The number of disciples who are assured of becoming buddhas in the future increases from five hundred to twelve hundred in chapter 8, where we also find the parable of the priceless jewel in the lining of a robe. A good friend told a penniless man that he had sewn a priceless jewel into the lining of his robe when he was drunk. This story is thus about recovery. The poor, drunken man is likened to disciples who had fallen into nihilism, the friend is the Buddha, and the jewel in the lining of the robe is their hidden possibility of becoming buddhas through acts of compassion (bodhisattva practice). We are taught that:

Keeping their bodhisattva actions
As inward secrets,
Outwardly
They appear as shravakas.

Thus the disciples who had fallen into a nihilistic way of life, including the solitary practitioners, were all revived by the Buddha’s call. And they received assurance of becoming buddhas in the future. Chapter 9, which follows, is a summary of this.

Within this group of disciples were some who still had room to learn and some who were regarded as having no further need of study. Those who attained the stage of not having anything more to learn were called arhats. An arhat is a saint who deserves people’s respect and reverence. Essentially, it was another term for the Buddha, used with a positive connotation. But after the rise of Mahayana Buddhism it was often used as a pejorative term for Small Vehicle Buddhists who had become nihilistic because they thought there was nothing more they needed to learn in life.

Such Small Vehicle Buddhists can be regarded as being of two kinds: direct disciples of the Buddha and solitary practitioners. Later, in addition to “Small Vehicle,” it came to be called “the two vehicles.” Be that as it may, what we see in chapter 9 is that all the Small Vehicle Buddhists, both shravakas and pratyekabuddhas, are assured of becoming buddhas in the future whether they are in need of further learning or not. With this the chapter ends. As the text says, “Then the two thousand people in training and no longer in training, hearing the Buddha’s assurance, were ecstatic with joy.” The significance of this is that the form of the Lotus Sutra is such that, through this chapter, the Buddha speaks to his direct disciples, the shravakas. “Two thousand” is just a round number and can be taken to mean all followers of the Small Vehicle.