DESCRIPTION

This chapter begins a suite of chapters dedicated to different bodhisattvas. Here, a bodhisattva named Nakṣatrarājasaṅkusumitābhiñā (’Star King Flower’) asks the Buddha about the travels of Bhaiṣajyarāja Bodhisattva and his past ascetic practices?

The Buddha replies with an itivṛttaka about the time of the Buddha Candravimalasūryaprabhāsaśrī (’Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue’), when there was a bodhisattva called Sarvasattvapriyadarśana (’Gladly Seen by All Living Beings’). After attaining the samadhi of manifesting all form-bodies, the bodhisattva slathers himself in fragrant oils, incense and flowers, consumes oils and incense, and then lights himself on fire as an offering, burning his perfumed body for twelve hundred years. Then the Candravimalasūryaprabhāsaśrī Buddha announces his parinirvana, teaches the Lotus Sutra, and passes away. Sarvasattvapriyadarśana cremates the Buddha’s body, inters the relics, and then lights both his arms on fire as offerings to the Buddha, which miraculously grow back afterward. The itivṛttaka concludes with the revelation that the bodhisattva Sarvasattvapriyadarśana was a past life of Bhaiṣajyarāja, and the chapter ends with the Buddha extolling the merit of preserving the chapter and the Lotus Sutra.

It should be noted that, although Śākyamuni Buddha ordered his emanation Buddhas who had come from the ten directions to return to their original lands at the end of the previous chapter, Chapter Twenty-Three concludes with a reference to Prabhūtaratna Tathagata in the treasure tower stupa, connecting the narrative to earlier events in the sutra.