The Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī represents the Buddha’s wisdom, while the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue typifies the Buddha’s practice. These two bodhisattvas are regarded as a pair: the wisdom represented by Mañjuśrī symbolizes one’s realization of the truth and the practice typified by Universal Virtue one’s practice of the truth.

We have already studied the realization of the truth in the Law of Appearance. In the assembly of the Buddha’s preaching of this Law, the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī was the representative of the Buddha’s disciples. We learned the entity of the truth in the “one chapter and two halves” — the latter half of chapter 15, all of chapter 16, and the first half of chapter 17. In this assembly, the Bodhisattva Maitreya represented the disciples. We were taught the practice of the truth through the example of the practices of various bodhisattvas in the latter half of chapter 17 and the following chapters, which are defined as the concluding part of the Law of Origin. Finally, the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue appears in the last chapter of the Lotus Sutra. There is a deep significance to his appearance at this particular point.