PRESENTED TO THE RIVERVIEW DHARMA CENTRE ON SUNDAY, JULY 30, 2017.
Chapter X
The Dharma Preacher
This indeed is the transcendent spiritual esoteric lore of the law, preserved by the power of the Tathagatas, but never divulged; it is an article of creed not yet made known.
Chapter X of the Lotus Discourse represents the second phase of development of the discourse, about fifty years after the first phase, represented by chapters 2 through 9. In this chapter the Buddha addresses eighty thousand ”great leaders” headed by Medicine King Tathagata. In a former life, this awakening being vowed to heal the physical and mental infirmities of all beings, providing many efficacious remedies for monastics.
Having heard something of the history of the Medicine Buddha, skeptics might object, how can we know that such a awakening being ever lived and if they did not exist, how can the cult of the Medicine Buddha be meaningful or effective? The Tantrics will tell you that the “historical” biography of the Medicine Buddha is only his most exoteric or superficial aspect, the so-called “outer meaning.” Tantra refers to three or four levels of meaning of Buddhist teachings: outer, inner, secret, and, sometimes, “most secret,” which refer to increasingly subtle and profound levels of understanding.
Thus, the Medicine Buddha may be understood in different ways. The Medicine Buddha mythos or archetype may also be understood as a psychic egregore, to use a term deriving from the Western Esoteric Tradition. An egregore is a complex of psychic energy that is built up because of the concentration and worship of countless numbers of living beings. This is not dissimilar from the Jungian notion of the archetype. Mind is not merely an epiphenomenon of matter but an influential reality in its own right, an idea that we also find in quantum physics interestingly, without regard to questions of historicity. This is the inner meaning of the Medicine Buddha.
The secret meaning of the Medicine Buddha is that the Medicine Buddha is an aspect, vector, mode, or “ray” of the Buddha archetype, the primordial Buddha paradigm that is the commonality of all buddhas, the Buddhahood of “Buddhaness” if you like, which has been called Adi-Buddha, “primordial Buddha,” and identified with Samantabhadra, the patron of the Lotus Discourse, and others. The Primordial Buddha is not a historical being at all, but rather the abstract principle of Buddhahood itself. It represents the healing power of the Buddha archetype. This is the secret meaning.
Finally, the most secret meaning of the Medicine Buddha is that it is the Buddha nature itself, and is thus identical with the very True Self of every person, the fundamental nature of which is emptiness or non-self-identity (paradoxically, the True Self is no-self, a statement that is only intelligible from the trans-dual perspective). These different levels of meaning, while not mutually exclusive, progress toward ever-increasing ultimacy. Thus, the historical objection is moot. A similar line of argument applies to the Mahayana itself. The Hinayana is the outer meaning of the teaching. The Mahayana is the inner meaning. The Vajrayana is the secret meaning of the teaching. In addition, the “universal vehicle” is the most secret meaning, a.k.a. the Dharma Transmission to the West, which will only be completely realized with the manifestation of Shambhala in the 25th century.
The “great leaders” consist of gods, dragon kings, nature-spirits, demigods or antigods, large humanoid bird-like creatures, centaurs, great serpents, male and female monastics and lay devotees, and various types of seekers, including disciples, hermit buddhas, awakening beings, and buddhas, subsuming the three paths. The Buddha reiterates that those who hear even one word of the Lotus Discourse , even for a moment, in the presence of the Buddha or even after his final emancipation will necessarily attain ultimate enlightenment.
The Buddha recommends to the assembly that the Lotus Discourse should be regarded as the Buddha himself and worshipped to be reborn as awakening beings in the human world of suffering. Thus, awakening beings are able to be reborn where they will as sons and daughters of the Buddha and keepers of the teaching, destined to become buddhas themselves, accomplishing the self-arising and spontaneous intuitive wisdom. Those who disparage the Lotus Discourse or its teachers or teachings will incur great demerit, whereas those who extol the Buddha and the Lotus Discourse will acquire great merit and even greater happiness. The Lotus Discourse , the Buddha declares, is the supreme Discourse.
