[W]ith “bodhisattva” being associated in our minds with such great ones as Maitreya and Manjushri, it may be very difficult for us to believe that we are capable of being bodhisattvas. We are too young, we may think, or too old or too stupid or too tired or too lazy or too selfish or too something else to be a bodhisattva! It’s impossible, we may feel. This is where Chapter 10, and the idea of the teacher of the Dharma, comes in. It may be hard for me to believe that I can be a bodhisattva, but not as difficult to believe that I might be a good man or good woman who is able “even in secret, to teach to one person even one phrase of the Dharma Flower Sutra” and, therefore, be an emissary of the Buddha, one who does the Buddha’s work. In other words, Chapter 10 gives us what may be perceived to be a more attainable goal.

What’s more, the gender gap so often prevalent in Buddhist texts is broken through here. Not only buddhas, but all of the famous, great mythical bodhisattvas are male, almost always dressed as Indian princes. But “any good son or good daughter,” the text says, who privately explains even a phrase of the Sutra to a single person is a messenger of the Buddha, one who does the Buddha’s work.