Chapter 28 teaches the four kinds of normative conduct appropriate to the Lotus Sutra: securing the protection of the Buddha, planting roots of goodness, joining a good congregation, and resolving to save all beings. It then teaches in various ways the protection of followers of the Lotus Sutra through the grace of the Bodhisattva Universal Sage (Samantabhadra), which in turn became Universal Sage’s vow to practice the faith.

The Lotus Sutra itself comes to an end here. Yet the Sutra of Contemplation of the Dharma Practice of Universal Sage Bodhisattva (which is in line with chapter 28 of the Lotus Sutra) immediately follows, and has been taken as the concluding sutra of the Lotus Sutra, just as the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings (in line with on the “innumerable meanings” found in chapter 1) was placed at the beginning of the Lotus Sutra and regarded as its opening sutra. The three sutras taken together are called “The Threefold Lotus Sutra.” The Contemplation of Universal Sage Sutra emphasizes the vow of Universal Sage to practice the faith, or the repentance part of his meditation on practice. The theory of reality repentance found in this sutra especially has received much attention. Reality repentance is the teaching that:

The whole ocean of hindrances from past actions
Arises from illusion.
If you want to repent, you should sit upright
And reflect on the true nature of things.
All sins are like frost and dew.
The sun of wisdom can dissipate them.

Here the key point has to do with meditation on emptiness. In other words:

What is sin? What is virtue? As the thought of self is itself empty, neither sin nor virtue is our master.

It recommends that:

You should recite the Great Vehicle
And meditate on the emptiness and formlessness of things . . .

The sutra itself calls this “repentance without Sin.”
This “repentance without sin” was later misunderstood to mean that there is neither sin nor evil. But originally it was based on being captivated by sin or evil, and it advocates getting rid of such captivation through meditation on emptiness. Tiantai Zhiyi created the Lotus samadhi or meditation on the basis of this reality repentance.