In response to Maitreya’s question about why the Buddha has illuminated the worlds, Mañjuśrī responds that he has seen this happen before. That is, he remembers something that Maitreya does not, suggesting that the power of his memory to encompass distant space and time — one of the markers of enlightenment in Buddhism — surpasses even that of Maitreya. It also suggests that Mañjuśrī has been cultivating the bodhisattva path far longer even than Maitreya, who was said to be but one lifetime away from achieving buddhahood. This is but one of many moments in which the Lotus Sūtra reverses conventional hierarchies by revealing hitherto unimagined expanses of the past.