Chapter 15: Emerging from the Earth

As bodhisattvas from other worlds volunteer to propagate the Lotus Sutra in the saha world after the Buddha's passing, Shakyamuni declines their offer, saying that this world already has bodhisattvas sufficient for the task. At that moment the earth trembles and splits open, and from below emerge bodhisattvas as numerous as the sands of sixty thousand Ganges Rivers. They are golden-hued, radiating light, possessed of the thirty-two marks, and they have been dwelling in the empty space beneath the saha world. They are led by four great bodhisattvas: Superior Practices, Boundless Practices, Pure Practices, and Firmly Established Practices.

These bodhisattvas rise into the air, approach the treasure tower where the two Buddhas sit, and pay homage to Shakyamuni and Many Treasures. The greeting ceremony alone takes fifty small kalpas, though the Buddha's supernatural power causes the assembly to perceive it as only half a day. The sheer number, magnificence, and evident maturity of these bodhisattvas astound the assembly. The Bodhisattva Maitreya, speaking on behalf of all, voices the obvious question: where did these bodhisattvas come from, and who taught them?

Maitreya presses the question with a pointed comparison: it is as though a young man of twenty-five were to point to a group of elderly men over a hundred years old and say, "These are my sons." The assembly cannot reconcile the vast number and advanced attainment of these bodhisattvas with what they know of Shakyamuni's relatively brief lifetime. This paradox sets up the most crucial revelation in the sutra -- the chapter on the Life Span of the Thus Come One -- which will follow immediately and transform the assembly's understanding of who the Buddha truly is.