Around the beginning of the fifth century, Kumārajīva, who was born near the western boundary of China, became a centrally important figure in Chinese Buddhism. His translation and introduction of many Buddhist sutras and commentaries marked a great turning point. It would be no exaggeration to say that he contributed to a revolution in thought in the Chinese Buddhist world. There were two main points involved in this change.

The first has to do with the correction of a misunderstanding of the fundamental Buddhist idea of truth—emptiness or sunyata—that had existed up to that time. When Buddhist sutras and commentaries were still not well known in China, the idea of emptiness was understood through the medium of ideas that already existed in China, especially the idea of nothing drawn from the works of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. For example, in chapter forty of the Lao-tzu we find: “All things emerged from being, and being emerged from nothing.” Early Chinese Buddhists used the “nothing” found here to interpret the Buddhist idea of emptiness. This way of understanding Buddhism according to prior Chinese thought was later criticized for being too dependent on native terminology and structures of thought.

Even before Kumārajīva’s time Sinicized Buddhism had come under criticism. But he translated and introduced many sutras and commentaries to China, especially those that centered on explanations of emptiness, thereby making more evident the prior misunderstanding. There suddenly arose movements to correct such misunderstandings and to bring Buddhist thought into conformity with what Buddhism actually was. Sengzhao (384-414) who was first among Kumārajīva’s disciples in understanding emptiness, was the leading figure in this movement. His writings were later edited as The Treatise of Zhao. By reading this book we can understand what Sinicized Buddhism was, how Sengzhao criticized it, and how with that act of criticism, he tried to clarify the true meaning of emptiness.

The second point is that once the various sutras and commentaries had been translated and introduced, there arose a demand that they be arranged and systemized—that is, that they be doctrinally interpreted. Historically speaking, the Buddhist sutras and commentaries were developed in India. If we trace them back we can sometimes come to understand their contextual relationships and historical order. But such procedures were not known in China, and those sutras that were first discovered were introduced and studied in a disorderly way. The need for doctrinal interpretation was born out of this disorder. Such interpretation involved appraising and ordering the sutras and commentaries according to the views of various Buddhist scholars.

This kind of interpretation flourished in the fifth and sixth centuries, during the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties.

In China, the Lotus Sutra was characterized as the teaching that unifies all good, meaning that all good ideas are brought together and unified in the Lotus Sutra. Inheriting this tradition, Tiantai Zhiyi created a single great philosophy with the Lotus Sutra as its nucleus. It is no exaggeration to say that Zhiyi achieved a unification and systematization of Buddhist thought for the first time. He made use of various sutras and treatises by taking as his central idea that the Lotus Sutra itself is a synthesis of broad and profound thought. He called the inclusiveness of the sutra “opening and integrating,” and made it the key concept in his systematization of a philosophy of synthesis.

Some contemporary Buddhist scholars view the Lotus Sutra as exclusive, contentious, and sometimes even combative. This can be regarded as another of the criticisms of the Lotus Sutra. Evidence for it being exclusive is found, for example, in the incident of the “departure of the five thousand” in the second chapter, in which five thousand people who did not understand the Buddha’s teaching got up from their seats and left, and the Buddha did not stop them but called them the dregs of the assembly. Such scholars regard all of the Mahayana sutras as negative toward the Small Vehicle to some extent, but none as extremely so as the Lotus Sutra.

They also suspect that the extreme practices of martyrdom and self-sacrifice found in chapter 13 are examples of something created by a distinct social group that was exclusive, closed, and estranged from the general society. From this they try to prove the exclusivity of the Lotus Sutra. And they relate to this what they see as the exclusivity and contentiousness of Nichiren or his followers.

There are additional criticisms, but we have discussed the main ones. The interesting thing is that there were also evaluations completely to the contrary. That is, there were those who praised the Lotus Sutra for establishing the supreme and absolute unifying truth (the Wonderful Dharma of One Vehicle), for elucidating the ultimate reality of this universe (the reality of all things), and for integrating various ideas. Just as the Lotus Sutra refers to itself as “great impartial wisdom,” followers of the Small Vehicle, who had been detested because they were never to become buddhas, are acknowledged by the Lotus Sutra as future buddhas under the unifying and integrating truth of the impartial one vehicle. In this respect the Lotus Sutra was seen as being the opposite of exclusive, namely inclusive and abundantly tolerant.