[Shariputra] is transformed by the Dharma. While the Dharma can be thought of, and is, something that nourishes and sustains us, it can also transform us. Shariputra’s life was dramatically changed by the Dharma. Here, hearing the Dharma, he suddenly realizes that the goal he has been pursuing and the kind of life he has been living, while good, is not good enough. He realizes that the way he has taken can be a kind of gateway to more fully following the Buddha. No wonder he is filled with ecstasy! Indeed, almost everywhere you turn in the Dharma Flower Sutra, someone is receiving the Sutra with joy, or is full of joy, or has a heart that is dancing for joy.

The Buddha reminds Shariputra that Shariputra had learned this lesson before but had forgotten his own original vow. This is one of the many ways in which the Dharma Flower Sutra teaches that the potential for being a buddha is fundamental – something given to us originally. His life as a bodhisattva was always his life. Now, quite suddenly, he knows it.

To understand the Buddha Dharma as an ultimate truth about reality is to experience it as liberating. That Shariputra has received only some of the Buddha Dharma means that even though he is enlightened, liberated, and overcome with joy, this is only a new beginning, a rebirth, not a death in which there is nothing more to do. He is set free to live in the Dharma.

In many stories in the Dharma Flower Sutra we find that characters who represent the Buddha have problems leading their children. In the early parable of the burning house, for example, the children in the burning house initially refuse to pay any attention to their father. Similarly, the children of the physician in Chapter 16 … also refuse to obey their father’s exhortation to take the good medicine he has prepared for them. The poor son in Chapter 4 is a runaway. In addition, we also often find sympathy being expressed for Shakyamuni Buddha because he is responsible for this world of suffering.

Collectively, both of these elements, disobedient children and sympathy from others, and many other things as well, point to the similarity of the Buddha to ordinary human beings. Some might think of the Buddha as being extremely distant and different from ourselves – along the lines of how the famous Christian theologian Karl Barth describes God: “totally other.” But in the Dharma Flower Sutra it is the opposite: the Buddha is very close to us, concerned about us, affected by us – thus similar to us. That is why the Buddha’s work, so to speak, is difficult. It is only because he cares about this world that his job is difficult.

We will often have the most difficulty leading those who are closest to us, our own children, or parents, or wives, or husbands. Often this can be a sign that things are as they can be. If life is difficult for the Buddha because he is close to the world, we should expect to have difficulties with those who are closest to us. Those difficulties should be taken as a sign that we should strive to improve our relationships with those closest to us, even though we can expect this to be difficult at times.

Let’s look further at each of the three things that Shariputra realized:
He is a child of the Buddha. Here, and throughout the Dharma Flower Sutra, the primary meaning of “child of the Buddha” is “bodhisattva.” Here, Shariputra realizes that while being a shravaka, he is also a bodhisattva, actually more deeply and profoundly a bodhisattva. But being a child of the Buddha has other implications as well.

What Shariputra originally set out to find was an understanding of the world in which death is not the end of everything – that is, a world in which everything comes to nothing. In other words, he sought meaning in life, he wanted his own life to be meaningful, to amount to something more than death.

Basically, he found two things. First, he found that nothing can separate us from what Christians call the love of God and Buddhists the compassion of the Buddha. The Dharma Flower Sutra teaches repeatedly that the Buddha is all around us, nearer than we think. He is the father of us all, the Compassionate One. The second important meaning of this metaphor is that we owe our lives not only to our biological parents and ancestors, but even more to the process, the Dharma, by which we live and are sustained. Chinese and Japanese Buddhism place enormous stress on the importance of biological ancestors, but in the teaching that we are all children of the Buddha, we should realize that biology is only one of the ways in which we inherit from the past. What we learn from our teachers – usually to be sure in the first instance from our mothers or primary caretakers, but also from a whole company of teachers, including those we encounter in books – has an enormous impact on shaping who and what we are. And those of us who are significantly drawn to the Buddha Dharma will be especially aware of our indebtedness both to the Buddha and to the tradition that has made his Dharma available to us. In an important sense, we ourselves are children of the Buddha.

In many of the parables in the Dharma Flower Sutra, it is a father figure who represents the Buddha. It is possible that the use of such stories influenced the teachings of the Dharma Flower Sutra, leading it, probably more than any other Buddhist text, to emphasize the father-like nature of the Buddha, personalizing him as it were. Over and over, the Lotus Sutra uses personal language to speak of an ultimately important reality. Far from being “absolute,” or even “omniscient,” as the Buddhist tradition has sometimes claimed, the Buddha of the Dharma Flower Sutra is someone who is very concerned for his children. This means, in effect, that the happiness of the Buddha, the fulfillment of the Buddha’s purpose, depends – again – on us.

One of the ten great disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha, Shariputra was usually regarded as first in wisdom, sometimes regarded as first among the disciples, and sometimes even mistaken by Jains as the leader of the Buddhist movement. Shariputra was a brahman, a member of the highest caste in India, who left a wealthy family to follow one of the six great non-Buddhist teachers. This teacher taught skepticism about knowledge of things we cannot see – such things as other worlds, causation, and so forth.

It is said that Shariputra and Maudgalyayana (called “Maha Maudgalyayana,” Great Maudgalyayana, in his only appearance in the Lotus Sutra) were close friends before they became monks. One day when they were in a crowd of people watching dancing girls and enjoying a festival, Shariputra suddenly realized that all of those people now having so much fun, and he himself, would soon be dead. He resolved to seek liberation from a condition in which the conclusion to everything is death. After listening to several other teachers, he decided, with Maudgalyayana, to become a disciple of the skeptic Sanjaya. Later, after meeting a monk who told him only that the Buddha’s main teaching was that all things are produced through causation, together with Maudgalyayana and all of the other disciples of Sanjaya, he joined the Buddha’s following. This was about a year after Shakyamuni’s awakening.

Legend also has it that when he was about to die, Shariputra requested permission from the Buddha to do so before the Buddha himself, as he would not be able to stand the grief of witnessing the Buddha’s death. With the Buddha’s permission he returned to his home with one disciple. Saying “I have been with all of you for forty years. If I have offended anyone, please forgive me,” he lay down on his bed, and quietly passed away.