Day 13 covers all of Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples.
I digress.
In the past 11 months, I have been cycling through the Lotus Sutra every 32 days, posting each day a comment on that day’s reading. So today, while Purna and the “five hundred disciples” are promised their future Buddhahood and we are reminded of the seed of Buddhahood we possess in the Parable of the Pricess Gem, I just feel like it is time to mention what a Buddha world would look like.
After performing “the Way of Bodhisattvas step by step for innumerable, asamkhya kalpas (and we are alerted in the footnotes that this is a finite period), Purna will become a Buddha called Dharma-Brightness in a kalpa called TreasureBrightness on a world called Good-Purity:
The world of that Buddha will be composed of one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, that is, as many Sumeru-worlds as there are sands in the River Ganges. The ground [of that world] will be made of the seven treasures. It will be as even as the palm of a hand. There will be no mountains nor ravines nor ditches. Tall buildings adorned with the seven treasures will be seen everywhere in that world, and the palaces of gods of that world will hang so low in the sky that gods and men will be able to see each other.
Here’s where it gets interesting:
There will be no evil regions nor women. The living beings of that world will be born without any medium. They will have no sexual desire.
The footnote explains: “It means that they will be born not through the medium of a mother or an egg or moisture but by their own karmas. It is held that those who are born without any medium appear in a moment in their adult forms.
They will have great supernatural powers, emit light from their bodies, and fly about at will. They will be resolute in mind, strenuous, and wise. They will be golden in color, and adorned with the thirty-two marks. They will feed on two things: the delight in the Dharma, and the delight in dhyana. There will be innumerable, asamkhya Bodhisattvas, that is, thousands of billions of nayutas of Bodhisattvas. They will have great supernatural powers and the four kinds of unhindered eloquence. They will teach the living beings of that world. There will also be uncountable Sravakas there. They will have the six supernatural powers including the three major supernatural powers, and the eight emancipations.
The world of that Buddha will be adorned with those innumerable merits.