So foundationalists and antifoundationalists both make persuasive arguments for our acceptance of their respective stances, each having something strongly persuasive about their own position and revealing something repugnant about the other. Each position implies unacceptable consequences. This leaves the reader-spectator stymied and adrift as regards the outcome of the “debate.” …
If one is left perplexed by these discussions and debates, the Threefold Lotus Sutra is of immense value for overcoming the foregoing quandaries. The title of the introductory sutra, the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, gives a strong clue as to the direction of the resolution. The manifold diversity of the everyday world gives rise to countless ways of experiencing it, interpreting it, since experience makes accessible only a minute portion of the vast spatial and temporal diversity of the whole. Were the experiential disclosure largely to overlap in the case of two individual instances, the subjective inclinations and proclivities of the two individuals sharing similar experiences will result in interpreting them in quite different ways. The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law lets us understand this plurality and diversity through the parable of the herbs. It tells of the generous rain supplying the needs of diverse plants, be they grasses, herbs, flowers, shrubs, or mighty trees. The same rain nourishes them all, yet each grows according to its own particular nature. What is here presented is how diversity is produced from some underlying singular universal–the rain.
This seems to support the foundationalist position that behind the diversity of the many specific plants there is the unity of their source in the common nutrient, the rainwater. Thus the generosity of the sky in supplying water is the foundation of the richly diverse flora.
But to avoid the charge against the usual foundationalists, the Lotus Sutra also discusses how though there is a fundamental singular truth, a foundation to the universe, this truth is accessible only to the Buddha. Although all of us are lured and coaxed along the path to achieving Buddhahood, and, indeed, promised that it is within our essential possibilities, at the same time it is recognized that great discipline and compassion are required of us to go beyond our limited present stage of development. While the “foundation” is hinted at as the Void, and is characterized by the Ten Suchnesses, these are not readily assimilable concepts; indeed, they are not concepts at all; they imply the practice of compassion, the practice of self-sacrifice. It would be folly for those listening to the Buddha to think that they have a theoretical or conceptual grasp of the “foundation” of all.
To the contrary, what we can grasp is one or several of innumerable meanings. However, they are all meanings. Meanings of what? Meanings of the ultimate reality, of the Buddha-nature. However, any attempt to explicate what that is, is to present but one of its innumerable meanings. What we can grasp intellectually are meanings, not the ultimate reality. Only the Buddha can grasp the ultimately real, since Enlightenment is not the consequence but the precondition of such a power. The Buddha advises the bodhisattvas that every Law emerges, changes, settles, and vanishes every moment, instantly.
It is obvious that such “impermanence” renders the Law beyond whatever it is that we call “knowing”; for our kind of knowledge requires that the known be bounded and stable enough to be what it is, to endure. For our kind of knowing is to know the known by its limitations, by its determinations which specify it to be this way rather than that. But whatever is such as to be accessible to this kind of knowledge is not the ultimately real. That, whose meanings the innumerable meanings qualify, cannot be presented; for whatever is capable of being presented, however true it may be, is just another meaning. That from which all the meanings derive is not itself another meaning; it is of an entirely different constitution, which is often presented in the text, only to be negated. As a propaedeutic we might be told of the Void, the Formless, the Absolute Nothingness, or the Ten Merits, but all these are but aids, stepladders for turning the wheel, useful devices, perhaps, but not to be clung to, investigated, analyzed, and especially not to be used as weapons against others who talk about God, or the Truth, or Suchness. All claims are to be transcended, the Void voided, the Truth abandoned as it becomes a Lie (Nietzsche), but the practice of compassion remains paramount. To be compassionate requires no doctrine. Compassion is not something one knows; it is something one does, and something one receives. The path to Enlightenment is compassion; and compassion rather than hostility and partiality is what is called for by the path to Enlightenment. The parable of the herbs is very clear in showing generosity or compassion for the thirst of the plants as the underlying “reality” of the diverse flourishing.
When in the Lotus Sutra we learn that the Buddha-nature is recognized in all, be they disciples such as Śāriputra, great bodhisattvas, relatives of the Buddha Śākyamuni such as Rāhula, or indeed villains such as Devadatta, we can see the universality of compassion, and generosity. These have to overcome hostility, revenge, and even judgement and justice. For all these require limits, contrasts, opposition, either-or thinking. And while we are not fully enlightened, we are indeed in the clutches of contrast, thinking, judgement, preference, hierarchy. Enlightenment constitutes being beyond all this. How to be beyond it? By always practicing compassion, being mindful of the fact that less than full enlightenment is tantamount to suffering; to finding the impermanent unsatisfactory.
Be it in the parable of the magic city or the parable of the burning house, the suggestion is clear that skillful means are to be used for getting the willing cooperation of those whose despondency, disinterest, bad habits, or ignorance prevent them from doing what is ultimately for their own benefit. These parables fly in the face of some conventional modern claims, such as “the ends do not justify the means” and that knowing the good for the other when the other does not share that knowledge is “paternalism,” and using deliberate deception in order to get the other to do what we think is best for that person is “manipulation.” Thus, the parables themselves are not instances of some absolute truth, but rather, persuasive devices, themselves to be abandoned once they have enabled us to behave compassionately. They, too, are merely skillful means to an end.
A Buddhist Kaleidoscope; John R.A. Mayer, Reflectioms on the Threefold Lotus Sutra, Page 152-154
