Day 25 covers all of Chapter 20, Never-Despising Bodhisattva, and opens Chapter 21, The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas.

It’s time to leave Never-Despising Bodhisattva and examine the Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgatas. And to start we need the context of why the Buddha and his replicas put on this display of their powers.

The powers we’re going to see are prompted by the vow made by the Bodhisattvas who had sprung up from underground:

Thereupon the Bodhisattva-mahasattvas as many as the particles of dust of one thousand worlds, who had sprung up from underground, joined their hands together towards the Buddha with all their hearts, looked up at his honorable face, and said to him:

World-Honored One! After your extinction, we will expound this sutra in the worlds of the Buddhas of your replica and also in the place from which you will pass away. Why is that? It is because we also wish to obtain this true, pure and great Dharma, to keep, read, recite, expound and copy [this sutra], and to make offerings to it.

It’s worth noting that in the 12 months that I’ve been parsing the Lotus Sutra, I’ve apparently never offered these verses to explain exactly why the Buddha and his replicas go on to perform their supernatural powers.

So that’s that. Next month a cough and a finger snap.