[The Parable of the Burning House] is interpreted as saying that the world is like a burning house. But the idea of escaping from the world is not what the sutra teaches. Elsewhere it makes clear that we are to work in the world to save others. The point here, I think, is more that we are like children at play, not paying enough attention to the environment around us. Perhaps it is not the whole world that is in flames, but our playgrounds, the private worlds we create out of our attachments and out of our complacency. Thus, leaving the house is not escaping from the world but leaving behind our play-world, our attachments and illusions, or some of them, in order to enter a real world.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 191

Parables are analogies, but never perfect ones. [The Parable of the Burning House] provides an image of four separate vehicles. But if we follow the teaching of the sutra as a whole, the One Buddha Way is not an alternative to other ways; it includes them. A limitation of this parable is that it suggests that the diverse ways (the lesser carts) can be replaced by the One Way (the special cart). But the overall teaching of the sutra makes it plain that there are many paths within the Great Path, which integrates them, i.e., they are together because they are within the One Way. To understand the lesser ways as somehow being replaced by the One Way would entail rejecting the whole idea of the bodhisattva-way, which the sutra clearly does not do. In fact, the whole latter part of the sutra is a kind of extolling of the bodhisattva-way. Also, in the story itself, in running out of the burning house the children are pursuing the śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva ways. In terms of their ability to save, the three ways are essentially equal. They all work.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 191

Here [in the story about Wonderful Voice Bodhisattva’s visit] again is expressed the idea that the sahā world, despite its obvious shortcomings, is something special, and that this is related to the presence in it of Śākyamuni Buddha. There may be other reasons for this, but I suppose that the great size and magnificence and accomplishments of the Bodhisattva Wonderful Voice contribute to the enhancement of the sahā world and Śākyamuni, since he comes to the sahā world to pay tribute to Śākyamuni Buddha.

In fact, there seems to be an implication here, and in other instances where bodhisattvas come from outside the sahā world to visit Śākyamuni Buddha, that the sahā world is especially important because it is a more appropriate, that is, more difficult, place for bodhisattva practice. One of the repeated themes of the sutra is that one can and should learn from difficulties. Salvation, in this world, is not a matter of freedom from suffering and distress, but rather an ongoing process of overcoming evil by helping others. In this sutra, for example, Śākyamuni Buddha simply thanks Devadatta, well known elsewhere as the personification of evil, for being his teacher, and predicts that Devadatta too will become a buddha. In this sense, this world offers many opportunities for one to enter the Buddha-way through bodhisattva practice.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 188-189

In chapter 16, the Buddha has made clear that he is alive at all times and, in this sense, universal or eternal. In chapter 17, having heard this, an incredibly large number of living beings, bodhisattvas, and bodhisattva mahāsattvas receive various blessings, such as the ability to memorize everything heard, unlimited eloquence, power to turn the wheel of the Dharma, supreme enlightenment after eight, four, three, two or one rebirths, or the determination to achieve supreme enlightenment. In all twelve different groups within the congregation assembled to hear the Buddha preach are mentioned here, each of them enormously large, and each having received various blessings as a consequence of hearing about the everlasting life of the Buddha.

In response to this joyous occasion, the gods in heaven(s) rained beautiful flowers and incense down on the innumerable buddhas of the ten directions who had assembled in the sahā world, on Śākyamuni Buddha and Many Treasures Buddha, then sitting together in the latter’s magnificent stupa, and on the great bodhisattvas, and on the monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen assembled there. Deep in the sky, wonderful sounding drums reverberated by themselves. The many Indras and Brahmas from the other Buddha-lands came. Then the gods rained all kinds of heavenly jewel-encrusted garments in all directions, and burned incense in burners which moved around the whole congregation by themselves. And above each of the buddhas assembled under the great jeweled trees, bodhisattvas bearing jeweled streamers and such, and singing with wonderful voices, lined up vertically, one on top of the other, all the way to the heaven of Brahma.

