In another extremely interesting passage [in the Perfection of Insight in Eight Thousand Lines], Subhūti asks about the meaning of the “great vehicle.”

“What is that great vehicle [upon which a bodhisattva rides]? … Who has set out in it? … Where will it stand?”

The Buddha answers:

“Great vehicle,” that is a synonym of immeasurableness. “Immeasurable” means infinitude. By means of the perfections has a bodhisattva set out in it. From the triple world it will go forth. It has set out to where there is no objective support. It will be a bodhisattva, a great being, who will go forth, but he will not go forth to anywhere. Nor has anyone set out in it. It will not stand anywhere.

The Buddha continues in this vein, but we may skip the text to Subhūti’s answer:

The Lord speaks of the “great vehicle.” Surpassing the world with its gods, men, and asuras, that vehicle will go forth. For it is the same as space, and exceedingly great. As in space, so in this vehicle there is room for immeasurable and incalculable beings. So is this the great vehicle of the bodhisattvas, the great beings. One cannot see its coming or going, and its abiding does not exist. Thus, one cannot get at the beginning of this great vehicle, nor at its end, nor at its middle. But it is self-identical everywhere. Therefore, one speaks of a “great vehicle.”

These ideas are extremely typical of the Prajn͂āpāramitā literature and may be taken as part of the formative matrix in which the chapters on the immeasurability of the Buddha’s life were conceived during the early phase of the development of Mahayana Buddhism. The key point to be learned from these passages is that “immeasurability” is part of a general discourse which seeks to indicate the ineffability of the true nature of things by disrupting conventional terminology. Whatever one can conceive of is part of the world as viewed by discriminating reason.

But the aim, in Mahayana Buddhism, is not to be entrapped by such discriminations. To avoid entrapment, the available terminology has to be used. But it is turned against itself. Thus a very large amount of merit is construed as being so large that it cannot be measured at all. And this in turn points to its “empty” nature, so that we arrive at the realization that a very large amount of merit is so immeasurably large that it is “no merit.”

It is submitted here that such an understanding of the term “immeasurability” underlies the usage in other Mahayana works.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Michael Pye, The Length of Life of the Tathāgata, Page 168-169

[I]t is extremely important to notice that a connection was made early on between the idea of immeasurability and emptiness.

In the Perfection of Insight [Wisdom] in Eight Thousand Lines (i.e., the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajnāpāramitā-sūtra), the disciple Subhūti asks the Buddha how a bodhisattva in training can recognize or “apperceive” the perfection of insight and is told that this is done through a series of thoughts which are “inclined toward all-knowledge.” Why so?

Because all-knowledge is immeasurable and unlimited. What is immeasurable and unlimited, that is not form, or any other skandha. That is not attainment, or reunion, or getting there; not the path or its fruit; not cognition or consciousness; not genesis, or destruction, or production, or passing away, or stopping, or development, or annihilation. It has not been made by anything, it has not come from anywhere, it does not go to anywhere, it does not stand in any place or spot. On the contrary, it comes to be styled “immeasurable, unlimited.” From the immeasurableness of space is the immeasurableness of all-knowledge.

This passage shows us that the term “immeasurability” belongs to those which indicate the aspect of being without characteristics. It is not intended to make an ontological assertion. Rather, it is intended to indicate the aspect of “positionlessness,” a term with which one may satisfactorily summarize the character of the Prajn͂āpāramitā and Mādhyamika schools.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Michael Pye, The Length of Life of the Tathāgata, Page 167-168

When words help, words are offered. But these words are not the final goal; they are merely a means to get us unstuck if we are stuck in our path toward Buddhahood. The text teaches that when it is necessary, the Buddha will “deceive us into the truth,” as Kierkegaard put it, just as in the parable of the magic city the tired pilgrims are lured toward their goal and dissuaded from giving up by the mysterious illusion of the proximity of a yet distant goal. Similarly, if we are to move beyond our habitual and limiting thoughts, perhaps potent new thoughts will affect our moving from our original stance. If a set of truth-claims helps us to move beyond our previous beliefs, the set has done its job. It does not, however, constitute a permanently satisfying and intelligible final answer. Once we are free from whatever delusion to which we were habituated, the tool of our liberation should be discarded rather than clung to. It was, after all, nothing more than a now spent tool. And so, it is that tactfulness requires that what is spoken be effective rather than literally true.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; John R.A. Mayer, Reflectioms on the Threefold Lotus Sutra, Page 156

