Day 5 begins Chapter 3, A Parable.

Sariputra’s concern that he wasn’t taught the Bodhisattva practice and instead had to settle for a lesser teaching is answered by the Buddha:

Now I will tell you in the presence of this great multitude including gods, men, sramaras, and brahmanas. 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.

Sariputra! 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 Sravakas this sutra of the Great Vehicle called the ‘Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, the Dharma for Bodhisattvas, the Dharma Upheld by the Buddhas.’

We have been the Buddha’s disciples over and over again in past lives and accumulated the merits that today allow us to hear the Lotus Sutra today.