Toward the end of [Chapter 23, The Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva,] we read that if there is a woman who hears this Sutra and acts in accord with its teachings, she will become a bodhisattva, one who is becoming a fully awakened buddha, in the pure land of Amitabha Buddha. Because she has been able to “embrace, read and recite, and ponder over this sutra and teach it for others,” she will obtain boundless merit, be praised by countless buddhas throughout the universe, be protected by hundreds of thousands of buddhas, and become equal to the Buddha; in other words, she will become a buddha. Here, in a sense, we have an alternative vision to that of a paradise in which there are no women – one in which a woman becomes a buddha through embracing the Sutra, by living the Sutra in this world.

A great Taiwanese monk, Master Yin Shun, passed away at the age of 100 in June of 2005. Normally, in Taiwan, the name of Amitabha, the buddha who presides over the Western Paradise, the land of happiness and bliss, is chanted for the benefit of someone who has died. But shortly before he died, Master Yin Shun requested that the name of Shakyamuni Buddha be chanted after his death because Shakyamuni Buddha is the Buddha of the world in which we live now. Master Yin Shun wanted to be reborn into this world of suffering and hardship rather than in a world of eternal happiness and bliss, so that he could continue promoting Buddha Dharma where it is most needed.

[W]hat is the job that needs to be done? The more general answer is that the Dharma needs to be widely shared – so, especially with the Buddha no longer able to do so directly, bodhisattvas are responsible for teaching, and thus perpetuating, Buddha Dharma. The Sutra is concerned not only with teaching the Dharma in the ordinary sense; it is concerned with having the Dharma be embodied, having it be a central part of the lives of people. Early in [Chapter 23], Shakyamuni Buddha says, “For incalculable hundreds of thousands of billions of eons, I have studied and practiced this rare Dharma of supreme awakening.” Notice that he says both “studied” and “practiced.” Practicing the Dharma goes beyond studying it to embody it in one’s life. Thus bodhisattvas have a responsibility not only of teaching the Dharma by words, but also by demonstrating and exemplifying it in their actions.

It is because of this role as exemplars of the Dharma that bodhisattvas, both mythical and human, can be models for us. Because they are said to have many marvelous powers, people may pray to a bodhisattva for relief from some kind of danger or suffering, but that is not the most useful way to understand our relationship to such bodhisattvas. They have been entrusted by the Buddha to be exemplars of the Dharma who in their very being can inspire us to follow our own bodhisattva ways. If various bodhisattvas have found skills and powers with which to help others, we too can develop skill in ways of helping others.

We can, of course, understand the three phases [of the Dharma] not as an inevitable sequence of periods of time, but as existential phases of our own lives. There will be times when the Dharma can be said to be truly alive in us, times when our practice is more like putting on a show and has little depth, and times when the life of the Dharma in us is in serious decline. But there is no inevitable sequence here. There is no reason, for example, why a period of true Dharma cannot follow a period of merely formal Dharma. And there is no reason to assume that a period has to be completed once it has been entered. We might lapse into a period of decline, but with the proper influences and circumstances we could emerge from it into a more vital phase of true Dharma. A coming evil age is mentioned several times in the Dharma Flower Sutra, but while living in an evil age, or an evil period of our own lives, makes teaching the Dharma difficult, even extremely difficult, nowhere does the Dharma Flower Sutra suggest that it is impossible to teach or practice true Dharma.

In this story [of the bodhisattvas from the earth] there is also an affirmation of human life, reflecting a humanistic, positive regard for human life in this world. In greeting the Buddha, the bodhisattvas from below ask the Buddha whether he is in good health and peaceful, whether the living beings here are ready to receive the Dharma, and whether they are exhausting him. His reply is that he is in good health, that the living beings of this world are ready to receive the Dharma, and that they do not wear him out because they have already learned some important things in previous lives, where they have planted roots of goodness. Thus, a positive regard for human beings is affirmed: just as in the story of the gem in the hair, the treasure, the Dharma Flower Sutra, is given because there are many of great merit; here too there is a positive regard for human beings in general.

Nikkyo Niwano, founder of Rissho Kosei-kai, connects this story and its message of world-affirmation with the idea that Shakyamuni Buddha became awakened not as someone sent to earth by a god or as one who received a divine revelation from a transcendent realm, but through his own efforts as a human being. In this respect, Buddhism, he said, is quite different from most, perhaps all, other religions.

It is appropriate, therefore, that Master Hsing Yun, founder of Fo Guang Shan – a great monastery in Taiwan, with branches all over the world, which is strongly oriented to serving people in this world and in this time – calls his teaching “Humanistic Buddhism.”

Today much, if not all, of the world is gradually undergoing something of a transformation with respect to what people think about gender. Women insist on equality with men, resulting in some quite remarkable changes in social structures and cultural habits in much of the world. The story of the dragon princess can be used to support the ideal of equality between men and women, as that was its obvious purpose, at least with respect to the ability to become fully awakened.

