PRESENTED TO THE RIVERVIEW DHARMA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2017

DEDICATED TO THE TORONTO CENTRE OF GRAVITY BUDDHIST ASSOCIATION*

 

Foreword

The Lotus Discourse is the common English title of the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra, literally the “Discourse on the White Lotus of the True Teaching.” It is the basis of four schools of Mahayana Buddhism, the Tiantai, Tendai, Cheontae, and Nichiren, and is influential in Zen Buddhism. Many East Asian Buddhists regard the Lotus Discourse as the summation of the highest teachings of Buddhism.

Kogaku Fuse proposed in 1934 that the verse section of chapters I–IX and XVII are the oldest, dating them to the first century BCE, about the same time that the Pali Canon was first written down and the Prajnaparamita literature appeared. The prose section was added in the first century CE and the rest in two stages during the second century CE.

Tamura thinks that chapters II–IX were completed about 50 CE. Chapters X–XXII were added about 100 CE. Finally, chapters XXIII–XXVIII were added about 150 CE.

The Lotus Discourse was translated from Sanskrit into Chinese three times: in 286 CE, by Dharmaraksa; in 406  CE, by Kumarajiva; and a revised version of Kumarajiva’s text in 601 CE by Jnanagupta and Dharmagupta.

Although no longer extant, many scholars now believe that the Lotus Discourse was originally composed in a Prakrit language similar to Pali, and then translated into Sanskrit and Chinese. It is, therefore, part of the Prakrit Buddhist legacy, like the Pali Canon.

The Lotus Discourse is traditionally associated with the Innumerable Meanings Discourse, regarded as a prologue, and the Samanta Bhadra Meditation Discourse, as an epilogue. I’ll be discussing this in the last talk of the series on the Lotus Discourse since they were composed much later.

The Lotus Discourse was first translated into a European language by Eugene Burnouf and published in 1852. A chapter of the translation in progress was published in 1844 in the American transcendentalist magazine, The Dial. Hendrik Kern published the first and only complete English translation of the Sanskrit version in 1884. Seven English translations have been published to date. Spanish and German translations also exist.

According to Donald Lopez, the Lotus Discourse presents “a radical revision of both the Buddhist path and of the person of the Buddha.” Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Candrakirti, Santideva, and other authors in the Madyamaka and Yogacara schools frequently cite the Lotus.

Several commentaries on the Lotus Discourse exist, including an Indian commentary by Vasubandhu and a Chinese commentary by Tao Sheng. Zhiyi wrote two commentaries on the Discourse. Tao Sheng and Zhiyi both related the teachings of the Lotus Discourse to the doctrine of Buddha nature (tathagatagarbha). Dogen also refers frequently to the Lotus Discourse , and spent his last days reciting and writing from the Lotus Discourse in his hermitage, which he named “Lotus Sutra Hermitage.” Hakuin Ekaku, the Rinzai Zen master, is said to have been enlightened while reading the third chapter of the Discourse.

Seten Tomh originally presented this commentary on the Lotus Discourse to the members of the Riverview Buddha Centre as a series of four one-hour talks in the summer of 2017.

Preface

All Mahayana Buddhists revere the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra. It claims to reestablish the primordial spiritual teaching. It bears significant resemblances to the Pali Canon. Many East Asians regard the Lotus Discourse as distilling the ultimate Buddhist teaching. The book exists in Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, and Vietnamese versions, as well as many translations into Western languages.

The Lotus Discourse is often published with the Discourse of Innumerable Meanings and the Discourse of Meditation of the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue, as a preface and an epilogue, respectively. I have approached the Lotus Discourse as a single synthetic work, working through the chapters in their straightforward formal order.

Whatever its development, the number of chapters of the final form of the Lotus Discourse, 28, is the number of the Moon (4 × 7), an important symbol of the teaching in the Pali Canon and elsewhere. Twenty-eight is also the number of historical buddhas listed in the Buddhavamsa, culminating in Gautama (Maitreya is #29).

Like another Chinese discourse, the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, the Lotus Discourse has been credited with at least one enlightenment experience (that of Hakuin Ekaku [1686–1768], reviver of the Rinzai school of Japanese Zen, while reading Chapter III).

Scholars have identified three main themes in the threefold division of the Discourse: the One Vehicle of the Wonderful Teaching, i.e., the essential oneness of all Buddhist ways; the Everlasting Original Buddha, the primordial Buddha archetype or paradigm; and the Way of the Awakening being (bodhisattva), emphasizing the method or path.

The Lotus Discourse and the Pali Canon

There is growing acceptance of the view that the original language of the earliest sections of the Lotus Discourse was not Sanskrit, but a Prakrit language, like Pali (Kern finds numerous vestiges of Magadhi and Pali in his translation of the Sanskrit version of the Lotus Discourse ). Although clearly a Mahayana text, the Lotus Discourse is filled with references to the Pali Canon. As we know from my talk on “The Early Buddhist Schools,” the Mahayana grew out of the early Hinayana schools rather than as a reaction against them, as is widely but wrongly believed.

