Day 5 begins Chapter 3, A Parable
Having last month considered Śāriputra’s fear that he was listening to Mara in the form of a Buddha, we hear Śākyamuni’s prediction of the future Buddhahood of Śāriputra.
Thereupon the Buddha said to Śāriputra:
“Now I will tell you in the presence of this great multitude including gods, men, śramaṇas, and brāhmanas. Under two billion Buddhas in the past, I always taught you in order to cause you to attain unsurpassed enlightenment. You studied under me in the long night. I led you with expedients. Therefore, you have your present life under me.
“Śāriputra! I caused you to aspire for the enlightenment of the Buddha in your previous existence. You forgot all this, and thought that you had already attained extinction. In order to cause you to remember the Way you practiced under your original vow, I now expound to the Śrāvakas this sūtra of the Great Vehicle called the ‘Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, the Dharma for Bodhisattvas, the Dharma Upheld by the Buddhas.’
“Śāriputra! After a countless, inconceivable number of kalpas from now, you will be able to make offerings to many thousands of billions of Buddhas, to keep their right teachings, to practice the Way which Bodhisattvas should practice, and to become a Buddha called Flower-Light, the Tathāgata, the Deserver of Offerings, the Perfectly Enlightened One, the Man of Wisdom and Practice, the Well-Gone, the Knower of the World, the Unsurpassed Man, the Controller of Men, the Teacher of Gods and Men, the Buddha, the World-Honored One. The world of that Buddha will be called Free-From-Taint. That world will be even, pure, adorned, peaceful, and fertile, where gods and men will prosper. The ground of that world will be made of lapis lazuli; the roads will fan out from the center to the eight directions. Those roads will be marked off by ropes of gold, and the trees of the seven treasures on the roadsides will always bear flowers and fruit. Flower-Light Tathāgata will also lead the living beings [of his world] by the teaching of the Three Vehicles.
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“Śāriputra! Although the world in which he appears will not be an evil one, that Buddha will expound the teaching of the Three Vehicles according to his original vow.
This prediction of Śāriputra’s future world is one of the great mysteries to me. After more than 40 times reading the Lotus Sūtra, I simply cannot fathom why Śāriputra, as the Buddha Flower-Light, will teach the Three Vehicles. None of the other predictions of future Buddhahood of the Śrāvakas includes this detail.
The Buddha says, “In order to cause you to remember the Way you practiced under your original vow, I now expound to the Śrāvakas this sūtra of the Great Vehicle called the ‘Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, the Dharma for Bodhisattvas, the Dharma Upheld by the Buddhas.’ ”
Note the Buddha is concerned with “the Way you [Śāriputra] practiced under your original vow.”
Then in the prediction of Flower-Light’s world, we are told, “Although the world in which he appears will not be an evil one, that Buddha will expound the teaching of the Three Vehicles according to his original vow.”
Updated March 22, 2019
I posted this question to the Nichiren Shu page on Facebook and received this reply from Rev. Ryuei McCormick:
My impression is that the first prediction is the most complete and comprehensive. In the other predictions it should be understood that this is probably the case.
The One Vehicle is not another vehicle aside from the three vehicles. I don’t buy those interpretations that say it is a fourth vehicle, and that does not seem how Nichiren or Tiantai understood it either. There are no three vehicles other than as partial aspects of the One Vehicle. There is no One Vehicle aside from its manifestations in terms of the three vehicles.
Also there is a difference between evil and defiled. The people of a given land may all be “good” (i.e. wholesome) but still have the defilement of ignorance that causes them to cling to self and dharmas. The three vehicles are progressively deeper ways of breaking through such defilement.
Another way to look at this may be as follows – the shravaka and pratyekabuddha vehicles are preliminary understandings of the bodhisattva vehicle, the bodhisattva vehicle is a preliminary understanding of the One Vehicle, and the One Vehicle is the most complete understanding of the previous three vehicles. If there were no One Vehicle there would be nothing for the three vehicles to be increasingly adequate explanations of, and if there were no three vehicles there would be nothing for the One Vehicle to be a complete understanding of. They are all in mutually possession of one another just as the ten worlds are – and in fact the three vehicles and buddhahood are four of the ten worlds!
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
Updated April 26, 2019, with Clay Creating the One Vehicle