Why does the Buddha say in Chapter 3 that he will teach the One Vehicle, but only to bodhisattvas? In the first chapter, we saw that the Dharma Flower Sutra celebrates both listening and teaching or preaching. In other words, it takes two to teach – teaching is not teaching unless someone is taught. Thus in the first chapter, heavenly flowers fall on both the Buddha and the audience. That idea is extended here with the idea that the Buddha preaches only to bodhisattvas. The point is that to hear the Dharma is to be already, to that degree, a bodhisattva. This is because to truly hear the Dharma is to take it into one’s life, thus to live by it, thus to be a bodhisattva. So it can be said that the buddhas come into the world only to convert people into bodhisattvas.