Nichiren drew from the Mahābhijfiājfiānābhibhū [Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Tathāgata] story an understanding of how the Buddha’s pedagogical method unfolds over time. Zhiyi had identified three standards of comparison by which the Lotus Sūtra could be said to surpass all others. The first, based on Śākyamuni’s declaration of the one buddha vehicle in the “Skillful Means” and subsequent chapters, is that it encompasses persons of all capacities. The second, based on the present, “Apparitional City” chapter, is that it reveals the process of the Buddha’s instruction from beginning to end. Drawing on the Mahābhijfiājfiānābhibhū narrative, Zhiyi described this process with the metaphor of “sowing, maturing, and harvesting.” That is, the Buddha implants the seed of buddhahood in the mind of his disciples with an initial teaching; cultivates it through subsequent teachings, enabling their capacity to mature; and finally reaps the harvest by bringing those disciples to full enlightenment. As the opening passage of this chapter describes, the buddha Mahābhijfiājfiānābhibhū lived an immensely long time ago, so long that one could measure it only by grinding a vast number of world systems to dust and using each dust speck to represent one eon. In that distant time, Mahābhijfiājfiānābhibhū and his sixteen sons planted the seed of buddhahood in the minds of their auditors by preaching the Lotus Sūtra. Those who heard the Lotus Sūtra from the sixteenth son were born together with him in lifetime after lifetime, as he nurtured their capacity, bringing it to maturity with subsequent teachings over the course of innumerable lifetimes. When that son preached the Lotus Sūtra in the Sahā world as Śākyamuni Buddha, some were at last able to reap the harvest of enlightenment, while others would do so in the future. In other words, Śākyamuni’s resolve to lead all beings to the one vehicle was not merely a matter of this lifetime, but a project initiated in the inconceivably remote past. Indeed, this chapter offers another early hint that Śākyamuni’s buddhahood encompasses a time frame far exceeding the present lifetime, a theme that the Lotus Sūtra develops in later chapters.