The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p56The parable is interpreted as saying that the world is like a burning house. … [T]he verse version of the parable goes to great lengths to describe the terrors inside the burning house, perhaps leading some to think that our goal should be to escape from the burning house that is this world.
But escaping from the world is not at all what the Sutra teaches. Elsewhere it makes clear that we are to work in the world to help or save others. The point here is more that we are like children at play, not paying enough attention to the environment around us. Perhaps it is not the whole world that is in flames but our own playgrounds, the private worlds we create out of our attachments and out of our complacency. Thus leaving the house is not escaping from the world but leaving behind our play-world, our attachments and illusions, or at least some of them, in order to enter the real world.
Category Archives: d6b
Means and Ends
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p53-54Even the very fancy carriage that the father gives to the children is, after all, only a carriage, a vehicle. All of our teachings and practices should be understood as devices, as possible ways of helping people. They should never be taken as final truths.
Appropriate means are means, not ends. In this sense they have only instrumental and provisional importance. While it is true that the notion of skillful means is sometimes used to describe something provisional, it is important to recognize that being instrumental and provisional does not mean that such methods are in any sense unimportant. At one point at least, the Dharma Flower Sutra even suggests that it is itself an appropriate means. The context is one in which the Sutra is praising itself and proclaiming its superiority over others (“those who do not hear or believe this sutra suffer a great loss”), but then has those who embrace the Sutra in a future age say:
When I attain the Buddha way,
I will teach this Dharma to them
By skillful means,
That they may dwell within it.
A More Generous and Inclusive Lotus Sutra
Today I continue my Office Lens housecleaning with another quote from Gene Reeves’ Translator’s Introduction to his 2008 translation of the The Lotus Sutra.
As in the case of the carriages in the parable of the burning house, the great vehicle can be understood as replacing the other vehicles, or as making skillful means unnecessary. There are passages in the sutra that suggest this interpretation. We might call this the narrow interpretation of the Lotus Sutra, a perspective taken by some followers of Nichiren. They insist that in the Lotus Sutra they have found the one truth in light of which all other claims, and all other forms of religion including all other forms of Buddhism, are to be rejected as false and misleading. Most of those who study the Lotus Sutra, however, understand the teaching of the one vehicle in a much more generous, inclusive way.
The one vehicle itself can be understood as nothing but skillful means. That is, without a great variety of skillful means there can be no one vehicle, since it is through skillful means that living beings are led toward the goal of being a buddha. Without skillful means the one vehicle would be an empty, useless vehicle. Furthermore, the one vehicle itself is a teaching device, a skillful means of teaching that the many means have a common purpose. (Reeves, p13)
Invitation to Creative Wisdom
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p23What 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.
Riding in Smaller Vehicles
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p51We should realize that in this story it is the lure of the three “lesser” vehicles that actually saves the children. In running out, the children are pursuing the shravaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva ways. And here, these three ways, including the bodhisattva way, are essentially equal, as they are equally effective, perhaps with one appealing to some of the children, another to others, and the other to still other children. These “smaller” vehicles, in other words, are sufficient for saving people, that is, for enabling them to enter the One Buddha Vehicle and become bodhisattvas, ones who are on the way to becoming buddhas themselves.
Many Paths Within the Great Path
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p50Parables are metaphorical; they are analogies, but never perfect ones. This parable provides an image of four separate vehicles. But if we follow the teaching of the Sutra as a whole, the One Buddha Vehicle is not a separate alternative to other ways; it includes them. Thus, one limitation of this parable is that it suggests that the diverse ways (represented by the three lesser carriages) can be replaced by the One Way (the great carriage). But the overall teaching of the Sutra makes it plain that there are many paths within the Great Path, and the Great Path integrates them all. They are together because they are within the One Vehicle. To understand the many ways as somehow being replaced by the One Way would entail rejecting the ideal of the bodhisattva way (the third carriage), which the Sutra clearly never does.
Buddhism: Philosophy or Religion?
Buddhism for Today, p185The book Buddhism by Christmas Humphreys has been widely read in the West. The author, a distinguished English lawyer and also a devout Buddhist, wrote in his preface: “Indeed, by the usual tests, Buddhism is not a religion so much as a spiritual philosophy whose attitude to life is as cool and objective as that of the modern scientist. But it lives, it lives tremendously. …” We cannot help admiring the fact that Mr. Humphreys, a Westerner, has grasped the essence of Buddhism with such accuracy. Indeed, he may have been enabled to understand Buddhism in its true and pure state because he was born and bred in England, which has no tradition of Buddhism.
When we reconsider the teaching of the Law of Appearance in the Lotus Sutra, we realize that though Buddhism is indeed a religion in one respect, … at the same time, with Christmas Humphreys, we can say that Buddhism is a great system of philosophy and ethics.