The Lotus Discourse includes many references which will be familiar to readers of the Pali Canon: including places (Mount Grdhrakuta, Vulture Peak, the Buddha’s favourite peak in Rajagaha), people (Mahakasyapa, Sariputra, Mahamaudgalyayana, Ananda, Rahula, Yasodhara, et al.), doctrines (arhantship,  emancipation, final emancipation, the Four Great Truths, disciples, void or emptiness, perfect wisdom, self-born, self-concentration, skill, mantras, tathagatas, wheel of causes and effects [i.e., interconnectedness], the world, sixty-two false views, and many others), and even events (e.g., the enlightenment of and subsequent preaching by the Buddha and the trope of remembering similar situations with disciples in past lives), but the Lotus Discourse represents a radical re-visioning of the meaning and significance of the Buddhist project as it introduces a new understanding of the goal of attainment and the character of the path itself.

While it is fashionable to say that the Lotus Discourse is rhetorical and has no real content, one can identify over a hundred essential concepts throughout the Lotus Discourse , all organized around the central revelation of the Lotus Discourse , identified by A.K. Warder with the fifteenth chapter of the book. Warder is probably referring to chapter XV of Kern’s Sanskrit edition, which is chapter XVI of the Chinese edition since chapter XII was split in two in the fifth or sixth century. None of the content was lost, although there are subtle differences between the Sanskrit and the Chinese versions. Scholars remain uncertain as to which version was first.

The Symbol of the Lotus

The Sanskrit word pundarika means “lotus flower,” as well as the colour “white.” Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains all revere the lotus. Buddhists regard it as a symbol of body, speech, and mind. Rooted in the mud of the world, the lotus flower blooms on the surface of the water, untainted by the mud from which it draws its nourishment. It also symbolizes non-attachment since water rolls easily off its smooth petals. Many Asian divine beings are depicted sitting on lotus flowers. When the Bodhisattva first walked, lotus flowers were said to bloom from his footprints. Padmasambhava is also said to have been born sitting on a lotus flower at the age of eight.

The Idea of the Tathagata

Tathagata is a somewhat mysterious word that the Buddha uses throughout the Pali Canon with reference to himself, and less frequently with reference to arhants. It is generally translated as “one who has thus gone” or “one who has thus come.” The word is used as though it were familiar to its audience, but has not been found in any pre-Buddhist context. Even as early as Buddhaghosa (5th century CE) the exact meaning of the word was uncertain. In his commentary on the Digha Nikaya, Buddhaghosa gives eight alternative definitions: one who has arrived or walked in such a way; one who knows reality; one who has won, discerned, or declares truth; one whose deeds accord with his words; and the great doctor whose medicine cures all ills.

The Anguttara Nikaya says that the Tathagata is called such because what is seen, heard, sensed, and cognized, attained, searched into, and pondered over by the mind is fully understood. In other words, the Tathagata is one who understands. Tathata refers to “thusness” or “suchness,” reality in itself. Richard Gombrich has suggested that the word means “one like that.” The word appears in the Mahabharata where it says, “Thus (tatha) is gone (gati) of those who have realized the Truth.”

In the Pali Canon, the Tathagata is described as immeasurable, inscrutable, hard to fathom, and not apprehended. Similarly, the Lotus Discourse refers frequently to the “mystery of the Tathagatas.” The Tathagata is free of karmic tendencies, and is thus beyond the comprehension of other beings. They are “deep, immeasurable, unfathomable, like the mighty ocean,” rather like the sage of Laozi. Although this is sometimes taken to imply that the Tathagata has no post-mortem existence, this is strictly speaking not necessarily implied, since it does not follow that because something cannot be seen that it does not exist. The Buddha explicitly rejects nihilism, and his use of the tetralemma is far more profound than simple negation. Edward Conze notes that in the Mahayana view the Tathagata refers to the true inherent selfhood of the human being. However, we must remember that this “selfhood” is not the inherently self-existing atomic “noun” self of the Upanishads but a continuous but essentially transient consecution of sentience that is uncharacterizable, the so-called mindstream. It is the process philosophy of Whitehead or the “I seem to be a verb” of R. Buckminster Fuller.