The Buddha says that “this sutra is the mystic, essential treasury of all buddhas, which must not be distributed among or recklessly delivered to men,” and the most difficult to believe and understand. Somewhat paradoxically, those who copy, keep, read, recite, worship, and preach the Lotus Discourse to others will be endowed by the Tathagata with his “robe,” a presumed reference to the story in the Pali Canon where the Buddha gives his robe to Mahakasyapa to indicate his role as the Buddha’s successor as president of the First Buddhist Council. The Tathagata will place his hand on their heads (in blessing presumably, perhaps also to inspire their minds).
The Buddha recommends erecting a pagoda in which discourses are deposited, for the Lotus Discourse , based on the doctrine that the Lotus Discourse is identical with the body of the Buddha. He asserts that awakening beings may be both lay and ordained, male and female, and that those who have heard the Lotus Discourse are walking in the true bodhisattva way and close to attaining enlightenment, because “the Perfect enlightenment of every bodhisattva all belongs to this sutra.” The Lotus Discourse reveals the meaning of the skilful method of the Buddha and is the only discourse that reveals the complete and real truth to all aspirants of whatever path and school, including Hinayana, Mahayana, disciples, hermit buddhas, and awakening beings.
The teacher of the Lotus Discourse should develop a great, compassionate, gentle, and patient heart based on the realization of universal voidness or emptiness. The Buddha will send spiritual protectors and shapeshifters to attend to his teaching, and even cause such a teacher and his audience to experience visions of the true Buddha as a pure and luminous being under the right conditions. He will inspire such a teacher with the wisdom to teach the true teaching. This further implies that the Buddha continues to be involved with the world, even though he exists beyond all worlds. Thus, he is not extinct in the sense of being either non-existent (nihilism) or impersonal (deism).
Chapter XI
Revelation of the Stupa
Who causes that sound to go out from the magnificent Stupa of precious substances?
Suddenly an enormous stupa arises (Hurvitz has “wells up”; Kato has “springs up”) out of the earth and appears to hover in the sky. The Discourse gives the dimensions of the stupa as 500 yojanas by 250 yojanas (roughly 4000 × 2000 miles. Assuming 8 miles = 1 yojana), this is about eight million square miles, similar in size to South America. Kern translates “stupa” as “meteoric phenomenon,” but the UFO association is obvious. It reaches as far as the abode of the Four Great Kings, the dimension next above our own earth-plane.
Made of precious metals and adorned with stones, banners, flags, garlands, and jewelled bells, all sorts of beings, including the inhabitants of the realm of the thirty-three gods, pay homage to and extol the fragrant stupa. The stupa also speaks! The Buddha identifies this stupa with the body of the Tathagata, the dharma body referred to in the Pali Canon. The whole story strongly suggests the story of the precious dharma wheel that appears in the sky in the Pali Canon and is identified with the sovereignty of the teaching.
The Buddha’s ajna chakra (the chakra located in the centre of the brain) emits a glow (Kato et al. calls it a “ray signal” or information vector) and in all the directions, wherever the Buddha directs his concentrated attention, buddhas appear in beautiful pure lands and Buddha fields preaching the Lotus Discourse with ravishing voices, innumerable as the sands of the Ganges. These buddhas are all emanations of the primary Buddha archetype, and appear as hidden dimensions of ordinary space-time. All of these buddhas pay homage to Siddhartha Gautama on Vulture Peak and the precious stupa in this world of suffering, which is also transformed into a beautiful pure land.
The assembled buddhas entreat the Buddha to open the stupa, who rises into the air and opens the door of the stupa, “with the fingers of his right hand,” which makes a great sound wherein they all behold the intact body of the Tathagata Abundant Treasures (or Many Jewels), identified with the “reality body” of the Buddha himself, seated in meditation in the ancient, archetypal, cross-legged posture that goes back to Indus Valley civilization (3rd-2nd millennium BCE). The Buddha enters the stupa and also sits in cross-legged posture, whereupon the whole assembly rises into the sky to join them and hear the teachings.
Chapter XII
Devadatta
Chapter XI of the Lotus Discourse , named after the Buddha’s evil cousin and brother in law, Devadatta, is included in chapter XI of the Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan versions of the Sutra. Kumarajiva’s version splits chapter XI into two chapters.
The Buddha says that he sought the Lotus Discourse throughout vast ages of time as a righteous king. A hermit, Asita by name, came to him and offered to teach him the Lotus Discourse , whereas the king accepted the hermit as his teacher. Asita, the Buddha says, was none other than Devadatta.
