In Nichiren’s reading, the predictions of future buddhahood that Śākyamuni Buddha confers at the beginning of [Chapter 13, Encouragement for Keeping this Sutra] on the remaining śrāvaka disciples — Mahāprajāpatī, his aunt and foster mother, and Yaśodharā, his former wife and the mother of Rāhula — were further evidence that the Lotus, unlike other Mahāyāna sūtras, guaranteed buddhahood to women, a point he stressed to his female followers. To one woman he wrote that she, practicing as she did in the present, troubled world, far surpassed Mahāprajāpatī, who had vowed in this chapter only to “extensively expound this sūtra in other lands.”