The Lotus Discourse appears to have originated in Kashmir during the Fourth Buddhist Council of the Sarvastivadin school. In the Pali tradition, the Pali Canon was written down during the Fourth Buddhist Council in the first century BCE. The Sarvastivadin Fourth Buddhist Council is believed to have been held during the reign of the Kusana emperor Kaniska (78–102 CE), confirming Tamura’s chronology of the Lotus Discourse . Interestingly, the tradition that the Lotus Discourse appeared five hundred years after the Parinirvana corresponds to 423–399 BCE, which is not far off the increasingly accepted view that the Buddha died between 410 and 370 BCE. Although the Theravadins do not accept the authority of this council, the Sarvastivada was an influential Hinayana school that split off from the Sthaviravada in the third century BCE, during the reign of King Ashoka, the same school from which the Theravada claims descent. Warder notes that the Sarvastivada was the least conservative Hinayana school. Modern scholars believe that the Lotus Discourse was originally written in a Prakrit similar to Pali, and then translated into Sanskrit, like the Sarvastivada canon. It is ironic that the Lotus Discourse , arguably the most influential and important Mahayana discourse, seems to have originated as the work of a Hinayana school!

The Treasure House of Secrets

Chapter I

Causal Introduction

The Lion of the Shakyas is to make an exhortation, to declare the fixed nature of the Law.

The Lotus Discourse begins with the traditional words, “Thus have I heard,” referring to a story or tradition handed down from the past. Thus, the Discourse explicitly identifies itself with the words of the Buddha, despite its obvious non-historical or trans-historical character. The authors of the Discourse, who were presumably not fools, must have understood this very well and yet they chose to present the Discourse in a trans-historical context in order to make two points: (1) to identify the Discourse with the words of the Buddha, and (2) to demonstrate the transience and non-self-identity of historicity itself, and by this means to demonstrate the absolutely atemporal and transcendent character of the True Teaching that leads to utter emancipation. In other words, the form and format of the Lotus Discourse is itself a skilful method!

That said, the Discourse opens with the Buddha teaching the monastics on Vulture Peak, a favourite place of the Buddha outside Rajagaha. The Discourse improbably identifies the impossible number of twelve thousand arhants, and proceeds to name the top twenty-one. The names are familiar to us from the Pali Canon, but the situation is anything but “Paliesque.” The reader is transported into an alternate universe in which the ordinary limitations of time and space do not apply. This world is the world of pure mind. In case the reader has not “got it” yet, the Discourse goes on to number 180,016 monastics, awakening beings, various “divine sons,” “four great heavenly kings,” eight dragon kings, and other celestial musicians (kimnaras), mythic lovers with animal forms (gandharvas), antigods, and  celestial bird beings (garudas), plus as many as perhaps two or more million attendees.  What is being described here is a parallel universe that coincides with our world but obeys different natural laws: in short, the world of dreams, the imaginative realm, or the human psyche, which is itself, it should not be forgotten, a dimension of reality.

The inclusion in this list of four antigod kings is interesting in light of a long passage in the Vinaya where the antigods are spoken highly of and associated with concealed treasures and another passage in the discourses where many antigods come to honour the Buddha. These references echo an archaic teaching wherein the divine beings and antigods were not at war. The whole pyramid culminates in King Ajatashatru, the king of Magadha whose devout father, Bimbisara, supported the Buddha. After murdering his father and following a policy of violent expansion based on conquest, rather like Ashoka, Ajatashatru began to worry about the afterlife and became a supporter of the Buddha like the father he had murdered. However, he also patronized the Jains.

According to the Discourse, the Buddha preached the Discourse of Innumerable Meanings, often published as a preface to the Lotus Discourse . The Discourse of Innumerable Meanings gives teachings on virtue, preaching, and merit. After preaching the Discourse, he entered an altered state of consciousness or meditative state called “the contemplation of the station of innumerable meanings.” His body and mind became perfectly still. The sky rained down flowers and the earth shook. From his ajna chakra in the centre of the forehead a vector of attention emanated in the form of a laser-like light beam that illuminated eighteen thousand eastern worlds, revealing all sorts of beings including living and deceased buddhas, seekers, and awakening beings.

The assembly marvels at the spectacle, including Maitreya, the Future Buddha, who asks Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, the cause of it all. Manjushri tells Maitreya and the assembly that the Buddha is about to declare the Great Teaching that is hard to believe. Manjushri attributes the ultimate origin of this teaching to a trans-historical Buddha called “Sun Moon Light Tathagata.”

Manjushri says that the Buddha teaches three paths for three different sorts of person: For the disciples he declares the Four Noble Truths, based on the principle of  existential suffering, leading to nirvana. For the hermit buddhas he declares the doctrine of interconnectedness, based on the principle of emptiness, leading to self-realization. In addition, for the awakening beings he teaches the Six Perfections, based on the principle of compassion, leading to Buddhahood. “Sun Moon Light” also teaches the Discourse of Innumerable Meanings, which teaches the path of the awakening being, and enters meditation as the Buddha had done.