Devadatta was a Buddhist monk and the cousin and brother-in-law of the Buddha, and the brother of Ananda. Devadatta was Koliyan. He split from the Buddha’s community with five hundred other monks to form their own order. Most of these are said to have been Shakyan relatives of both Devadatta and Siddhartha. Devadatta became self-righteous. He began to think that only he and not the Buddha should lead the order. Shortly afterward, Devadatta asked the Buddha to retire and let him run the order. The Buddha retorted that he would not even let his trusted disciples Sariputra or Moggallana run the order, much less one like Devadatta, “who should be vomited like spittle.”
The Buddha warned the monks that Devadatta had changed for the worse. Seeing the danger in this, Devadatta approached Prince Ajatashatru and encouraged him to kill his father, the good King Bimbisara; meanwhile, Devadatta would kill the Buddha. Devadatta then tried to murder the Buddha himself by pushing a rock down on him while the Buddha was walking on the slopes of a mountain. When this failed, he got the elephant Nalagiri drunk and sicked the enraged elephant on the Buddha while the Buddha was on alms round. However, the Buddha’s loving-kindness was so great that it overcame the elephant’s anger. Devadatta then tried to foment a schism in the order.
He collected a few monastic friends and demanded that the Buddha accept the following rules for the monks: that they should live all their lives in the forest, live entirely on alms obtained by begging, wear only robes made of discarded rags, dwell at the foot of trees, and abstain entirely from fish and flesh. The Buddha allowed the monastics to follow all of these except the last if they wished. The Buddha refused to make any of these rules compulsory, however, and Devadatta went about saying that the Buddha was living in abundance and luxury – similar to the accusation made by the Group of Five before the Buddha’s enlightenment. Devadatta then created a schism and recited the training rules apart from the Buddha and his followers, with five hundred novices. The Buddha sent his two chief disciples, Sariputra and Maudgalyayana, to bring back the erring young monks. Devadatta thought they had come to join his order. After asking Sariputra to give a dharma talk, he went to bed. When he awoke, he discovered that the chief disciples had persuaded the young monks to return to the Buddha.
The Buddha predicts that even Devadatta will become a Buddha. Considering Devadatta’s antipathy for Siddhartha in this life the identification of Devadatta with the source of the Lotus Discourse and the Buddha’s prediction that he will become a Buddha are both remarkable. The relativity of good and evil is a theme that recurs throughout Buddhist writings, including in the Pali Canon. The story reminds one of the Gnostic Christian books, especially the Gospel of Judas, in which Judas is represented as the positive agent of the salvific principle. The demonic or “satanic” principle is somehow essential for salvation. Thus, in Tantra, evil is transformed by mental power into a force for good. The Lotus Discourse is subtly indicating its identity with an antinomian tendency that we also find in the Gnostics, Tibetan mahasiddhas, Sufis, and in William Blake.
Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, predicts that that the eight-year-old daughter of the Dragon King Samara will become a Buddha, thus discountenancing the misogyny of the Pali Canon and earlier passages of the Lotus Discourse itself. Sariputra, defending the old view, challenges Manjushri’s assertion that a woman can become a Buddha. “The body of a woman is filthy and not a vessel of the Law. How can she attain supreme Bodhi?” Presenting a pearl to the Buddha (cf. chapter XIV), the dragon’s daughter transforms herself into a male Buddha and realizes instantaneous enlightenment.
Chapter XIII
Zeal
Light of the world, thou knowest the disposition of all who have flocked hither from every direction, and thou knowest that we speak a word of truth.
The Medicine King Buddha and Great Eloquence vow to keep, read, recite, and preach the Lotus Discourse throughout the degenerate age to come, i.e., the present time, characterized by arrogance and greed. The whole assembly vows to do the same. The Buddha predicts the future enlightenment of his foster mother, Mahapajapati and his wife, Yasodhara.
Chapter XIV
Joyful Dwelling
Let the Bodhisattva be concentrated in mind, attentive, ever firm as the peak of Mount Sumeru, and in such a state of mind look upon all laws and things as having the nature of space.
Manjushri asks the Buddha how the Lotus Discourse is to be taught. The Buddha replies that he is to live in the place where the awakening being acts, characterized by four methods:
- The way of the body;
- The way of speech;
- The way of mind; and
- The way of the vow.
