As we progress along the Lotus Sutra path – our faith growing with our practice and our practice enhanced by our study – it is important to realize that it’s not just OK to ask questions, but essential.

The benefit of asking questions is repeated throughout the Threefold Lotus Sutra and starts with the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings:

“With that, the Buddha said to the bodhisattva Fully Composed: ‘Well done, you of great good intent! Well done! You have skillfully questioned the Tathāgata regarding this profound, unequaled, all-ferrying, transcendental essence. You should know that you will enable many to benefit, you will please and bring ease to human and heavenly beings, and you will relieve living beings of their suffering. This is great and real compassion—trust wholly and completely that this is true. By this direct cause and its outgrowths, you will surely realize and quickly achieve ultimate enlightenment; you will also enable all living beings, now and in the future, to realize and achieve ultimate enlightenment.”

In the Lotus Sutra itself we have Maitreya Bodhisattva asking in the first chapter why the Buddha had emitted a ray of light illumining all the corners of eighteen thousand worlds in the east. In Chapter 2 we have the Śrāvakas and Arhats and the four kinds of devotees asking, “Why does the World-Honored One extol so enthusiastically the power of the Buddhas to employ expedients?” And when the Buddha’s answer proved surprising, Śāriputra asked in Chapter 3, “In order to cause the four kinds of devotees to remove their doubts, explain why you said all this to them!” In Chapters 6, 8 and 9, we have the great disciples questioning whether they will receive a prediction of future Buddhahood. Even when newly minted Bodhisattvas question in Chapter 9 why the Buddha is focusing so much attention on Śrāvakas rather than Bodhisattvas, the Buddha offers an important lesson on the need to practice what we study.

The arrival of the Stupa of Treasures in Chapter 11 raises a host of questions. In Chapter 12, the question of whether the Dragon King’s daughter can become a Buddha is asked and answered quickly. In Chapter 14, Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva asks how ordinary Bodhisattvas should expound this sūtra in the evil world after the Buddha’s extinction. And then there are the questions raised when uncountable numbers of Bodhisattvas arrive in Chapter 15, The Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground. Following the revelation of the Buddha’s unlimited lifespan and the merits to be received from hearing of the duration of the Buddha’s life, Maitreya Bodhisattva asks in Chapter 18 how many merits those who rejoice at hearing the sutra will receive. Finally, Chapter 23, The Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva, opens with Star-King-Flower Bodhisattva asking a question and closes with Many-Treasures Tathāgata in the Stupa of Treasures praising Star-King-Flower Bodhisattva: “Excellent, excellent, Star-King-Flower! You obtained inconceivable merits. You asked this question to Śākyamuni Buddha, and benefited innumerable living beings.”

We should always keep in mind: There are no stupid questions.

It’s not uncommon for faith to ebb and flow. Certainly that’s to be expected at the start. This can be likened to the divisions of the Ages of the Dharma.

In sutras other than the Lotus Sutra, there is an expectation that the efficacy of the Buddha’s teaching will decline over time. Commonly these phases are referred to as the Age of True Dharma, the Age of Semblance Dharma and the Latter Age of the Dharma. These can also be referred to as the true Dharma, when the teaching is still fresh and has real potency; the merely formal Dharma, when the teachings have devolved into mere rituals; and the end of the Dharma, when the teachings lose all impact.

In Stories of the Lotus Sutra, Gene Reeves offers an explanation of how these same divisions can be applied to our faith and practice “not as an inevitable sequence of periods of time, but as existential phases of our own lives.”

“There will be times when the Dharma can be said to be truly alive in us, times when our practice is more like putting on a show and has little depth, and times when the life of the Dharma in us is in serious decline. But there is no inevitable sequence here. There is no reason, for example, why a period of true Dharma cannot follow a period of merely formal Dharma. And there is no reason to assume that a period has to be completed once it has been entered. We might lapse into a period of decline, but with the proper influences and circumstances we could emerge from it into a more vital phase of true Dharma. A coming evil age is mentioned several times in the Dharma Flower Sutra, but while living in an evil age, or an evil period of our own lives, makes teaching the Dharma difficult, even extremely difficult, nowhere does the Dharma Flower Sutra suggest that it is impossible to teach or practice true Dharma.” [p214]

We should keep in mind that settling into what feels like merely formal practice isn’t without benefit. As Reeves explains:

“The relation between sincere respect and its expressions in gestures and words is something like the relation between true Dharma and merely formal Dharma. And yet expressions of respect even when respect is not sincerely felt can still be good. What we can think of as ritual politeness – saying ‘Thank you’ when receiving something, even if we do not feel grateful; … saying ‘I’m sorry’ when we do not really feel sorry – can all contribute to smoother social relations. Just as true Dharma is greater than merely formal Dharma, being truly grateful is greater than expressing gratitude in a merely formal way, and heartfelt sincerity is greater than merely conventional politeness, but even social conventions and polite expressions can be an important ingredient in relations between people and can contribute to mutual harmony and respect.” [p217]

Mutual harmony and respect is a worthy goal of Buddhist practice.

In December of last year, I attended an online lecture by Dominick Scarangello, PhD, international advisor to Rissho Kosei-kai. The subject of the lecture was “Actualize Your Inner Potential By Modeling the Lotus Sutra’s Bodhisattvas,” but that was not the focus. Instead, he offered a discussion on how the rise of western scientific thought destroyed faith in the west, and how we might restore faith without giving up science. (A recording of the lecture is available here.)

For me, the takeaway was something described as the “faith frame,” a frame of reference adopted by the faithful that coexists with our perceived real world and within which we enrich and strengthen ourselves.

Dr. Scarangello introduced the “faith frame” by first discussing the importance of play among bear cubs.

“Play allows for the permanent extension of competence and confidence through pretense. … Play creates a world in ‘rule-governed’ fantasy – in episodic or imagistic representation – in which behavior can be rehearsed and mastered, prior to its expression in the real world, with real-word consequences. Play is another form of ‘as-if’ behavior, that allows for experimentation with fictional narrative – pretended descriptions of the current and desired future states of the world, with plans of action appended, designed to change the former into the latter.” [Psychologist Jordan Peterson]

That “play frame,” Dr. Scarangello explained, is essential to the development of the cubs. Without it, they would not survive on their own.

When done as religious practice, Dr. Scarangello said, such serious play is accomplished within the “faith frame.” Quoting from Stanford University anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann:

“To choose to think with the faith frame is a decision to enter into another mode of thinking about reality that calls on the resources of the imagination to reorganize what is fundamentally real. … This involves a shift in perspective similar to the shift in and out of imaginative play – except that the play claims are also serious claims about the world.”

This “imaginative play” is not fanciful as much as it is “imaginal” – “as if…” As Scarangello explained:

“Founder Niwano was convinced that Buddhism is rational and compatible with modernity, but there is very much of the imaginal in his approach to practice, and I think it’s those aspects of his teachings and guidance that prove difficult for people in other cultures today.”

As Luhrmann explains in her 2018 article “The Faith Frame: Or, Belief is Easy, Faith is Hard”:

“People of faith want to live as if the faith frame is really true, and it is hard, because faith is always under assault by the small (and large) unfairnesses and brutalities of life.”

For me, this “faith frame” is the domain of our Buddhist practice, an essential environment necessary to our development as Buddhists. Within this “faith frame” we can actualize our inner potential by modeling the Lotus Sutra’s Bodhisattvas and by so doing surmount the small and large unfairnesses and brutalities of life.

Without the “faith frame” we would not survive on our own.