According to the sūtra text, the vast throng of bodhisattvas who appear suddenly in Chapter Fifteen “had all previously been living in the space under the earth of the Sahā world.” Zhiyi identified this “space” as the mysterious depth that is the dharma nature and as the middle way; he also equated it with the “land of ever-tranquil light,” a metaphor for the Buddha’s enlightened realm. One modern Lotus commentator interpreted “living in the space under the earth of the Sahā world” to mean having insight into the empty and constructed nature of all things, which permits one “to be in the midst of the swirl of the world of desire, without being dragged down by it, constantly maintaining a stance of unattached freedom.” This interpretation echoes the description of these bodhisattvas later in the chapter as being “as undefiled by worldly affairs as the lotus blossom in the [muddy] water.”