The Way of the Body
The way of the body consists of ethical behaviour. One follows the Middle Path between realism or eternalism and nihilism, avoiding discrimination and worldly people and activities, and infatuation with women, as well as non-binary individuals (pandakas), one of the four genders recognized in Buddhism, and teaching dharma without any expectation of reward. Rather, one should concentrate on the Buddha and meditate in a quiet place. However, homoerotic attraction was far from unknown to the celibate all-male order.
Further, the awakening being should regard all phenomena as empty or void, seeing things as they really are, viz., not moving (a cutting edge theory of modern post quantum physics regards the universe as static, the illusion of change being the result of the dynamism of conscious intention or the act of observation), like space, beyond linguistic labelling and therefore trans-rational, illusory, infinite, ubiquitous, and the result of causes and conditions.
The Way of Speech
An awakening being should be friendly and tolerant, and constructive rather than destructive. In a passage reminiscent of the Tao Te Ching, the Lotus Discourse says, “it is because one is skilled at cultivating such comfortable thoughts as these that one’s listeners shall not oppose one’s intentions.”
The Way of Mind
The awakening being teaches the dharma with perfect equanimity, inducing others to hear, observe, recite, teach, copy, and honour the Discourse with others.
The Way of the Vow
Finally, they should manifest the bodhisattva vow to attain Buddhahood and teach out of compassion for all beings and thus bring all beings to emancipation. The Buddha identifies the Lotus Discourse with a “bright pearl” in the top knot of a “sage-king” (cf. Plato’s philosopher kings). The wise king only gives the crown jewel to his chosen ones. The pearl is clearly a symbol of the sahasrara chakra at the crown of the head. Similarly, the Lotus Discourse presents the Buddha’s highest teaching.
Taoism and Buddhism see the pearl as a symbol of spiritual awareness or enlightenment. The pearl in the centre of the lotus blossom symbolizes the ultimate wisdom in life, and pearls are associated with the dragon energy in Asian folklore. Pearls also represent the full moon, prominent in Buddhist symbolism. In the Avatamsaka Sutra the metaphor of Indra’s net represents reality as a web or network wherein a pearl is tied into every knot in the web. The pearls represent the totality of all possibilities, where each pearl is connected to every other pearl through an infinite web symbolizing the infinite interconnectedness of all phenomena. Moreover, the surface of every pearl is like a mirror, reflecting all other pearls in the web. Jesus, of course, refers in a parable to the pearl of great price that represents the kingdom of heaven. Interestingly, the next parable in the Gospel refers to a net!
The wise king achieves the dharma by means of the combination of meditative concentration and wisdom, teaches the discourses and confers on his followers such precious gifts as meditation, emancipation, “faultless roots and powers” (Hurvitz has “faculties without outflows”), and psychic powers (Kato has “all the wealth of the law”), culminating in emancipation. Implicitly the Lotus Discourse , “the secret treasure house of the tathagatas,” is identified with the pearl, representing the highest teaching of the Buddha, through which all beings can achieve perfect wisdom.
Chapter XV
Bodhisattvas Emerge from the Earth
I am to utter an infallible word; refrain from disputing about it, O sages: the science of the Tathagata is beyond reasoning.
In this prelude to chapter XVI (chapter XV of the Sanskrit edition), in which the essential teaching of the Lotus Discourse is finally plainly revealed, the assembled awakening beings enthusiastically offer to teach the Lotus Discourse to others. However, the Buddha spurns their offer, declaring that the so-called “originally converted bodhisattvas” are chosen messengers who alone can teach the Lotus Discourse in the future. These mysterious awakening beings have been personally taught and trained by the Buddha, and are countless in number.
At that moment, the earth shakes and is split apart by earthquakes, and out of the great clefts that open up in the ground vast numbers of luminous “bodhisattvas of the earth” rise up and ascend to the same great aerial stupa that we encountered in chapter XI. This recalls the the Buddha’s earth-touching gesture when he appeals to the divine spirit of the earth in response to Mara’s challenge to prove the fact of his enlightenment. It is also impossible to ignore the UFOlogical implication of this description.
