The central concern of the first half of the Lotus Sutra is the uniting of the three vehicles into the One. Early proponents of Mahayana, whose thought is expressed in the Wisdom sutras, denigrated the existing Buddhism as Hinayana, contending, in their efforts to give precedence to the practice of the bodhisattva as a candidate for buddhahood, that neither śrāvakas nor pratyekabuddhas were capable of attaining the buddha degree. As the compassion of the Buddha came to be emphasized more and more, though, it became necessary to resolve the question of the buddhahood of the other two vehicles. The “Tactfulness” chapter of the Lotus Sutra specifically addresses the issue, and following chapters repeat its ideas one by one, using a number of parables and allegories. The Buddha’s disciples, the śrāvakas, previously described as having as their ultimate goal the attainment of arhatship, receive in the Lotus Sutra, together with the pratyekabuddhas, predictions of their ultimate buddhahood. Therefore the sutra can truly be called adbhuta-dharma (“the unprecedented law and teaching”).

Buddhism employs a special word, vyākaraṇa, to express a prediction about someone’s future attainment of buddhahood. It had been used in sutras preceding the Lotus, and can be traced right back to the Jātakas (stories of the Buddha’s former lives) and other early scriptures. It has various forms of expression and, appearing in a broad spectrum of sutras, is a major contributor to the development of the idea of prediction in Buddhism. With the growth of the concepts of buddha-nature and tathāgata-garbha in middle-period Mahayana works, such as the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra and Śrimālādevi-sūtra, the idea of prediction gave way to those new ways of thinking.