The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p307-308It is written that terrible things – leprosy, missing or bad teeth, ugly lips, a flat nose, squinty eyes, deformed hands and feet, body odor, severe illness, and so on, often for many generations – will come to those who expose the faults of followers of the Sutra. (LS 397—98) This passage is often used by the Sutra’s detractors to show that the Lotus Sutra is extremely intolerant. But we should be careful about this. At least a couple of things need to be said.
One is that the context makes it clear that what is being talked about primarily is not evil-doers but followers of the Lotus Sutra. The passage concludes with, “Therefore, Universal Sage, if anyone sees someone who receives and embraces this sutra, they should get up and greet them from afar, as if they were paying reverence to the Buddha.” The purpose of the passage is not, in other words, an attempt to describe consequences of evil actions; rather, it is to urge that special respect be given to those who embrace the Sutra.
Second, the passage does not point to supernatural intervention or action to punish evil-doers. It is not about literal punishment at all. At most, it should be taken to mean, again, that actions have consequences. Thus, just as planting good seeds is likely to produce good results, planting rotten seeds by doing bad things is likely to have bad results.
Having said this, perhaps we should also take a quick look at an earlier passage, one in which it is said that those who follow the Dharma Flower Sutra not only will no longer be attached to worldly pleasures, they will have no liking for scriptures of non-Buddhists or other jottings, nor ever again take pleasure in associating with such people or with other evil people, be they butchers or those who raise pigs, sheep, chickens, and dogs, or hunters, or pimps. The common thread here, of course, has to do with profiting from the sale of flesh, animal or human. It shows that some Buddhists have taken very seriously the prohibition against killing or profiting from killing and, in this case, prostitution.