Four awakening beings lead the bodhisattvas of the earth. They are: Superior Practices (the leader), Boundless Practices, Pure Practices, and Firmly Established Practices, which have been interpreted in various ways. The great Japanese reformer, Nichiren (1222–1282), identified with Superior Practices, whose Sanskrit name is Visishtacharitra.
The awakening beings that rise out of the earth take their seats cross-legged around the Buddha. The Buddha declares Maitreya to be the next Buddha. The Sanskrit version of the text refers to the Buddha’s “manliness.”
The Buddha tells the assembly that the awakening beings that emerge out of the earth inhabit a vast “open space” within the earth sphere. Here we see a possible archaic origin for the Hollow Earth Theory! This is a universal idea found in mythology, folklore, and legends, including Cabala and Tibetan Buddhism (Agharti). The inner earth is a reputed location of Shambhala. In Greek lore, an ancient god called Zalmoxis inhabited these interior caverns. According to Celtic lore there is a cave in Station Island called Chuachan that leads to the lower realms, also known as St. Patrick’s Purgatory. The Tuatha De Danaan, who introduced Druidism to Ireland, are also reputed to have emerged out of the interior earth through a cave in County Down. Other similar sites include the north side of the Missouri River, whence the Mandan people are said to have originated; Cedar Creek, near the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation; and the Red River above the junction of the Mississippi River. The Cedar Creek caverns were shown to Leclerc Milford, a French military officer and adventurer, by the Creek Indians in 1781, who declared that there was room there for fifteen or twenty thousand families. Hopi tradition refers to a similar cave in the Grand Canyon. The Incas have a tradition of such a cave east of Cuzco, Peru. Many ancient peoples believed that their ancestors came out of the interior of the earth. Many believe they still exist.
Edmond Halley, after whom Halley ’s Comet is named, proposed that the earth is hollow in 1692. Some traditions identify the interior inhabitants as “devilish.” The interior earth has more recently been proposed as the source of the UFO phenomenon. Astronomer and computer scientist Dr. Jacques Vallee in particular has suggested that the UFO phenomenon is actually terrestrial in origin, which explains the similarity of some of their inhabitants to human beings. W. Holiday’s “goblin universe” idea, popularized by Colin Wilson, may also be included here. If one looks at the imaginative interpretation of the hollow earth hypothesis in fiction, it seems to be associated with inversion, archaism, high technology, secret knowledge, spirituality, alien life, and utopianism. The hollow earth meme may also represent a psychological projection of a reality that has a larger, more profound interpretation than the mere physical theory.
We need not take these mythologems literally to take them seriously. It is easy to see in “the midst of the open space of this sphere” modern scientific conceptions of multi-dimensionality, in which various numbers and types of dimensions beyond the ordinary four dimensions are concealed within our experience of materiality, as well as multi-universes that may coexist but be invisible and intangible to us. The Jungian in me cannot help but notice too that these higher beings are also interior beings! That modern science is openly speculating about such things is remarkable confirmation of the primordial wisdom of our ancient ancestors whose worldview is so similar to ours even after thousands of years of aberration that persists in the incredibly shallow and naïve view of reality that pervades religion, politics, industry, and even science today (“secular scientism”). The perennial philosophy is both protean and perdurable.
The incredulous assembly, deluded by historicism, objects that the Buddha has only been enlightened for forty years, putting the age at which he is reputed to have taught the Lotus Discourse at 75, five years before his passing. How, therefore, can he have trained so many awakening beings? They beg the Buddha to explain so they do not doubt. This is the moment of consciousness expansion that everyone has been waiting for, and the prelude to the essential teaching of the Lotus Discourse , which we will discuss in the next chapter.
Recap
The Lotus Discourse opens with the Buddha seated in meditation on Vulture Peak before a vast assembly of all different sorts of beings, including male and female monastics and householders, gods, dragons, spirits, demigods, anti-gods, mythical birds, centaurs, great snakes, humans, non-humans, and kings. The world of the Lotus Discourse is clearly a visionary world, a world of the imagination, a world of the mind, and not the common historical world that we know as the earth-plane. It is, however, emphatically not an “unreal” world.