Clearly the events depicted here are both magical and cosmological in scope. The story involves countless worlds, buddhas, bodhisattvas, and wondrous events with flowers, sound, and incense — all in praise of the revelation, in the sahā world, of the good news of the Buddha’s ever-presence. Within the story it is, in a sense, important that there are many worlds in ten directions, and gods as well as buddhas, bodhisattvas, and humans. But, in another sense, how many directions there are, or how many different kinds of beings there are, has virtually no importance. In fact, here and I think only here, the text refers to nine directions, rather than the usual ten. What is important is that no matter how many directions there are, no matter how many worlds there are, and no matter how many kinds of living beings there are, all are delighted and transformed by and extol the ever-presence of the Buddha — the fact that none of them ever is or ever was or ever will be without the presence of the Buddha. The story uses a cosmological setting, but it does so for the purpose of proclaiming the significance and magnificence of Śākyamuni Buddha, the Buddha of the sahā world.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 186-187

Here there is an apparent contradiction — the sutra clearly insists that there is no time in which the Buddha is not present, but it also claims that he became a buddha. Chapter 16 answers Maitreya’s question at the end of chapter 15 by teaching that Śākyamuni has been a buddha from the very remote past, but this does not explain how he both always is and yet became enlightened. What is involved here, I think, is that on the one hand, in order both to affirm this world and to identify the Buddha with the Dharma, the everlasting process which is the truth about the nature of things, it is important to have him be eternal or everlasting. Just as there is, and can be, no place from which the Buddha is completely absent, there is no time in which the Buddha is not present. On the other hand, the very meaning of “enlightenment” requires that it be a process, and thus requires that Śākyamuni Buddha became enlightened. In fact, in several places the Lotus Sutra teaches that Śākyamuni Buddha became enlightened only after countless kalpas of bodhisattva practice. Further, only if he became enlightened could Śākyamuni Buddha be a model for others or an encouragement for them to enter the Buddha-way. So an apparent contradiction remains unresolved.

The sutra can be indifferent to such problems because they are soteriologically unimportant. Just as in chapter 24 when the Bodhisattva Wonderful Voice expresses to the Buddha of his own land his desire to visit the sahā world to pay tribute to Śākyamuni Buddha, and that Buddha warns him that even though the sahā world is not smooth or clean and its buddha and bodhisattvas are short, he should not disparage or make little of that world or think that its buddha and bodhisattvas are inferior. In this story too the point is that the sahā world is not to be regarded as inferior. In other words, the real point here is an affirmation of the sahā world. It is, we are told, a world which should not look for help from other worlds because it does not need help from elsewhere.

Thus the use of miracle stories in the Lotus Sutra is exactly the opposite of what is so often the case. Instead of using stories of other worlds as a way of encouraging escape from or negligence toward this world, in the Lotus Sutra stories of other worlds are used to radically affirm the reality and importance of this world.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 185-186

Exactly what is meant by the empty space in the lower part of the sahā world below the earth is unclear. Probably it is simply the most convenient way to have this huge number of bodhisattvas be hidden, yet not be in the less than human regions within the earth, and not be among the heavenly deities, yet still be in the sahā world. In other words, both for the sake of the story and for the sake of the central message of the Lotus Sutra, it is important that these bodhisattvas be both hidden and of this world.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 184

In the [Parable Of The Skillful Physician And His Sick Children], the physician-father of course represents the Buddha, and his supposed death is like the Buddha’s entry into nirvana. In reality, in the view of the Lotus Sutra, the universal Buddha, the loving father of the world who is working to save all from suffering, has not and will not pass away. He pretends to pass away only in order to get people to be more responsible for their own lives. This is a good example of how the sutra takes what is a basically negative notion, nirvana, and turns it into a world-affirmative one.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 183

The idea in the story of the jeweled Stupa that Śākyamuni Buddha creates a unified world out of many worlds is especially significant. The Lotus Sutra is an integrative sutra. Throughout, it emphasizes unity, oneness, integration, some kind of coming together. As the truth is ultimately one, i.e., without internal contradiction, so too the teachings of the Buddha who discovered the truth must be one. That is, finally there can be only one Buddha-way. But in the Lotus Sutra, the one does not destroy or denigrate the many. Though integrated, though the many become as one, they remain many. The cosmos only exists by virtue of the fact that it has worlds. Similarly, in the Lotus Sutra, the teaching, the Buddha Dharma, only exists by virtue of the many teachings. Neither right views nor right living can be a matter of replacing the many by the one.

That the one who creates a single world out of many worlds is Śākyamuni Buddha is related to his being, as said earlier, both one and distributed throughout the cosmos. In other words, Śākyamuni Buddha can unify Buddhism and the cosmos, and therefore the life of the true hearer precisely because he himself is both one and many.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; Gene Reeves, The Lotus Sutra as Radically World-affirming, Page 182