The stories in the Dharma Flower Sutra, or at least many of them, are so fantastic, so imaginative, so unlike anything we have experienced, that they cannot possibly be taken for history or descriptions of factual matters, or stories about actual historical events. The reader of the Dharma Flower Sutra knows from the very first chapter that he or she has entered an imaginary world quite different from what we ordinarily perceive. And if the stories are successful, the reader will come to understand that he or she is empowered to perform miracles by them.

That this setting is in the actual world, on earth, is very important for the Lotus Sutra. In it there is explicit rejection of forms of idealism – exemplified for instance by Platonism – in which actual things are only poor reflections of some other, ideal reality. In Buddhism, idealism sometimes takes the form of a “two-truth theory” according to which there is a conventional world of appearance or phenomena and an absolute world of reality or truth. For the Dharma Flower Sutra, however, this world, the world of things, is an ultimately real world. This is the world in which Shakyamuni Buddha lives, both historically and in the present. This is the world in which countless bodhisattvas emerge from below to indicate the importance of bodhisattvas of this world taking care of this world. This is the world to which buddhas and bodhisattvas from all over the universe come to witness the teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha. This is the world in which all human beings are offered a special opportunity to be bodhisattvas and practice the Buddha Way, the way by which we too can be buddhas, buddhas right here on earth in the midst of the world’s suffering, including our own.