Just as Hegel in the West has helped us see beyond the limiting laws of thought that Aristotle formulated as the conditions of rational thinking, the law of identity, that A = A; the law of noncontradiction, that nothing is both A and Not-A; and the law of excluded middle, that everything is either A or Not-A, so the Buddhist heritage is similarly a liberating one. Hegel shows that when one thinks about a seedling, a bud, the flower, and its fruit, there is a sense in which each is distinct and other than the other. But at the very same time they are all aspects of the one plant. The shoot anticipates the blossom; the flower is but the transformation of the blossom, and the fruit, the ripened flower, and the promise of the seed and the sprout. In some intuitive way we can here “understand” that the question should not be “Are they the same or different?” but rather that the very difference is involved in the sameness; each momentary unit portends the next moment and is but the fulfillment of the previous one. The bud is and is not the flower; just as we are and are not the Buddha nature. The flower is not some final goal that the bud seeks; it is but a next stage on an eternally continuous process; similarly, Buddhahood is not some eventual final achievement, it is the continuous and temporal praxis of compassion. This surely is the intent when in the sutra the audience are all considered bodhisattvas, when many would have deemed themselves mere śrāvakas or pratyekabuddhas.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; John R.A. Mayer, Reflectioms on the Threefold Lotus Sutra, Page 156

So foundationalists and antifoundationalists both make persuasive arguments for our acceptance of their respective stances, each having something strongly persuasive about their own position and revealing something repugnant about the other. Each position implies unacceptable consequences. This leaves the reader-spectator stymied and adrift as regards the outcome of the “debate.” …

If one is left perplexed by these discussions and debates, the Threefold Lotus Sutra is of immense value for overcoming the foregoing quandaries. The title of the introductory sutra, the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, gives a strong clue as to the direction of the resolution. The manifold diversity of the everyday world gives rise to countless ways of experiencing it, interpreting it, since experience makes accessible only a minute portion of the vast spatial and temporal diversity of the whole. Were the experiential disclosure largely to overlap in the case of two individual instances, the subjective inclinations and proclivities of the two individuals sharing similar experiences will result in interpreting them in quite different ways. The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law lets us understand this plurality and diversity through the parable of the herbs. It tells of the generous rain supplying the needs of diverse plants, be they grasses, herbs, flowers, shrubs, or mighty trees. The same rain nourishes them all, yet each grows according to its own particular nature. What is here presented is how diversity is produced from some underlying singular universal–the rain.

This seems to support the foundationalist position that behind the diversity of the many specific plants there is the unity of their source in the common nutrient, the rainwater. Thus the generosity of the sky in supplying water is the foundation of the richly diverse flora.

But to avoid the charge against the usual foundationalists, the Lotus Sutra also discusses how though there is a fundamental singular truth, a foundation to the universe, this truth is accessible only to the Buddha. Although all of us are lured and coaxed along the path to achieving Buddhahood, and, indeed, promised that it is within our essential possibilities, at the same time it is recognized that great discipline and compassion are required of us to go beyond our limited present stage of development. While the “foundation” is hinted at as the Void, and is characterized by the Ten Suchnesses, these are not readily assimilable concepts; indeed, they are not concepts at all; they imply the practice of compassion, the practice of self-sacrifice. It would be folly for those listening to the Buddha to think that they have a theoretical or conceptual grasp of the “foundation” of all.

