[In Chapter 17, The Variety of Merits,] the Five Stages or Categories for the future … show us what practitioners of the Lotus Sutra should do once Sakyamuni has entered into Nirvana and is no longer physically present among us. These five categories for practice in the future are quite similar to the four faiths in the present… . Both imply a lifetime of effort and hard work on the long road to perfection. (We might even find them discouraging; “nobody is perfect.”) But before dismissing them as impossible to fulfill, we should note again that both begin with the same first step, that of joyfully accepting the message of eternal life in Chapter 16. Then gradually the practitioner begins to read and discern the deeper meaning of the Sutra, finally becoming a teacher of it.