We are to understand that the number of Buddhas throughout the universe is incredibly large, and that all of them are, in some sense, subordinate to Shakyamuni Buddha. Thus, Shakyamuni Buddha, as well as being the Buddha of this world, in which suffering has to be endured and can be, is also a universal buddha – a buddha who is somehow present everywhere in time and space.

The exact meaning of the Chinese term used for these many buddhas is not very clear. They can be said to be “representatives,” or perhaps “duplicates” or “replicas” of Shakyamuni, but I think that they can best be understood as embodiments of Shakyamuni. Certainly, they are not, as some would have it, mere “emanations.” The complex point is that they are both independently real apart from Shakyamuni Buddha and in some sense subordinate to him. Put abstractly, we have here one of several images in the Dharma Flower Sutra in which the reality and togetherness of being both one and many is affirmed: here are both the one central reality of Shakyamuni, somehow represented throughout vast reaches of space, and the reality of many buddhas, each with their own lands and their own attendant bodhisattvas. Nowhere in the Sutra is it suggested that these buddhas and their lands are in anyway unreal. Other worlds are less important – to us in our daily lives – than is our own world, but that does not mean that they are any less real than our world.