Philosophy is the science of the study of this world, human life, and the fundamental principles of things. Ethics is the path of duty. The teaching of the Lotus Sutra that we have studied so far may be tentatively summed up as philosophy and ethics. However, when we thoroughly investigate the teaching of the Lotus Sutra, the most profound teaching of the Buddha, we realize that it is also the teaching of a religion that enables us to be saved from our mental suffering, something which cannot be accomplished by learning alone, making human life brighter and leading the world toward peace.
The Great Spirit of the Lotus Sutra
Buddhism for Today, p58-59The Buddha’s compassion is useless unless all living begins can realize it. For this reason, he purposely does not use his divine power.
If we penetrate further beneath the surface of this meaning, we can see that if the Buddha were to lead all living beings straight to enlightenment, they could not understand his teachings and would lapse because they are so absorbed in pleasures of the senses and material things. Therefore, he desires to lead them from the first step, which is to cause them to realize the dreadful state of this world.
In spite of the compassionate consideration of the Buddha, living beings often only glance at their father’s face (the Buddha’s teachings); they do not consider how these teachings concern their own lives, and they do not listen to them wholeheartedly. We have often experienced this, which shows clearly the mental state of ordinary people.
Then the Buddha as a final measure displays goat carts (the śrāvaka-vehicle), deer carts (the pratyekabuddha-vehicle), and bullock carts (the bodhisattva-vehicle). Now all living beings are attracted to the Buddha’s teachings for the first time. Hearing his words, “Take whichever teaching of these three that you like; I will give you any of them,” they run out of the burning house while imagining these attractive playthings to themselves.
To imagine attractive playthings to oneself means that one has already entered into the mental state of śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, or bodhisattva. To run out of the burning house means that one is already seeking after the Buddha’s teachings. When living beings remove illusions from their minds, they can immediately escape from the burning house of suffering in this world.
However, they do not yet think of being saved from the burning house. Their minds are filled with the desire to obtain one of the attractive carts—the enlightenment of a śrāvaka, a pratyekabuddha, or a bodhisattva. Then they ask the Buddha for these carts. This means that each asks for his own enlightenment. Then quite unexpectedly, beyond the enlightenment of the three vehicles, they see the supreme teaching, that is, the enlightenment of the One Buddha-vehicle (the great white-bullock cart), shining brilliantly.
The Buddha really wishes to give this great cart to all living beings. So he gives the same thing unsparingly and equally to anyone who has advanced to the mental state of seeking supreme enlightenment. How wonderful the Buddha’s consideration is! All can attain the Buddha’s enlightenment equally — this is the great spirit of the Lotus Sutra.
The Status of Arhatship
Two Buddhas, p58-59Different Mahāyāna sūtras treat the status of Arhatship — the goal of the mainstream tradition — in different ways, for example, as a lesser but still viable goal (as in The Inquiry of Ugra) or as an outright misunderstanding on the part of the Buddha’s disciples (as in the Vimalakirti Sūtra). There was a shared consensus, however, that persons of the first two vehicles, in liberating themselves from rebirth by achieving the goal of nirvāṇa, were thereby excluded from achieving the buddhahood that is gained on the bodhisattva path. The Lotus Sūtra is distinct in asserting that the apparent threefold division of the teaching into the distinct vehicles of śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas is only apparent: ultimately, all are following the bodhisattva path and will eventually become buddhas. This “revival” of śrāvakas, causing them to realize that they are actually bodhisattvas, was identified early on by Chinese exegetes as a crucial feature of the Lotus.
The Revelation of the Universal Ground
Two Buddhas, p127-128According to Zhiyi’s parsing, Chapters Two through Nine of the Lotus Sūtra comprise the main exposition of the “trace teaching,” or shakumon, the first fourteen chapters of the Lotus Sūtra. These chapters assert that followers of the two “Hinayāna” vehicles can achieve buddhahood. For the sūtra’s compilers, this message subsumed the entire Buddhist mainstream within its own teaching of the one buddha vehicle and extended the promise of buddhahood to a category of persons — śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas — who had been excluded from that possibility in other Mahāyāna sūtras. In Nichiren’s day, however, the idea of the one vehicle, that buddhahood is in principle open to all, represented the mainstream interpretive position, and his own reading therefore has a somewhat different emphasis. For Nichiren, the sūtra’s assertion that even persons of the two vehicles can become buddhas pointed to the mutual possession of the ten realms and the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment, without which any talk of buddhahood for anyone, even those following the bodhisattva path, can be no more than an abstraction. The revelation of this universal ground, he said, especially in the “Skillful Means” chapter, constitutes the heart of the shakumon portion of the Lotus. Nonetheless, he regarded Chapter Two through Chapter Nine, the main exposition section, as having been preached primarily for the benefit of persons during the Buddha’s lifetime. The remaining chapters, Chapter Ten through Chapter Fourteen, which constituted the remainder of the trace teaching, he saw as explicitly directed toward those who embrace the Lotus after the Buddha’s passing, and therefore, as having great relevance for himself and his followers.