DESCRIPTION

This chapter begins with the Buddha surprising the audience with a revelation that snce he actually attained Buddhahood, countless, limitless hundreds of thousands of myriads of kotis of nayutas of kalpas have passed, not merely forty years. The Buddha uses the analogy of placing particles in lands and then grinding all those lands into particles to describe the number of kalpas that have passed since his attainment of enlightenment.

The Buddha then explains this upaya using the parable of the physician father who cures his children’s poisoning by appearing to have died. This is the seventh parable associated with the Lotus Sutra.