Manjushri goes on to articulate many varied ways that one can seek the Buddha-way, including generosity; monasticism; memorizing, reading, reciting, studying, and realizing the teaching; renunciation; devotion; and the cultivation of the qualities of radiance; energy; self-control; submission; meditation; self-sacrifice; spiritual science; and wisdom or indifference; and finally the practice of stupa worship.

When Manjushri finishes, the Buddha emanates another light beam that illuminates eighteen thousand eastern Buddha lands. Manjushri says that he was the Bodhisattva “Mystic Light,” the disciple and successor of the Buddha “Sun Moon Light,” and that Maitreya was the Bodhisattva “Fame Seeker,” who was a disciple of “Mystic Light.” Manjushri announces that the Buddha is about to preach the True Teaching.

It seems to be a universal spiritual idea, found in many religions including Gnosticism and native American spirituality, among others, that the universe is a vast, intricate and labyrinthine, multidimensional and interconnected network wherein all sorts of sentient beings appear in effectively infinite numbers at all stages of spiritual development and in all sorts of conditions over vast ages of time. Such a world includes many non-ordinary possibilities. This is the fundamental cosmic conception. Everything in the Lotus Discourse is of astronomical proportions, which in turn comments on the original teachings of the Buddha and the kind of worlds of experience that they reveal to the pure mind of the enlightened observer.

Chapter II

Skill in Means

This is the fixed vow of the Tathagatas: Let me, by accomplishing my course of duty, lead others to enlightenment.

Rousing from his meditation, the Buddha declares to Sariputra, the disciple foremost in wisdom in the Pali Canon, that the Buddha wisdom and its wisdom school cannot be understood or entered respectively by mere disciples or hermit buddhas. Nevertheless, countless buddhas throughout all time have used many teachings and clever stratagems to lead living beings to the ultimate realization.

The skill and wisdom of the Tathagata, however, is perfect; his mind has grasped the Infinite. Only a Buddha can know the Reality of All Existence in its Totality. The disciples and hermit buddhas in the assembly are perplexed, including Sariputra himself, but the Buddha declines Sariputra’s request to explain the revelation of the Lotus Discourse , declaring that neither the divine nor the human realms are prepared to know the truth. On the second request the Buddha declines again, stating further that divine beings, humans, and anti-gods are not prepared for the truth and that wrong-headed monastics might fall into hellish realms if they misunderstand.

After the third request, the Buddha relents, in accord with custom, whereupon five thousand monastics and householders walk out of the assembly due to their ignorance, spontaneously purifying the assembly, as during the lunar observance described in the Pali Canon. Sariputra, however, remained. The Buddha tells Sariputra that a Buddha only reveals this doctrine every three thousand years to teach human beings the Buddha wisdom concerning the pure mind that is true but trans-linguistic. This teaching is only for awakening beings. It is the truly universal, non-sectarian teaching, the singular truth to which all of the contingent skilful methods and systems of Buddhist philosophy and doctrines testify implicitly, leading beyond reason to perfect wisdom.

This process is eternal and ongoing. In a degenerate age (such as that in which we live), the teaching is taught by skilful methods to accommodate all the different imperfections of beings, to bring as many beings as possible to the realization of the truth. The Buddha declares especially that arhants should seek out Buddhahood and declares that, in the end, all those who aspire to Buddhahood, even if only for a moment, will achieve Buddhahood, in accordance with the inexorable law of moral causality whereby every cause must result in an effect and every effect must be the result of a cause.

Chapter III

A Parable 

It is most excellent and sweet, the most exalted in the world, that knowledge of the Buddhas, the most high among men; it is something sublime and adorable.

Sariputra is ecstatic listening to the Buddha’s words, but asks why the Buddha preaches the teaching of the “great vehicle” by means of the “small vehicle”? Sariputra blames it on the karmic limitations of the Buddha’s disciples, who set up arhantship in place of Buddhahood as the goal of the path. Later, the Buddha says that worldly beings need worldly means and must realize the nature of the world, illusory as it is, before they can realize the wisdom of the buddhas, “reality as it is.” This is of course an implicit reference to the Hinayana.

The Buddha teaches realization by means of three vehicles: the disciple, which leads to the realization of nirvana; the hermit buddha, which leads to self-realization; and the way of the awakening being, which leads to the perfect wisdom of Buddhahood. The arhants pursue “science with a master,” and thus are epiphenomenal, but the buddhas are primogenitary. The hermit buddhas and buddhas are self-ordained (“self-born”) and pursue “science without a master.” Interestingly, the texts agree that Buddhahood is possible even in a dark age where the teaching is not known.

The Buddha tells Sariputra that in fact he, the Buddha, “caused” Sariputra to pursue the way of the awakening being many ages ago, and facetiously compares Sariputra’s attainment of emancipation with ignorance of reality (the antithesis of enlightenment, which is traditionally characterized by the memory of past lives). The Buddha preaches the Lotus Discourse to reawaken the memory of Sariputra’s bodhisattva vow. The Buddha predicts that Sariputra will be reborn many ages in the future as a Buddha called “Flower Light Tathagata.” The Buddha goes on to describe his Buddha-land in highly ornate language, which echoes similar descriptions in the Pali Canon.

