What is the purpose of all this enchantment and magic? Entertainment? In one sense, yes! It is to bring joy to the world. Stories are for enjoyment. But not only for enjoyment. Not in all of them, but in a great many of the stories in the Lotus Sutra, especially in those that are used to demonstrate practice of skillful means, it is important to recognize that what is being demanded of the reader is not obedience to any formula or code or book, not even to the Lotus Sutra, but imaginative and creative approaches to concrete problems. A father gets his children out of a burning house, another helps his long-lost adult son gain self-respect and confidence through skillful use of psychology, still another father pretends to be dead as a way of shocking his children into taking a good medicine he had prepared for them, and a rich man tries to relieve his friend’s poverty. These stories all involve finding creative solutions to quite ordinary problems.

Creativity requires imagination, the ability to see possibilities where others see only what is. It is, in a sense, an ability to see beyond the facts, to see beyond the way things are, to envision something new. Of course, it is not only imagination that is required to overcome problems. Wisdom, or intelligence, and compassion are also needed. But it is very interesting that the problems encountered by the buddha figures in the parables of the Lotus Sutra are never solved by the book. They do not pull out a sutra to find a solution to the problem confronting them. In every case, something new, something creative, is attempted; something from the creative imagination.