The Buddha displays wondrous and supernatural signs, including a beam of energy that emanates from his forehead, not unlike the forehead organ of the dolphin called the melon. Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, tells Maitreya, the Next Buddha, that these are signs that the Buddha intends to preach the Great Teaching, specifically the Lotus Discourse , based on historical precedents. Similarly, the Pali Canon says that luminous signs precede the appearance of Brahma.
The Buddha reveals to Sariputra, the disciple foremost in wisdom, that the ultimate meaning of the teaching is hard to understand. Thus, he teaches disciples according to their faculties, adapted to their limited abilities and understanding; only a Buddha can comprehend the ultimate meaning of the teachings, which is beyond rational comprehension and linguistic expression. Despite the great variety of teachings, the Buddha says there is One Single Buddha Vehicle, which manifests in many different forms, including the three vehicles of the disciples, hermit buddhas, and awakening being. Sariputra begs the Buddha to teach this ultimately explanatory teaching, but the Buddha hesitates, declaring that it would fill gods and men with fear, and that arrogant monastics might fall into a great void because of it. Sariputra persists, and the Buddha finally relents, agreeing to teach the Great Teaching.
Immediately five thousand proud and arrogant monastic and lay disciples walk out of the assembly, thus purifying the assembly and making it a suitable receptacle for the ultimate revelation of the Lotus Discourse . The Buddha says that a teaching such as this, which is an ancient and indeed primordial teaching, is only revealed once every three thousand years, which is the mythological frequency of the flowering of the cluster fig blossom (Ficus glomerata, Skt. udumbara) to which he refers. Known as the “blue lotus,” the udumbara plant is used in Ayurvedic medicine as an aphrodisiac and also to reduce fever, amongst other uses. 3400 BCE is near the beginning of Indus Valley Civilization (ca. 3300 BCE), the original Indian civilization, as well as being somewhat close to the advent of the Kali Yuga in 3102 BCE, corresponding to the advent of urban civilization. Three thousand years after 3102 BCE is 102 BCE, corresponding to the appearance of the Prajnaparamita and the first appearance of the Lotus Discourse itself.
The Buddha declares that innumerable buddhas pervade the universe, all teaching the same ultimate truth in many different forms, varying according to their conditions, yet all tending toward the complete and final enlightenment of Buddhahood. He further declares the future Buddhahood of all those in the assembly, declaring their future names, realms, ages, and longevities.
The Buddha then hints at the supreme teaching of the Lotus Discourse by means of a series of seven parables, including the Burning House, the Lost Heir, the Plants, the Phantom City, the Concealed Gem, the Crest Jewel, and the Physician’s Sons (chapters III, IV, V, VII, VIII, XIV, and XVI respectively). He declares the Lotus Discourse to be the supreme discourse, productive of great merit for those who hear, read, understand, keep, copy, or teach the Discourse. Nirvana is not the goal of enlightenment, but merely the culmination of the first stage of the path, the stage of discipleship, on the way to final enlightenment. Through nirvana, the arhant extinguishes the imperfections and is emancipated from the mirage of the world. They see phenomena as they really are in themselves, without distortion, and are thus freed from involuntary rebirth.
A stupa pyramid rises out of a void inside the earth, breaks through the ground, causes earthquakes, and hovers in the air above the assembly, followed by innumerable numbers of luminous awakening beings. They also come out of the earth and fly up to the stupa, where they join the Buddha and the gathered assembly inside what is clearly continent-sized aerial object.
Chapter XVI
The Measure of the Tathagatas Lifespan
There I rule myself as well as all beings, I. But men of perverted minds in their delusion, do not see me standing there,
The Buddha declares that he will speak, and the assembly, led by Maitreya, begs him to speak.
The Buddha declares the Buddha archetype or paradigm, the Buddhahood that is actually ancient and timeless, attained throughout eternity by all Buddhas. Buddhas manifest wherever and however necessary to further the spiritual development of those to whom they appear, yet within and beyond them all is the original and originating Buddhahood itself that appears to those to whom it appears in accordance with their conditions and their capacity. Since the world is endless, so too is this Buddhahood. Therefore, it is primordial and has appeared and reappeared throughout all history and all time and space.