The assembly spontaneously removes their robes and offer them to the Buddha as a homage. Divine beings, radiant beings, and “divine sons” all pay homage to the Buddha with robes and flowers. Suddenly the robes start to dance in the sky to the sounds of celestial music! A voice is heard declaring that the Buddha has rolled the wheel of the teaching a second time since Varanasi, the place near Sarnath where the Buddha delivered his first sermon called “Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dharma” in the First Dispensation, about 445 BCE. Thus, the Lotus Discourse announces the advent of a Second Dispensation of the True Teaching about five hundred years after the Buddha passed. 

The Buddha tells Sariputra the famous parable of the burning house, immortalized in the poem of Bertolt Brecht. A great elder, old and rich, lives in a mansion with only a single small door but with hundreds of inhabitants including many non-human beings and thirty “young sons.” Like the elder himself, the huge house is old, and a fire trap. Suddenly it catches fire! The elder realizes that although he can save himself, his children are so preoccupied with their games that they have no impulse to flee. He calls to his children to flee, but they are so innocent and preoccupied by their distractions that they heed him not. Therefore, the father lies to his children, declaring that outside the gate they will find many toys to play with.

This device is identified with what the translator translates as “tactful means,” more conventionally translated as “skilful” or “expedient means” or method. Thus, the children rush outside and escape the fire. However, instead of giving the children toys he gives each one a fine chariot, with curtains, bullocks, servants, and guards. Note the symbolism of the chariot. In Cabala, the chariot (merkabah) is a symbol of the Great Work. We also find the symbolism of the chariot in the Tarot trump of the same name.

The message of the parable is that skilful method is a deception designed to lure the ignorant into the true teaching, where the lie is a metaphor for the truth that incorporates the cognitive limitations of those to whom it is addressed. On the other hand, one could also say that truth itself is a form of falsehood, since all cognitions are limited, mere labels. Thus, the truth of the teaching is trans-linguistic. Because it is trans-linguistic, it can only be learned from one who has already realized it, i.e., a Tathagata.

Chapter IV

Firm Resolution

We have obtained unexpectedly and without longing the jewel of omniscience, which we did not desire nor seek, nor search after, nor expect, nor require; and that inasmuch as we are the sons of the Tathagata.

Subhuti and several other arhants are awestruck and ecstatic. Rising and arranging their garments, and making obeisance to the Buddha, they ask the Buddha for a parable of the teaching, referring to the void, formlessness, and “non-function.” These seem to refer to the “three gates of emancipation” of the Hinayana, but the Discourse of the Seal of the Teaching, where they are summarized, is Mahayana.

The Buddha then tells a parable of a man who runs away from his father as a youth and stays away for several decades. As he grows older, he becomes needier. He wanders about the countryside searching for food and clothing. Thus, he returns to his native land. In the meantime, his father has become rich. Over the course of many years, he has missed his son, regretted his leaving, and wished to find him so that he can bequeath his legacy to his son, other than whom he has no heirs. By chance, the son arrives at his father’s house. The father recognizes the son, but the son does not recognize the father. Rather, he sees the wealth of the man and flees, thinking that he might be apprehended. The father sends servants after the son, who try to subdue the son by force but he resists. The father, realizing that this method will not work, develops a stratagem. He employs his son under the guise of a common householder, and over the course of the years, he befriends his son, until finally he openly reveals that this is his son and heir. In this way, he gradually brings his son to the truth of his patrimony, but not in such a way as would traumatize or overwhelm him.

The father is the Tathagata; the arhants are the Buddha’s sons. Through arhantship and the realization of emancipation, the Tathagata brings his “sons” to the realization of the Buddha or Tathagata wisdom of the bodhisattva path of the One Way. Thus, the Lotus Discourse is saying that Hinayana is really Mahayana, or at least the opening to Mahayana, but the arhants do not know this. Put another way, Hinayana reveals the teaching from the perspective of worldly ignorance; Mahayana, from the perspective of enlightenment, which transcends nirvana and worldliness. Nirvana itself is just part of the dualistic Hinayana construct, and is itself transcended by true realization.

Chapter V

Medicinal Plants

I am the Dharmaraja, born in the world as the destroyer of existence.

The Buddha tells Kasyapa, the arhant who recited the verse portion of the previous chapter, that a Tathagata is full of merit and cannot tell a lie, a doctrine that we find in the Pali Canon. He is the king of the teaching. His exposition of the teaching is skilful. The teaching of the Tathagata leads to the “stage” of “perfect knowledge.” Having perfect understanding of the teaching, he reveals the gnosis of perfect Buddha wisdom to all.

