Some traditions maintain that there are five kinds of Lotus Sutra practices taught here: receiving and embracing (or upholding) the Sutra, reading it, reciting (or chanting) it, explaining it (by teaching or preaching), and copying it.

“Receiving and embracing” involves really hearing and following the Sutra, giving yourself to it, so to speak. It is not merely a matter of hearing with one’s ears and mind, but also with one’s body. That is, it is a matter of making the Sutra a truly significant part of one’s life by embodying its teachings in one’s actions in everyday life.

By reading the Sutra, whether alone or with others, aloud or to oneself, and by reciting or chanting the Sutra, the teachings are likely to become more deeply rooted in our minds and hearts. The Sutra does not seem to support, however, the idea that mindlessly reciting the text has any value.

Reciting sutras once meant reciting them from memory. Memorizing sutras was once an extremely important responsibility of monks. For centuries it was the only way they had to store them, as writing had not yet been invented in India. Even after the invention of writing, without printing presses, copies of a sutra written on bark and such, especially copies of a sutra as long as the Lotus Sutra, must have been relatively rare.

Explaining the Sutra to others is good not only for learners, but also for teachers. All good teachers know that, in the process of teaching, they almost always learn at least as much as their students. Even now – after decades of teaching the Dharma Flower Sutra – I still always feel that in a classroom we are all learners and that I am being blessed with the greatest learning of all.

Copying a sutra originally meant, until relatively recently, writing it out by hand. With such a large quantity of sutras, this was a very important practice, the principal way of storing sutras for subsequent use. With written copies there could be much less reliance on memorized versions. But while copying Chinese characters by brush can be a pleasant meditative exercise involving concentration, I’m not at all sure that such copying is so important today. What is important is looking at every character or word in the text, not quickly skipping over parts that are boring or difficult. Translating also, I believe, can well serve the purpose of concentrating one’s focus on each part of the text. Such practice, too, can be beneficial both to the reader and to the translator.

Whatever else it is, the great Stupa in this story is a literary device providing a reason for assembling all of the buddhas from all directions. This Stupa springing out of the earth from the past could be material from a dream, or from a rich imagination. But it can also be said that Abundant Treasures Buddha symbolizes the truth, the Dharma that does not change and is a kind of ground or basis for all teaching of the Dharma. In this way, Shakyamuni Buddha can symbolize the teacher of the Dharma. And the two buddhas sitting together on a single seat would indicate both that the teacher is to be respected as much as the truth itself, and the opposite, namely, that however devoted we may be to Shakyamuni Buddha for teaching, we should remember that our devotion should be based on his teaching the truth.

Here it’s important to note that the Stupa does not come from some distant heaven, but springs up out of the earth. This means that this world and ourselves in it are affirmed, as this is where the truth about the nature of reality is to be found, and to be taught. In other words, this world has a kind of buddha-nature within it, here symbolized by the Stupa that comes up out of the earth with Abundant Treasures Buddha in it.

So, too, the fact that all of the buddhas throughout the entire universe come to this world, or at least to a purified version of this world, shows a powerful affirmation of our world. The Pure Land, this story implies, is to be found here. This is the land that Shakyamuni Buddha transforms into a Pure Land, even if only temporarily.

Such affirmations are not just sentiments; they are an indication of where our own energies should go – that is, into purifying this world and realizing the buddha-nature of things in this world, thus enabling us both to see this world as a Pure Land and to transform it into a Pure Land.

We are to understand that the number of Buddhas throughout the universe is incredibly large, and that all of them are, in some sense, subordinate to Shakyamuni Buddha. Thus, Shakyamuni Buddha, as well as being the Buddha of this world, in which suffering has to be endured and can be, is also a universal buddha – a buddha who is somehow present everywhere in time and space.

The exact meaning of the Chinese term used for these many buddhas is not very clear. They can be said to be “representatives,” or perhaps “duplicates” or “replicas” of Shakyamuni, but I think that they can best be understood as embodiments of Shakyamuni. Certainly, they are not, as some would have it, mere “emanations.” The complex point is that they are both independently real apart from Shakyamuni Buddha and in some sense subordinate to him. Put abstractly, we have here one of several images in the Dharma Flower Sutra in which the reality and togetherness of being both one and many is affirmed: here are both the one central reality of Shakyamuni, somehow represented throughout vast reaches of space, and the reality of many buddhas, each with their own lands and their own attendant bodhisattvas. Nowhere in the Sutra is it suggested that these buddhas and their lands are in anyway unreal. Other worlds are less important – to us in our daily lives – than is our own world, but that does not mean that they are any less real than our world.