A chapter-by-chapter road map through the Lotus Sūtra is something helpful to have; the sūtra is not transparent. Its teachings are not presented in a clear, discursive fashion but, rather, unfold through parables, fantastic events, and mythic imagery. This can be frustrating to the modern reader, who sometimes fails to see how extraordinary the sūtra really is. The autobiography of the Japanese Zen master Hakuin (1686-1769) provides a similar example. Recounting his early efforts to study the Buddhist teachings, Hakuin wrote:

People who are suffering in the lower worlds [of rebirth], when they rely on others in their efforts to be saved, always ask that the Lotus Sūtra be recited for them. There must indeed be profound and mysterious doctrines in this sūtra. Thereupon I picked up the Lotus Sūtra and in my study of it found that, other than the passages that explain that there is only one vehicle and that all phenomena are in the state of nirvāṇa, the text was concerned with parables relating to cause and effect. If this sūtra had all these virtues, then surely the six Confucian classics and the books of all the other schools must be equally effective. Why should this particular sūtra be so highly esteemed? My hopes were completely dashed. At this time I was sixteen years of age.

But sixteen years later, after long years of meditative training and the experience of awakening, Hakuin wrote, “One night sometime after, I took up the Lotus Sūtra. Suddenly I penetrated to the perfect, true, ultimate meaning of the Lotus. The doubts I had held initially were destroyed and I became aware that the understanding I had obtained up to then was greatly in error. Unconsciously I uttered a great cry and burst into tears.”