The Dharma Flower Sutra calls upon us, not only to transform individuals, but also “to purify buddha-lands.” From the point of view of the Sutra, of course, this earth is the buddha land of Shakyamuni Buddha. This world, and especially this world, is Shakyamuni Buddha’s world. But the Buddha is not some sort of all-powerful God ruling the universe. The Buddha is embodied, made real, in the Buddha-deeds of ordinary living beings. The Buddha invites us to be partners with him in transforming this world into a pure buddha land, where there is a kind of harmony of beauty enabling living beings to flourish together in many different healthy ways, all equally depending on the Dharma and on one another.

[Chapter 5] of the Lotus Sutra encourages us to think of the large picture and to be grateful that we are nourished by the Dharma raining on us. But it is also important to recognize that the Dharma can be rained down by us. In Zen and Western Thought the famous Zen scholar Masao Abe wrote that “the greatest debt without doubt is to my three teachers. … Without the Dharma rain they poured upon me, a rain which nourished me for many years, even this humble bunch of flowers could not have been gathered.”

In other words, to follow the Buddha Way, the Dharma, is to be nourished by the Dharma, but it is also to nourish others – many kinds of others. In still other words, to follow the Buddha Way of transforming living beings and purifying buddha lands is to become a buddha oneself, at least in small but very important ways.

At the end of this story, the son is happy, as he has acquired great wealth, much greater wealth than he had ever imagined having. But, while it is the end of the story, we must not imagine that it is the end of the matter. We can even say that his difficulties – that is, his responsibilities – have now really only just begun. Awakening is a process – a responsibility as much as an achievement or a gift.

As the shravakas say right after the telling of this parable, we should never become complacent and satisfied with some lesser level of awakening, such as some great experience of nirvana, but always pursue the Buddha way.

Perhaps above all, this chapter is an exhortation never to be complacent with what one has achieved, an invitation to continue to grow in wisdom, compassion, and service.

That is the bodhisattva way, the bodhisattva way of becoming a buddha.

The chief way in which the Lotus Sutra enchants is by telling stories – parables and similes, accounts of previous lives, stories of mythical events, and so forth. Though there are various ways of counting, it contains well over two dozen different stories. In the Sutra, a great many traditional Buddhist doctrines are mentioned, such as the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the three marks of the Dharma, interdependent origination, the twelve-link chain of causation, the six perfections, and more. Even one of the Sutra’s most emphasized teachings, that of the one vehicle of many skillful means, is initially presented as an explanation of why there is such a variety of teachings within Buddhism. There are plenty of teachings or doctrines in it, but if we want to approach a fuller understanding of what the Dharma Flower Sutra teaches, we had better pay attention to its stories, and not merely to propositions within them or to sentences that explain them, but also to the overall thrust and function of the stories within this very unusual Sutra.

Even 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. (LS 273)

The 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.

The chapter ends in this way:

The time has come for people to understand.
With your palms together, wait single-mindedly!
The Buddha will pour the rain of the Dharma
To satisfy those who seek the Way.

If those who seek after the three vehicles
Have any doubts or regrets,
The Buddha will remove them
So that none whatever remain. (LS 74)

In effect, the first chapter is a warning – a warning that you are entering an imaginative territory, a world that can change your life, and that such a change in you can be significant for the entire cosmos. The world of the imagination can be a frightening and even dangerous place, precisely because it invites us into a world that is new and unfamiliar and therefore difficult to understand.

It may place demands on us by assuring us that we can be and do much more than we ever believed possible – yet if we respond to it in joy, our entry into this transformative world can be very rewarding.

In Chapter 1 of the Sutra, before the vast assembly, having already preached the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, the Buddha entered deeply into meditative concentration. Then, to prepare the assembly to hear the Buddha preach, various omens suddenly appeared – flowers rained down from the heavens on everyone, the earth trembled and shook, and the Buddha emitted a ray of light from between his eyebrows, lighting up eighteen thousand worlds to the east, so that the whole assembly could see these worlds in great detail, including their heavens and purgatories, all their living beings, and even their past and present buddhas. Surely we are being advised here that we are entering a different world, and a different kind of world, a world that is at once rich in fantasy and at the same time anchored in this world.

Thus the Dharma Flower Sutra opens up and reveals this world as a magical world, a world in which flowers rain down from the heavens, drums sound by themselves, and Shakyamuni Buddha lights up all the worlds with beams of light streaming from between his eyebrows. It is a world in which an illusory castle-city provides a resting place for weary travelers, in which a Stupa emerges from the ground so that an extinct buddha from long ago can praise Shakyamuni for teaching the Dharma Flower Sutra, where the Bodhisattva Wonderful Voice, with his nearly perfect, giant, and radiant body, from another world makes flowers appear on Holy Eagle Peak and then comes through countless millions of worlds with eighty-four thousand other bodhisattvas to visit Shakyamuni Buddha and others, and where the Bodhisattva Universal Sage comes flying through the sky on his white elephant with six tusks to visit and help those in this world.