The Buddha compares the Tathagata to a cloud pouring down rain throughout the universe, fertilizing every sort of medicinal plant. “From the rain of one cloud [each] according to the nature of its kind acquires its development, opening its blossoms and bearing its fruit. Though produced in one soil and moistened by the same rain, yet these plants and trees are all different.” From the diversity of life, the Buddha infers the manifestation of the teaching adapting itself to the conditions in which it manifests. This is of course a characteristic of all living beings. The Tathagata spreads the teaching throughout the “three-thousand-great thousandfold world” (the chiliocosm), including divine beings, humans, and antigods, which might be compared to the current scientific understanding of existence as consisting of a vast number of planets, stars, galaxies, and universes in potentially infinite proliferation. Buddhism understood that the structure of existence is recursive, i.e., infinitely differentiated through repetition, like a fractal, and totally interconnected at the most fundamental level. The Buddha teaches the teaching to all beings in all ways, as it is written in the Pali Canon, “each for himself,” thus benefitting all beings and bringing them all to the teaching according to each one’s innate nature and capacity, thus effecting the regeneration of the world, beyond the duality of nirvana and worldliness.

The Tathagata teaches the “unitary essential law” that consists of deliverance from mortality, abandonment of nihilism, extinction of the extremes, and finally the perfect gnosis or wisdom concerning the “seeds” by which everything grows and develops according to its own nature. Only the Tathagata knows which stage each being is at. The final resolution is the “final nirvana of eternal tranquility, ending in return to the void.” The realization of the essential emptiness of existence is the method.

Chapter VI

Prediction of Buddhahood

His magic power, while he reveals supreme enlightenment, is inconceivable.

The Buddha predicts that Mahakasyapa, who instigated the First Buddhist Council, will become a Buddha called “Radiance Tathagata” in the far future. The Buddha declares the doctrine of the three dharma stages or phases, called Righteous Law, Counterfeit Law, and Decline of the Law. After the decline of the Law, a new Buddha appears to renew the teaching and regenerate the process. Each of these stages lasts for many ages, and thus lies beyond historical time. The transcendent Buddha paradigm or archetype itself acts in the world timelessly, revealing the teaching. The Buddha makes similar predictions with respect to other arhants in the assembly.

Chapter VII

Former Connection

Move forward the wheel, O thou whose sight is infinite! Rarely art thou met in the course of many kotis of Aeons. Display the benevolence thou hast observed in so many former generations; open the gate of immortality.

Chapter VII of the Lotus Discourse introduces a trans-historical Buddha named Universal Surpassing Wisdom (Mahabhijnajnanabhibhu). This Buddha had sixteen sons prior to his enlightenment. According to the Sanskrit version of the Lotus Discourse , the “Brahma heavenly kings” travel vast distances (“five hundred myriad kotis of domains,” a koti itself referring to tens or hundreds of millions or more), coming from all directions in search of the luminous phenomenon that accompanies the enlightenment of Universal Surpassing Wisdom, to the Bodhi tree in the “western quarter” in their “aerial cars” (the Chinese commentaries describe these as mobile like carriages), where they circle him hundreds of thousands of times and strew him with flowers.

These “aerial cars” are themselves described as luminous. The alternative translation, “palaces,” suggests that these “aerial cars” are inhabited. I have discussed the relationship between the UFO phenomenon and Buddhism in “Buddhism and the UFO Phenomenon.” They entreat the Buddha to reveal the teaching after 180 ages of ignorance.

The Buddha introduces the topic of time dilation, declaring, “by the power of my Tathagata-wisdom, I observe the length of time as if it were only today.” He also alludes to Buddhist cosmology, specifically the realm of the thirty-three. Usually this is interpreted with reference to the thirty-three divine beings of the Vedic pantheon. Trāyastriṃśa is, of course, the highest realm atop Mount Sumeru and the second of the six heavens of the desire realm — two levels above the human world, situated between the realm of the Four Great Kings below and the mysterious Yama realm above.

Universal Surpassing Wisdom teaches the Four Great Truths and the Law of the Twelve Causes, a.k.a. Interconnectedness, in both forward and reverse order, culminating in the annihilation of old age, death, grief, lamentation, suffering, and distress, in response to which billions and trillions of beings have their minds freed. Finally, he preaches the Lotus Discourse to his four sons and their followers. However, although half the assembly accept and believe in the Lotus Discourse , half doubt it. After this Universal Surpassing Wisdom goes into retreat and practises meditative absorption for 84,000 ages. Meanwhile, his sons disseminate the Lotus Discourse .

