This was written in advance of the Feb. 21, 2021, meeting of the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is discussing Chapter 4 of the Lotus Sutra this month.

During the Feb. 7 presentation on Chapter 4, Understanding by Faith, it was suggested that the rich man’s initial failure to bring his son to him was in some way an illustration that the Buddha is fallible. That suggestion is as wrong as it would be to say that the rich man in Chapter 3 reveals the Buddha is neglectful since he fails to maintain his property and allows his small children to play unsupervised in knowingly dangerous surroundings.

The point in Chapter 4 of the rich man dispatching a messenger to bring his son to him is to illustrate that our inheritance is unconditioned. We are the Buddha’s children. Nothing is required of us to inherit. It is only because we can’t believe we could have such great fortune that the Buddha must bring us along in steps, helping us to gain confidence.

The dire condition of the Triple World (the rich man’s manor house) is the manifestation of our delusions, our misperception. As we will learn in Chapter 16, “I do not see the triple world in the same way as [the living beings of] the triple world do. I see all this clearly and infallibly.” And in gāthās: “[This] pure world of mine is indestructible. / But the [perverted] people think: / “It is full of sorrow, fear, and other sufferings. / It will soon burn away.”

The father pines for his missing son and wishes to welcome him home, but the poor son faints in fright

The poor son is incapable of believing he could be wealthy beyond measure. Instead, when he is released and told he is free to go, “The poor son had the greatest joy that he had ever had.”

The poor son, too base and mean, chooses to live in poverty and deprivation.