To the contrary, what we can grasp is one or several of innumerable meanings. However, they are all meanings. Meanings of what? Meanings of the ultimate reality, of the Buddha-nature. However, any attempt to explicate what that is, is to present but one of its innumerable meanings. What we can grasp intellectually are meanings, not the ultimate reality. Only the Buddha can grasp the ultimately real, since Enlightenment is not the consequence but the precondition of such a power. The Buddha advises the bodhisattvas that every Law emerges, changes, settles, and vanishes every moment, instantly.

It is obvious that such “impermanence” renders the Law beyond whatever it is that we call “knowing”; for our kind of knowledge requires that the known be bounded and stable enough to be what it is, to endure. For our kind of knowing is to know the known by its limitations, by its determinations which specify it to be this way rather than that. But whatever is such as to be accessible to this kind of knowledge is not the ultimately real. That, whose meanings the innumerable meanings qualify, cannot be presented; for whatever is capable of being presented, however true it may be, is just another meaning. That from which all the meanings derive is not itself another meaning; it is of an entirely different constitution, which is often presented in the text, only to be negated. As a propaedeutic we might be told of the Void, the Formless, the Absolute Nothingness, or the Ten Merits, but all these are but aids, stepladders for turning the wheel, useful devices, perhaps, but not to be clung to, investigated, analyzed, and especially not to be used as weapons against others who talk about God, or the Truth, or Suchness. All claims are to be transcended, the Void voided, the Truth abandoned as it becomes a Lie (Nietzsche), but the practice of compassion remains paramount. To be compassionate requires no doctrine. Compassion is not something one knows; it is something one does, and something one receives. The path to Enlightenment is compassion; and compassion rather than hostility and partiality is what is called for by the path to Enlightenment. The parable of the herbs is very clear in showing generosity or compassion for the thirst of the plants as the underlying “reality” of the diverse flourishing.

When in the Lotus Sutra we learn that the Buddha-nature is recognized in all, be they disciples such as Śāriputra, great bodhisattvas, relatives of the Buddha Śākyamuni such as Rāhula, or indeed villains such as Devadatta, we can see the universality of compassion, and generosity. These have to overcome hostility, revenge, and even judgement and justice. For all these require limits, contrasts, opposition, either-or thinking. And while we are not fully enlightened, we are indeed in the clutches of contrast, thinking, judgement, preference, hierarchy. Enlightenment constitutes being beyond all this. How to be beyond it? By always practicing compassion, being mindful of the fact that less than full enlightenment is tantamount to suffering; to finding the impermanent unsatisfactory.

Be it in the parable of the magic city or the parable of the burning house, the suggestion is clear that skillful means are to be used for getting the willing cooperation of those whose despondency, disinterest, bad habits, or ignorance prevent them from doing what is ultimately for their own benefit. These parables fly in the face of some conventional modern claims, such as “the ends do not justify the means” and that knowing the good for the other when the other does not share that knowledge is “paternalism,” and using deliberate deception in order to get the other to do what we think is best for that person is “manipulation.” Thus, the parables themselves are not instances of some absolute truth, but rather, persuasive devices, themselves to be abandoned once they have enabled us to behave compassionately. They, too, are merely skillful means to an end.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; John R.A. Mayer, Reflectioms on the Threefold Lotus Sutra, Page 152-154

The purification of the six faculties is thus available to any practitioner of the Lotus Sutra. One was Kenji Miyazawa, who exemplified the bodhisattva spirit of the Lotus Sutra, identifying with the plight of the poor and destitute peasants in northern Japan. He was brought up in a devout Jōdo Shinshū family, but he seems to have had disagreements with his father, who was a pious follower, and possibly with the Shinshū teaching itself. Regardless of his profession as a scientist, agronomist, storyteller, poet, and science fiction writer (to use a contemporary description), his devotion to the Lotus Sutra was total:

Obeisance to the Lotus Sutra of Profound Dharma!
My life — none other than the life of Profound Dharma.
My death — none other than the death of Profound Dharma.
From this human body to eventual Buddha body,
I receive and keep the Lotus Sutra.