Western academicians with a historicist bent regard this idea as a sort of theism and see the Lotus Discourse as a kind of reversion of Buddhism to theism, possibly even influenced by Christianity (but the opposite has also been argued). However, we do not need to look to Christianity to understand the influences of the Lotus Discourse . Far more likely is the doctrine of the Tathagatagarbha, the Buddha “womb” or “embryo” that represents the innate potentiality of every living sentient being for attaining Buddhahood. In the Pali Canon, it is described by the Buddha as “innately pure luminous mind” (Anguttara Nikaya). In the Mahayana tradition, it appears in the Nirvana Sutra (2nd century) and implicitly in the Lotus Discourse . This is the preeminent “secret teaching” of the Lotus Discourse that is credited with the potential to catalyze enlightenment itself.
The Buddha made it clear that nirvana does not mean that the Tathagata is literally extinguished – he condemned nihilism – but that he is emancipated from all conditions, including involuntary rebirth, in an immortal (i.e., timeless) state. He sees things as they are, from a transdual perspective, in which the world itself appears like a mirage, neither existent nor nonexistent. This is directly contrary to the Hinayana, which hypostasized phenomena as inherently suffering, transient, and selfless beings. This hypostatization of illusion creates an insuperable barrier to realization, similar in fact to the self-negating teachings of the Jains or theism.
The Buddha tells the parable of the Good Physician. In his absence his sons drink toxic medicines and some lose their minds. The doctor gives the sons who still have their senses an herbal medicine that restores them to health and sanity, but the mad sons, like some schizophrenics today refuse to take their medicine, declaring it to be no good. Such is the state of the world. Therefore, the physician plans a ruse. He leaves the medicine with the sons and then sends back a messenger to tell them that he has died. Hearing this, they become so remorseful that they take the medicine and are cured. The sons who take the medicine are the awakening beings, and they are cured of the suffering of existence, whereas those sons who cling to their suffering are the arhants, who refuse to realize that the First Noble Truth itself is belied by the fact of enlightenment, and thus is itself transient, being worldly. However, in the end all realize the truth of the bodhisattva path and the transience of suffering and indeed of the transcience of transience itself, thus realizing the Great Teaching.
In all this it should also be realized that the world is not merely toxic, it is also medicinal, the poison of desire also being the method of emancipation (cf. Chapter V). The things that can kill us can also cure us. This establishes the premise for the way of transformation of the Inner (or Internal) Tantra.
Chapter XVII
The Cycle of Merit
That spot of earth has been enjoyed by myself; there have I walked myself, and there have I been sitting; were that son of Buddha has stayed, there I am.
An even greater number of awakening beings were able to “take hold” of the “gateway of the dharanis,” or mantras, including a universally efficacious mantra (a panacea, in fact), and operate the wheel of the teaching. Many of these will attain enlightenment. After the Buddha spoke space was filled with a rain of flowers, sandalwood and other incenses, fine garments, and the sound of drums was heard. The Buddha declares to Maitreya that an incalculable number of beings (the number of grains of sand in 680 millions of nayutas of Ganges rivers, a nayuta being 100 billion) accepted the doctrine of the unborn dharma because of the revelation of the previous chapter.
The Buddha declares that the merit of believing in or even just understanding the revelation of the Lotus Discourse is beyond calculation, far greater than the cultivation of the five perfections (generosity, morality, patience, energy, and meditation), but specifically not the perfection of wisdom, once again emphasizing the special role of wisdom in relation to the other perfections that I have emphasized in my talks throughout the Pali Canon. The perfection of wisdom is especially efficacious if it is received through a continuous face-to-face transmission. The Buddha reiterates that the merit of one who hears, promulgates, holds, writes down, or worships the discourse is incalculable and their purified senses will perceive the earth-plane as a pure land. Hurvitz says that such a one holds the Tathagata in his head. Kern has “carries on his shoulder.” He will quickly come to the Knowledge of All Modes (Kato has “perfect knowledge”). Another term is “omniscience.”
Chapter XVIII
Explanation of the Merit of Rejoicing
All existences are like a mirage; hasten to become disgusted with all existences.
Maitreya asks the Buddha how much joy a man or a woman who celebrates the Lotus Discourse will experience. The Buddha says that if such a person preaches the Lotus Discourse such that fifty people also celebrate it, the joy that they all experience, even to the fiftieth person, will be incalculable. Moreover, anyone who accepts the Lotus Discourse will be reborn in a healthy and handsome body with great worldly benefits, including rebirth in higher worlds, where they will inhabit aerial vehicles (vimanas).