Universal Surpassing Wisdom emerges from his retreat and declares that everyone who believes in the Lotus Discourse will attain “the Tathagata-wisdom of Perfect Enlightenment.” The Buddha (Shakyamuni, the original speaker of the Lotus Discourse ) identifies himself with the sixteenth son of Universal Surpassing Wisdom. All of Universal Surpassing Wisdom’s sons become buddhas in various places, and the Buddha himself teaches under different names. Thus, the Buddha teaches the fundamental axiom of the perennial or ancient philosophy, of which historical Buddhism is just one expression.

The Buddha distinguishes between two emancipations, initial and final, the former associated with causalism and imperfect, but the distinction is still mysterious. In fact, we find a parallel distinction in the Pali Canon, between emancipation “with residue” (or “substrate”), which the Buddha experienced at the age of 35, and “final nirvana,” without substrate, which the Buddha experienced at the age of 80, when his physical body died. This is called “[real] extinction.” Only by the skilful method of the single or Buddha vehicle of the Tathagata, which is identical with the bodhisattva way, is final emancipation attained. The Lotus Discourse can only be understood by those who have penetrated or comprehended the teaching of the void or emptiness, which the Buddha says is the essence of the Law of the Twelve Causes.

The Buddha teaches a parable where a group of travellers on a long, hard, winding path, led by a seasoned guide, become exhausted and distraught at not reaching the goal and want to turn back. Thus, the guide conjures the mirage of a beautiful city where the travellers can rest, and tells them that that is the goal. To make them go on. The travellers enter the illusory city with great hope, satisfied and refreshed, certain that they have reached the end. Once they are content, the guide tells them that the city is illusory, and entreats them to make the final trek to the Place of Jewels, the true goal. Thus, they come to final emancipation. This story is like the story in the Pali Canon, where the teaching may be discarded after emancipation, like a used raft.

Chapter VIII

Prediction for Five Hundred Monks

There will be cars of gods stationed in the sky; the gods will behold men, and men will behold the gods.

Purna, son of Maitrayani, one of the ten disciples of the Buddha, noted for his eloquence, rises and praises the Buddha. The Buddha praises Purna too, declaring that next to himself Purna is the most lucid. The Buddha predicts that he will become the Buddha “Radiance of the Law Tathagata.” The Buddha declares that his “Buddha-land” will be as large as a chiliocosm, wherein the gods will inhabit “palaces … in the sky.”

We have already noted the alternative translation of “palaces” as “aerial cars,” and the context makes it clear that here we are referring to a universe, not a planet. The Discourse states that humans and divine beings will behold each other in these celestial palaces. Interestingly, his Buddha-land will be genderless because there will be no carnal passion (presumably they will be “spontaneously born,” like the divine beings in the Pali Canon), a notion echoed by Jesus in the synoptic gospels (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34–36). The inhabitants of Purna’s Buddha-land will be luminous and have the power of flight. The Buddha predicts the future destiny and Buddhahood of 1,200 arhants.

The arhants declare their realization that the arhant’s emancipation is unsatisfactory and that more remains to be done. The Buddha originally taught Perfect Wisdom, which is implicitly identified with Buddhahood, but the arhants settled for partial or incomplete emancipation because that was the easier path. Now they realize that arhantship is merely a prelude to Buddhahood, that is, the path of the awakening being, and they declare their aspiration to achieve the final, real emancipation of complete and perfect Buddhahood.

Chapter IX

Prediction for Ananda and Others

I am freed from all doubts; I am ready for enlightenment.

The Buddha predicts the future Buddhahood of his disciples. Ananda will become the Buddha “Sovereign Universal King of Wisdom [Great as] Mountains and Oceans Tathagata.” Ananda’s attainment of Buddhahood is the fruit of an ancient vow to treasure the teaching.

The Buddha predicts that Rahula will become the Buddha “Treader on Seven-Jewelled Lotuses Tathagata.”

The Buddha tells Ananda that two thousand arhants will attain Buddhahood in the far future.

Recap

The Lotus Discourse is rooted in the Pali tradition and maybe even in the Pali or at least a similar Prakrit language. Although it appears extremely innovative, we know from “The Early Buddhist Schools” that about half of the early Hinayana schools were moving toward a more liberal  understanding of the teaching. The original stratum of the Lotus Discourse goes back to the first century BCE, about the same time that the Pali Canon was first written down. Mahayana Buddhists highly revere the Lotus Discourse , which has even been credited with triggering enlightenment in Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1768), reviver of the Rinzai school of Japanese Zen, while reading the third chapter. Three large themes have been identified in the Lotus Discourse :

• The ultimate unity of all teachings;
• The primordial Buddha archetype; and
• The bodhisattva vow as the essential method of liberation.

The lotus is a Buddhist symbol of body, speech, and mind. The lotus flower or blossom is an emblem of realization, untainted despite being rooted in the mud of worldliness. Similarly, the awakening being enjoys the fruits of realization but remains involved in the world out of compassion for suffering beings.