I call this a world of enchantment. And enchantment, here, means a certain kind of fascination with the ordinary world. It means finding the special, even the supernatural, within the ordinary world of our existence. It means seeing this world itself as different, as special – as important and valuable. And this means that our lives – how we live and what we do – are important, not only for ourselves, but also for the Buddha and for the entire cosmos.

It is significant that Universal Sage and his elephant come not to offer us a ride to some paradise above the masses of ordinary people but to bring the strength of an elephant for doing the Buddha’s work in the world, so that the Dharma can blossom in us, empowering us to be bodhisattvas for others, enabling us to see the Buddha in others and to experience the joy of seeing buddhas everywhere.

In doing the work of the Buddha, we should recognize that there are many kinds of Dharma – teachings, truths, and correct ways of doing things. In the Buddha’s time there were Hindu dharmas and Jain dharmas, dharmas stemming from one’s birth or caste, and dharmas appropriate to one’s stage of life. In many respects, the Buddha’s teachings provided an alternative to conventional Indian dharmas. Thus, in Buddhism, Dharma is always Buddha Dharma. In other words, Buddha Dharma is such that without the Buddha there is no Buddha Dharma and, since the Buddha is first and foremost a teacher, the Buddha is not the Buddha without Buddha Dharma. The Buddha and his Dharma, the Dharma and its teacher, cannot be separated into independent realities.

There is a very interesting passage in Chapter 28: “If there are any who receive and embrace, read and recite, remember correctly, practice, and copy this Dharma Flower Sutra, it should be known that they have seen Shakyamuni Buddha. It is as though they heard this sutra from the Buddha’s mouth. It should be known that they have made offerings to Shakyamuni Buddha. It should be known that the Buddha has praised them for doing good. It should be known that Shakyamuni Buddha has touched the heads of such people with his hand. It should be known that such people are covered by the robes of Shakyamuni Buddha.” (LS 397)

The Sutra itself, in other words, is not just an embodiment of Buddha Dharma but of Shakyamuni Buddha himself, and thus is one of the ways in which the Buddha appears to and for us.

While Kwan-yin, Manjushri, and Maitreya are famous, especially in China and throughout East Asia, for taking on whatever body is needed in order to be helpful to others, Wonderful Voice Bodhisattva is hardly known outside of the Dharma Flower Sutra, or even outside of Chapter 24 of the Dharma Flower Sutra. He seems, for example, to have been completely neglected by artists. I do not know why this is so. It certainly cannot be because this story is any less encouraging to women than the Kwan-yin chapter. Here, by indicating numerous ways in which Wonderful Voice takes on female bodies, the text goes to some lengths to assure women that they too can become bodhisattvas, that they themselves can become Wonderful Voice Bodhisattva. Perhaps one reason that this bodhisattva failed to attract artists is that it is difficult to portray a face as beautiful as millions of moons together!

Nor do we know whether the story of Wonderful Voice Bodhisattva is older or younger than the story in the Dharma Flower Sutra of Kwan-yin Bodhisattva. But I think it is no accident that in the Dharma Flower Sutra this story is placed just before the Kwan-yin chapter. Kwan-yin is enormously famous for being able to take on any form in order to save others. One could easily think that this special power to take on different forms belongs to Kwan-yin alone. But in the Dharma Flower Sutra we are clearly shown that almost exactly the same power and list of forms is also attributed to Wonderful Voice. The point, I believe, is not that there are two bodhisattvas with such power, but that every bodhisattva has such power. We are not talking about magical tricks here. The ability to take on different forms according to what is needed means just that, an ability to adapt to different situations, particularly to the different needs of people. Taking on different forms is no more and no less than the ability to serve others usefully, practically, and effectively. This is a power given not only to the bodhisattvas Kwan-yin and Wonderful Voice, but to each and every one of us.

Thus, one obvious meaning of this story for us is that we too can become bodhisattvas who take on different forms and roles in order to help others. And there is another side to this, even its opposite – anyone can be a bodhisattva for us. If Wonderful Voice Bodhisattva can take on any form, anyone we meet might be Wonderful Voice Bodhisattva in a form designed to help us! But very often at least, someone can be a bodhisattva for us only if we let them, only if we open ourselves in such a way as to enable someone to be a bodhisattva for us.