Specially in early chapters of the Lotus Sutra, one major concern is to understand or explain how the older shravaka way is related to the newer bodhisattva way. What was especially important was to try to explain why the great early disciples of the Buddha, that is, the Buddha’s closest disciples, were shravakas and apparently had not taken the path of the bodhisattva. The authors and compilers of Mahayana sutras were trying to create a new tradition, but this new tradition could not be a complete break from the old tradition, symbolized in the Lotus Sutra as the shravaka way. While critical of that older tradition, they wanted to incorporate it into the new.

In Chapter 8 of the Sutra (“Assurance for the Five Hundred Disciples”), the Buddha first explains that the disciple named Purna, son of Maitrayani, has been a most excellent teacher of the Dharma under thousands of buddhas. He has skillfully taught the Dharma in the past, is doing so in the present, and will continue to do so in the future. He is so skillful that innumerable people, supposing him to be a shravaka, have benefited from his teaching. In reality, however, this Purna is a bodhisattva who will eventually become a buddha named Dharma Radiance. By disguising themselves as shravakas in ways like this, bodhisattvas make it possible even for unmotivated people to enter the bodhisattva way, the way of becoming a buddha.