The Lotus Discourse further describes the Buddha in phrases similar to the Pali Canon’s “32 and 80 marks of a great man,” including having beautiful lips, tongue, and teeth; a long, high and straight nose; round and full face; high and long eyebrows; broad, even, and upright forehead; and, interestingly, a perfect penis!
Chapter XIX
Merits of the Dharma Preacher
He knows the connections and knots; he discerns in all laws contrarieties; he knows the meaning and the interpretations, and expounds them according to his knowledge.
The Buddha declares that anyone who accepts and keeps the Lotus Discourse will purify their sense organs, including their body and mind, such that they see everything in the “thousand-millionfold” world, both hidden and exposed, from the lowest hell to the Pinnacle or Summit of Existence. The Pinnacle of Existence is equivalent to the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception of the formless realm. All living beings and their various karmic causes and conditions are included, without attachment, even if they have not acquired the Divine Eye, Ear, Nose, Tongue, Body, or Mind.
The various sensations described in the discourse are typical effects of advanced yoga practice or psychedelic experience. The references to Light Sound and Universal Purity may be equivalent to the Divine Beings of Radiant Glory and Streaming Radiance. Other cosmological references are familiar, including the Avici hell, Mount Meru (Sumeru) and its Iron Circle, the oceans within the iron rim, and the Brahma world. The qualification “without and within” suggests a recognition that these worlds are objective and subjective, similar to Jung’s concept of the psychoid. Similarly, the “palaces” of the gods, which are interestingly both male and female, also refer to “aerial vehicles” or UFOs. Kato et al. refer to Light Sound as the second realm of meditation heavens, and Universal Purity as the third realm of meditation heavens.
The purification of consciousness results in its progressive refinement, such that one’s nervous sensibility can be vastly expanded. I have read, for example, of a North American shaman who could hear the sound of a tree falling in the forest in the wilderness where they lived. The Pali Canon refers to a mental body that is generated by the meditative attainments. Here we learn that those who keep the Lotus Discourse “will obtain a pure body like pure crystal which all the living delight to see,” and they will experience the totality of the macrocosm in their body.
With respect to the mind, the Buddha says that “with this pure mental faculty by hearing so much as a single gatha or a single phrase, he shall penetrate incalculable, limitless meanings; and after having understood these meanings he shall be able to expound a single phrase or a single gatha for as much as a month, or four months, or even for a year and the dharmas that he preaches shall be in accord with the import of that meaning, standing in absolutely no contradiction to the marks of reality.” Thus, the verses of the sutra have “finite and boundless meanings” that can be discerned by the enlightened mind. Similarly, the number of Buddhas in the universe is infinite.
Chapter XX
The Bodhisattva “Never Disparaging”
It is because I have kept, read, preached this Dharmaparyaya [dharma teaching], derived from the teaching of the ancient Tathagatas … that I have so soon arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment.
The Buddha adds that in addition to the merits obtained by one who keeps the Lotus Discourse , contrarily, one who abuses or maligns them will experience great demerit. The Buddha implies that through the realization of the doctrine of the Four Noble Truths one gains the grade of disciple, characterized by the experience of nirvana (thus nirvana corresponds to the lowest grade of spiritual development); through the realization of the doctrine of Interconnectednes one gains the grade of hermit buddha; and through the realization of the doctrine of the Six Perfections one gains the grade of awakening being, characterized by the experience of enlightenment and the wisdom of Buddhahood itself. The bodhisattva path subsumes all lower paths. The purification of the six sense faculties also extends one’s life.
Each Buddha appears at the nadir of human civilization, and inaugurates an age divided into two phases, the Righteous Law and the Counterfeit Law. The second half of the age, called the age of diminution, is characterized by increasing famine, pestilence, and war. This period is also characterized by evil laws, the absence of moral restraint, erroneous doctrines, and short and brutish lives. This view of world history is cyclical, as in the Pali Canon.
Note
[1] See Adam Rourke, “The Goblin Universe: Speculations on the Nature of Reality,” 2009, http://assets.booklocker.com/pdfs/4263s.pdf and Ted Holiday and Colin Wilson, The Goblin Universe, 2nd ed., 1990.
Dharmata 