Miyazawa attempted to put into practical action the life of Bodhisattva Never Disparaging of the Lotus Sutra, always concerned with the well-being of the impoverished peasants of northern Japan with whom he worked. His identification with the peasants is eloquently expressed in one of his most famous poems:

Yielding neither to rain nor yielding to wind,
Yielding neither to snow nor to summer heat,
With a stout body like that,
Without greed, never getting angry,
Always smiling quietly… in everything,
Not taking oneself into account.

Looking, listening, understanding well and not forgetting
If in the East there’s a sick child, going and nursing him.
If in the West there’s a tired mother, going and carrying her bundle of rice,
If in the South there’s someone dying, going and saying you don’t have to be afraid,
If in the North there’s a quarrel or a lawsuit, saying it’s not worth it, stop it
In drought, shedding tears,
In a cold summer, pacing back and forth, lost.
Called a good-for-nothing by everyone,
Neither praised nor thought a pain,
Someone like that
Is what I want to be.

Here Miyazawa is the “good-for-nothing” (dekunobō) who identifies with the “know-nothing bodhisattva,” the Bodhisattva Never Disparaging of the Lotus Sutra. In both cases what was essential was living the Lotus teachings. This living can be the mastery of a single verse or a single sentence of the Lotus Sutra which would manifest the totality of the spiritual life. A single kind word, a simple gesture of compassion, is infinitely more meaningful than any conceptual understanding or discursive elaboration. This stress on what is truly valuable, as opposed to what we think is so, is found in other instances in the Lotus Sutra. Little value, for example, is placed on the śarīra, the remains of the Buddha, which is regarded as essential to the stupa. But the Lotus Sutra contends, “There is no need even to lodge śarīra in it. What is the reason? Within it there is already the whole body of the Thus Come One.”
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Taitetsu Unno, Somatic Realization of the Lotus Sutra, Page 74-75

The Lotus Sutra, down through the centuries, has meant different things to different people in different cultures, but its unifying core is the somatic realization of its basic message: the negation of the delusory self and the embodying of wisdom and compassion. This is to be accomplished by the dedicated praxis of receiving and keeping the scripture through reading, reciting, expounding, and copying. These acts are not mere formalities or ritual acts but are intended to realize the teaching of the Lotus in one’s own life, leading ultimately to compassionate action in the world. Its basic philosophy is summed up in the language of a contemporary exemplar of the Lotus teaching, Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933), who once said, “Until the whole world attains happiness, there can be no individual happiness.”
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Taitetsu Unno, Somatic Realization of the Lotus Sutra, Page 71

Nichiren, Risshō Kōsei-kai, Sōka Gakkai, Reiyūkai, and others inspired by the Lotus Sutra have been important examples of how Lotus Sutra Buddhists are to be actively engaged in transforming society. Lotus Sutra Buddhists are not passive hearers of a finalized message, but their capacities and needs and goals help to shape the flowering of the Dharma here and now. Thus, they are both receivers and cocreators of the message and participate in the process of manifesting the Dharma. Accordingly, part of the task of our lives is to help creatively to realize the Dharma in each situation, and to bring it into being in our lives and in the lives of those who are in need and for a world in need.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; David W. Chappell, Organic Truth: Personal Reflections on the Lotus Sutra Page 65-66

Basically, the Lotus Sutra affirms the wisdom and the eternity of the Dharma (“Revelation of the Eternal Life of the Tathāgata,” chapter 16), the inherent capacity of all people to receive it and to achieve eventual fulfillment (chapter 8), and the process of transmission that is in accord with the level, capacities, and growth process for each thing (chapter 5). In sum, within a vast vision of time and space, the Lotus affirms the capacities of all beings and affirms the goodness of all methods that are helpful. The ruling criterion is the growth and fulfillment of all beings. Accompanying this faith in the responsiveness of the Dharma (life) at its deepest levels and the confidence that it is good and intends growth, there is in turn an obligation: we, like the Dharma, are expected to be compassionate, responsive, and creative to help other beings grow.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; David W. Chappell, Organic Truth: Personal Reflections on the Lotus Sutra Page 64