This essay is an investigation into the certain distinctive rhetorical features of the Saddharmapundarika Sutra, with special attention to their relation to Tiantai doctrine. In particular，it focuses on the relation between the sravaka disciples and the Bodhisattva's, or between a particular figure's own sravakahood and the same figure's bodhisattvahood，which is seen as the primary locus classicus for the Tiantai doctrine of "inherent entailment." In the case of Sariputra, we are told that he has forgotten his own Bodhisattva vows, that he has been a Bodhisattva all along without knowing it. In the Tiantai reading，this further means that his practice as a sravaka has been a part of this practice. Zhiyi analyzes the sutra according to four categories：1) Narrative causes and conditions,2) Categorization of Buddhist teachings, 3) Roots and traces and 4) Mind contemplation. It is the third of these categories that is of special relevance to the Lotus, the analysis of the " original" or "root" identities of all the characters in the text and their present "traces" of apparent situation and practice. We are told in this part of the Fahua wenju commentary that all the sravakas and Bodhisattvas in the text have long been Buddhas. Zhiyi further introduces the category of "Mahayana sravakas, " a contradiction in terms which crystallizes the Tiantai view on this matter.For he ends up concluding that we are not to understand the relation of roots and traces as a form of conscious dissimulation，where one is inwardly aware of one's Buddhahood but pretends to be a sravaka or even a heretic，or as a differentiation between "real" Bodhisattvahood and "merely apparent" sravakahood，but rather in accord with the forgetting of one's own status as a further exemplification of that status. The Mahayana sravakas are all the more Bodhisattvas the more they are real sravakas. Moreover，in a distinctive Tiantai move，they are only in this way "true sravakas" -- to be a Bodhisattva, in fact，is simply to be a sravaka (literally，"sound-hearer") only more so：they now "make heard" the "sound" of the Dharma universally，as Bodhisattvas.
The vision of time that emerges from this, and the rhetorical emphasis on repeated realization and homonymous Buddhas awakening again and again in the text，is one where certain moments of awakening distinguish themselves by their ability to recognize themselves in every past and future moment，to see all previous and future deviations from themselves as also instantiations of themselves; awakening is a moment which see all previous and future non-awakening as forms of awakening，as forgettings of awakening which further express awakening. This temporal position is analogous to the Tiantai treatment of the "Buddhahood of insentient beings" in the spatial register：being awakened means seeing awakening even in the non-awake insentient beings,as forms of the expression of awakening，such that it can never be definitively said that any of these beings are purely awakened or deluded，sentient or insentient. Hence we find that the Lotus Sutra's treatment of Sariputra's forgetting of his bodhisattvahood serves as a model for some of the most distinctive Tiantai doctrines.
