[T]he actual Shakyamuni is the living form of eternal life and the manifestation of a transhistorical Shakyamuni in history. Accordingly, even if that manifestation disappears, Shakyamuni does not. He exists eternally, beyond ordinary ways of viewing or thinking about being and nonbeing. Those who go beyond such ways of viewing or thinking can grasp this. This is the second meaning of the theory of everlasting Shakyamuni Buddha. In brief, the transhistorical Shakyamuni Buddha and the historical Shakyamuni Buddha are united. …

the Stupa indicates that the worlds of the ten directions are unified into one buddha-land. This, too, is intended to reveal that Shakyamuni Buddha is a unifying Buddha.

Chapter 16 finally completely reveals that Shakyamuni is really the Everlasting Original Buddha. Shakyamuni himself emphasizes this, saying that the everlasting Shakyamuni goes beyond the ways of thinking about and viewing things used by ordinary people, who cling to being and nonbeing. The sutra says:

“The Tathagata has insight into the threefold world as it really is. For him there is no birth or death, neither retreat from nor emergence into the world, no transmigration or extinction, neither being nor nonbeing, neither existence nor nonexistence, neither sameness nor difference, and neither deception nor non-deception. He does not see the threefold world through the eyes of an ordinary person.”

Thus, those who are deluded by inverted or perverse ways of thinking cannot see Shakyamuni:

Perverse living beings fail to see me
Even though I am close.

It is before those who are upright and gentle, and have put attachment to desire behind them, that Shakyamuni appears:

And when the living have become faithful,
Honest and upright and gentle,
Then, together with the assembly of monks
I appear on Holy Eagle Peak.

In other words, those who are free from attachment to such things as being and nonbeing are able to see the Buddha.