Now you have obtained innumerable merits and virtues, which cannot be burned by fire or washed away by water. Your merits cannot be described even by the combined efforts of one thousand Buddhas. Now you have defeated the army of Mara, beaten the forces of birth and death, and annihilated all your enemies. Good man! Hundreds of thousands of Buddhas are now protecting you by their supernatural powers. None of the gods or men in the world surpasses you. None but the Tathāgatas, none of the Śrāvakas or Pratyekabuddhas or Bodhisattvas surpasses you in wisdom and dhyāna-concentration.’ Star-King-Flower! [He is a Bodhisattva.] This Bodhisattva will obtain these merits and the power of wisdom.
Nichiren writes about this prediction in his People in the World Letter:
QUESTION: In the 23rd chapter on the “Previous Life of Medicine King Bodhisattva” in the epilogue section of the Lotus Sūtra, women are encouraged to practice the sūtra wholeheartedly so that they may be reborn in the Pure Land of the Buddha of Infinite Life upon death. How about this?
ANSWER: The Buddha of Infinite Life in the “Previous Life of the Medicine King Bodhisattva” chapter is not the same as the Buddha of Infinite Life in the pre-Lotus sūtras and in the first half of the Lotus Sūtra. They merely have the same name. The Sūtra of Infinite Meaning (Muryōgi-kyō) says, “Even though they have the same name, their meanings are different.” Miao-lê says in his Annotations on the Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sūtra, “Even though you find the name of the Buddha of Infinite Life in the hommon section of the Lotus Sūtra, it does not at all mean the Buddha of Infinite Life mentioned in the Sūtra of Meditation on the Buddha of Infinite Life.” These should dispel all your doubts. After all, Bodhisattvas who are advanced in practice may easily come to this Sahā World from Pure Lands in the universe and can also easily go back there.
Gochū Shujō Gosho, People in the World Letter, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 203