In the Lotus Discourse , the Buddha refers to himself as the Tathagata, a somewhat mysterious word well translated by Hurvitz as the “Thus Come One.” The Lotus Discourse is the revelation of the essential mystery of the Tathagata, conceived in the interiority of his own enlightened mind. Thus, the Lotus Discourse is the direct manifestation of enlightenment itself, whereas the Pali Canon manifests enlightenment through the conditionality of unenlightened and worldly experience. Thus, the Lotus Discourse is radiant and ecstatic, whereas the Pali discourses largely (though not exclusively) emphasize suffering and ignorance. This insight explains the essential difference of form between Hinayana and Mahayana.

The Lotus Discourse declares itself to be the authentic philosophy of the Buddha, yet it is presented in an obviously trans-historical way, thus raising the question of what “the word of the Buddha”  means and the nature of reality itself. The phantasmagorical world of the Lotus Discourse is a fantastic display imagined from the perspective of direct realization. The Lotus Discourse is an  opera, wherein the Buddha is the central figure of a vast cast of innumerable sorts of beings, all engaged in a series of grand speeches and gestures, in the course of which the Buddha progressively reveals his superior and indeed superlatively transcendent understanding of the teaching. It is a remarkable coincidence that the Lotus Discourse originated about the same time that Jesus taught the Gospel in Galilee and Jerusalem, fufilling much the same function in relation to Judaism.

The cosmology of the Lotus Discourse is the cosmology of Buddhism: an extended horizontal dimension consisting of a virtual infinity of universes, galaxies, stars, planets, beings, and atoms, as a single plane of a vertically extended hierarchy of greater or lesser degrees of energy, sentience, suffering, wisdom, power, and bliss. Broadly, this vertical axis consists of the divine realm, the human realm, and the demonic realm. The entire system functions in accord with the law of moral causality and the principle of interconnectedness.

This includes astronomical phenomena and luminous aerial “cars” or palaces, time dilation, and travelling through higher dimensions of experience over vast epochs of time. Here divine beings and humans interact.

The Buddha’s teaching method is described as a stratagem or “skilful method”  whereby an infinity of buddhas throughout time seek to communicate the teaching to suffering beings by the most effective means adapted to the strengths or limitations of the disciples themselves, thus creating the appearance of a great diversity of teachings, whereas ultimately, there is only one teaching and one method that leads to a single, unsurpassed, perfect, and complete enlightenment (anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi), a state that transcends rationality and language, and embodies nonduality. The teaching is like a universal rain nourishing the diversity of beings everywhere in the multiverse without distinction.

The Lotus Discourse declares that all methods are merely preparations for the path of the awakening being, without which perfect wisdom and ultimate enlightenment cannot be experienced. Moreover, the Buddha declares that ultimately all beings who aspire to enlightenment, even but for an instant, will experience complete and perfect enlightenment in accordance with the law of moral causality, since every effect is the result of a cause and every cause must produce its correlative effect eventually. All possess the “precious jewel” of Buddha nature within themselves, and therefore enlightenment itself is everyone’s inherent own nature from the very beginning. Ultimately, ignorance and even nirvana itself are illusions.

Notes

* This talk was originally inspired by a talk I attended under the auspices of the Toronto Centre of Gravity Buddhist Association by Michael Stone and his teacher, Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, on January 20, 2012. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to send Michael a copy of the four talks before his untimely death at the age of 42 on July 16, 2017, but I was able to send him a copy of my latest book, Dharma Talks, in April and he also had kind words to say about this blog.

[1] See also Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 29, 32 38f., 49, 53. Cf. Yoshiro Tamura, Introduction to the Lotus Sutra (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2014), chap. 1.

[2] Kern, op. cit., cap. ii, pp. 54ff, vv. 112-24). Cf. Kato, op. cit., p. 72.

[3] See A.K. Warder, Indian Buddhism, 3^rd rev. ed.  (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2000), p. 375f.

[4] Brecht, “The Buddha’s Parable of the Burning House.”

[5] Kern has “vanity,” “purposelessness,” and the “unfixed.” The Pali words sunnata, animitta, and appanihita mean “emptiness,” “motiveless,” and “free from desire.” Akira has “nonsubstantiality,” “signlessness,” and “wishlessness” (History of Indian Buddhism, p. 56).

[6] Cf. “The Buddha-vehicle is the ratha ekakakra, the one-wheeled carriage, each wheel being trinabhi, three-naved, as in Rig-veda I, 164, 2” (Kern, op. cit., p. 81 fn. 2). “Nave” refers to the hub of a wheel. The Rig Veda says, “Seven to the one-wheeled chariot yoke the Courser; bearing seven names the single Courser draws it. Three-naved the wheel is, sound and undecaying, whereon are resting all these worlds of being.”