Day 14

Day 14 covers all of Chapter 9, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Śrāvakas Who Have Something More to Learn and the Śrāvakas Who Have Nothing More to Learn, and opens Chapter 10, The Teacher of the Dharma.

Having last month heard Śākyamuni’s prediction for Rāhula in gāthās, we hear Śākyamuni’s prediction for two thousand Śrāvakas.

Thereupon the World-Honored One saw the two thousand Śrāvakas, of whom some had something more to learn while others had nothing more to learn. They were gentle, quiet and pure. They looked up at the Buddha with all their hearts.

The Buddha said to Ānanda, “Do you see these two thousand Śrāvakas, of whom some have something more to learn while others have nothing more to learn?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Ānanda! These people will make offerings to as many Buddhas, as many Tathāgatas, as the particles of dust of fifty worlds. They will respect those Buddhas, honor them, and protect the store of their teachings. They will finally go to the worlds of the ten quarters and become Buddhas at the same time. They will be equally called Treasure-Form, the Tathāgata, the Deserver of Offerings, the Perfectly Enlightened One, the Man of Wisdom and Practice, the Well-Gone, the Knower of the World, the Unsurpassed Man, the Controller of Men, the Teacher of Gods and Men, the Buddha, the World-Honored One. They will live for a kalpa. They will be the same in regard to the adornments of their worlds, the number of the Śrāvakas and Bodhisattvas of their worlds, the duration of the preservation of their right teachings, and the duration of the preservation of the counterfeit of their right teachings.”

On my lengthy list of things I’d like to do, one is to compile all of the predictions for future buddhahood, including the lifespan of the Buddha and the other features of their worlds. A lifespan of a single kalpa is the shortest among those predictions. Is there meaning to that?