That the story retains what we see as an incorrect assumption that buddhas are always male can be used as an occasion for us to challenge our own assumptions about gender and gender roles. It is easy for us to recognize that the assumption in the Sutra that buddhas must be male is both unnecessary and undesirable, but it is not as easy to see our own unchallenged assumptions about the nature and appropriate roles of men and women. We might even think that the assumption found in this Lotus Sutra story comes to us a gif from the Buddha – is an opportunity for us to become more awakened, especially with respect to gender issues.

This image of the reality of one and many can also be seen in the image of Shakyamuni Buddha bringing together billions and billions of worlds to create a temporary unification of them into a single buddha land. Their reality as many lands does not disappear when they are brought together to function as one. Later in the Sutra they will return to being, as they were, many. In this way, Shakyamuni Buddha, as well as being the buddha of this world, is at the same time the Universal Buddha – the buddha who, by virtue of his embodiments, is represented or present everywhere throughout the universe.

One reason that this holding together of the reality of both the one and the many is important in the Dharma Flower Sutra is that it provides a general framework for understanding the One Vehicle of many skillful means. It provides, in other words, a way of understanding through images how the many ways of Buddhism can all have an importance and reality within one Buddhism.

[I]t is sometimes said that the Lotus Sutra offers an easy way to awakening, and that this is why it has been so popular throughout the history of East Asia, and, judging by the large number of fragments that continue to be found, probably it was once popular in India and Central Asia as well. But is the way of the Dharma Flower Sutra so easy?

This matter is a little complicated, because, as is so often the case with this text, two things are asserted that seem incompatible on the surface. On the one hand, it teaches that anyone and everyone can be, and to some degree, no doubt, has already been, a Dharma teacher and bodhisattva for someone else. We can say that all have planted seeds of becoming a buddha, or that they have entered the Way of becoming a buddha. In Chapter 10 we are told that if anyone rejoices even for a single moment from hearing even a single verse of the Sutra, he or she will attain supreme awakening. Please notice, however, that it does not say “has” attained supreme awakening, but “will.” What is between the hearing of a single verse and the attainment of awakening is, at least normally, a great deal of effort and work. As we have seen, the treasure we seek is at once both near and very distant – and what the Sutra teaches here is that even a single verse can plant a seed, a starting point for entering the Way. Like any seed, the seed and the bud that springs from it have to be watered and nourished in order to grow, flower, and bear fruit.

[W]ith “bodhisattva” being associated in our minds with such great ones as Maitreya and Manjushri, it may be very difficult for us to believe that we are capable of being bodhisattvas. We are too young, we may think, or too old or too stupid or too tired or too lazy or too selfish or too something else to be a bodhisattva! It’s impossible, we may feel. This is where Chapter 10, and the idea of the teacher of the Dharma, comes in. It may be hard for me to believe that I can be a bodhisattva, but not as difficult to believe that I might be a good man or good woman who is able “even in secret, to teach to one person even one phrase of the Dharma Flower Sutra” and, therefore, be an emissary of the Buddha, one who does the Buddha’s work. In other words, Chapter 10 gives us what may be perceived to be a more attainable goal.

What’s more, the gender gap so often prevalent in Buddhist texts is broken through here. Not only buddhas, but all of the famous, great mythical bodhisattvas are male, almost always dressed as Indian princes. But “any good son or good daughter,” the text says, who privately explains even a phrase of the Sutra to a single person is a messenger of the Buddha, one who does the Buddha’s work.

It is, I believe, unfortunate that the Lotus Sutra includes the Mahayana practice of referring to the twenty or so traditional Buddhist sects of that time with the demeaning term “Hinayana,” meaning “inferior,” “lesser,” or “small.” But we should understand that the Sutra teaches that this lesser way is sufficient to save people, as it is the attraction of the lesser vehicles that saves the children from the burning house. Consistent with this, whenever in this Sutra there is a description of a more or less paradise-like, future world, there are plenty of shravakas in it. Rather than reject “Hinayana” teachings and methods, the Dharma Flower Sutra seeks to incorporate them into the One Vehicle.

What’s more, teachings about the shravaka way in this Sutra should not be understood as being merely, or even primarily, about monks living many centuries ago. These teachings are for us as well. It is we ourselves, above all, who should not be arrogant or lazy, or feel too comfortable with what we have achieved or too worn-out to do anything more. It is we who need always to remember that we have entered a way that is very difficult and comes to no final end in life.

[In Chaper 7, after Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha finally attains enlightenment,] the Buddha then presents some of the most essential teachings of Buddhism, beginning with the four noble truths.

In brief, these are: the truth that life involves suffering; the truth that the cause or origin of suffering is desire or ignorance; the truth that suffering can be overcome, usually understood to be the state of nirvana; and the truth that the way to overcome suffering is the eightfold path. Closely associated with this teaching in classical Buddhism is the teaching of the “twelve causes and conditions.”

In the Dharma Flower Sutra these two teachings are closely associated with the shravaka and pratyekabuddha ways respectively, and they are mentioned frequently. But only here in this story are they actually described. And here both are associated with the shravaka way. In the Dharma Flower Sutra generally, while the bodhisattva way is presented as more inclusive or more far-reaching, there is no intention to disparage the shravaka way as illustrated by this story.