The Leading Teachers expound the Dharma with expedients
After realizing at the place of enlightenment:
“This is the abode of the Dharma and the position of the Dharma.
The reality of the world is permanently as it is.”

This articulates what was said earlier, [namely, the passage] “know that the dharmas are ever without a nature of their own (svabhāva).” In this way, therefore, they came to “know that [the dharmas] are without a nature of their own.”

The Buddhas, the Most Honorable Bipeds,
Expound the One Vehicle because they know:
“All things are devoid of substantiality.
The seed of Buddhahood comes from dependent origination.”

[This refers to] the doctrine of the [supreme or highest] emptiness suggesting that li is the nondual ultimate.

The Buddha provides the conditions (pratyaya) for li to arise. Now that li is not dual, how can it afford to be threefold? “For this reason they preach the One Vehicle.”

Those who bowed to the image of the Buddha,
Or just joined their hands together towards it,
Or raised only one hand towards it,
Or bent their head a little towards it
And offered the bending to it,
Became able to see innumerable Buddhas one after another.

What is shown in this and following paragraphs is that beings in the time of the past Buddhas planted the good seeds; one tiny part of one kind of good deed after another, they were all accumulated to perfect the Tao.

All those Great Saintly Masters
Who knew the deep desires
Of the gods, men, and other living beings
Of all the worlds,
Revealed the Highest Truth [Prime Meaning]
With various expedients.

li is originally of the unspeakable [nature]. He has borrowed words to speak about it. They are called [expedient] devices (upāya). Again, the two vehicles are employed as [teaching] aids for transforming them (beings). They are called other [expedient] devices. The One Vehicle is so deep that it has to rely on them to be manifested. According to one theory, what was preached [by the Buddha] for forty-nine years belong to expedient devices. The subject of the present preaching, the Dharma Blossom (or Lotus), belongs to “other [expedient] devices.”

Through their consecutive previous existences,
Their small embryos have continued to grow up
To become men of few virtues and merits.

[Hurwitz: That, receiving the frail form of a foetus,
For generation after generation they would constantly grow;]

Being within the delusion of the three realms, they are referred to as frail. Only the Dharma-body (-kāya) is great.

Some bhikṣus who live in a period in which no Buddha lives after my extinction may not believe the Dharma after they attain Arhatship because in that period it will be difficult to meet a person who keeps, reads, and recites this sūtra, and understands the meanings of it. They will be able to understand the Dharma when they meet another Buddha.

[For the interim period] between two Sages, when there is no Sage-Lord, unbelief may prevail. If one lives when a Buddha is present, one is certain to have faith and no doubts. Contemporary men have been taken unwittingly to where the Buddha is present, so there should be no [trace of] unbelief.

“Śāriputra! Some disciples of mine, who think that they are Arhats or Pratyekabuddhas, will not be my disciples or Arhats or Pratyekabuddhas if they do not hear or know that the Buddhas, the Tathāgatas, teach only Bodhisattvas.”

Wishing the Tao to prevail in the world, how can [the Buddha] not explain the distinction between attainment and loss, advising men to do away with [the cause of] loss and to follow [that of] attainment? If one calls oneself an arhat but does not know that the Buddha is [in the world] solely for converting [potential] bodhisattvas, one is not an arhat [in the true sense of the word]. One is then a man of error and loss. When a man is able to keep this sūtra, he can be said to have attained [the arhatship].

Therefore, the Buddhas divide the One Buddha-Vehicle into three as an expedient.

As the Buddha thought that men in the defiled age had no lofty will, and because the li of the Buddhas was so profound and distant that they (men) were unable to believe in it, the Buddha designed the doctrine of the three vehicles in order to make it accessible to men. Although it is said that he preached the three, what he preached always [in reality] was the One. Men are now personally in contact with the Buddha. Isn’t this a case of adaptation to make it accessible to men? Traces are closer to men. External demonstration is easier to apprehend. Even if it is possible to make it easy to learn, there is the distance inherent in its self-soness (Izu-jan). Moreover, it has been said that [followers of] the two vehicles had exhausted the bonds of existence; [and yet] they did not have [their] perfuming impressions (vāsanā) disposed of. By moving men close to [the One], [the Buddha] makes [it] easier to go beyond [the three]. If it is possible for them to go beyond [the three] and seek the self-soness [of the One at the same time], they will head for the total obliteration [of the three].

The worlds are defiled by the decay of the kalpa, by illusions, by the deterioration of the living beings, by wrong views, and by the shortening of lives.

Beings in the earlier generations were of a natural disposition, clean and void, and their bondages (lei) were minimal and thin. Compared with them, the contemporary generation can be characterized only as “defiled.” Kalpa refers to time. Being in this evil state, beings sometimes encounter armed soldiers and sometimes face the scarcity of grains, diseases, or epidemics.

[Beings] being entangled with various delusions, how can the Tao be stimulated to arise [in them]?

[Deterioration] refers to the evil (or sufferings?) arising from the full-orbed activities of the aggregates (skandhas), five in total.

The five false views are in opposition to the true and are in conflict with li. Hence, they are listed separately.

The false [views] and life get intertwined, keeping (beings) from encountering the Path (Tao). How could this not be defilement?

“Śāriputra! The Buddhas appear in the evil worlds in which there are the five defilements.

The gist of this segment is as follows. The Sage did not intend to set up the doctrine of the three, but because beings mired in defilement were found to have difficulty in acquiring the one single enlightenment, [the Buddha] had no alternative but to come into the world to preach the three vehicles. How could he wish to do so [for his own sake]?