[Shariputra] is transformed by the Dharma. While the Dharma can be thought of, and is, something that nourishes and sustains us, it can also transform us. Shariputra’s life was dramatically changed by the Dharma. Here, hearing the Dharma, he suddenly realizes that the goal he has been pursuing and the kind of life he has been living, while good, is not good enough. He realizes that the way he has taken can be a kind of gateway to more fully following the Buddha. No wonder he is filled with ecstasy! Indeed, almost everywhere you turn in the Dharma Flower Sutra, someone is receiving the Sutra with joy, or is full of joy, or has a heart that is dancing for joy.

The Buddha reminds Shariputra that Shariputra had learned this lesson before but had forgotten his own original vow. This is one of the many ways in which the Dharma Flower Sutra teaches that the potential for being a buddha is fundamental – something given to us originally. His life as a bodhisattva was always his life. Now, quite suddenly, he knows it.

To understand the Buddha Dharma as an ultimate truth about reality is to experience it as liberating. That Shariputra has received only some of the Buddha Dharma means that even though he is enlightened, liberated, and overcome with joy, this is only a new beginning, a rebirth, not a death in which there is nothing more to do. He is set free to live in the Dharma.

In Chapter 2 of the Lotus Sutra we find such expressions as this:

If anyone, even while distracted,
With even a single flower,
Makes an offering to a painted image,
They will progressively see countless buddhas. (LS 94)

If making an offering with just a single flower while being distracted can be a sign of taking the Buddha Way, surely such things as expressions of gratitude or apology, even superficial ones, can be signs of respect for others. Just as “merely formal” Dharma is better than no Dharma at all, small signs of respect are much better than no respect at all.

Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva tells everyone he meets, even extremely arrogant monks, even those who are angry, disrespectful, and mean-spirited, that they have taken the bodhisattva way. If what he says is true, surely whenever we make even superficial expressions of gratitude or apology, we are to some degree showing respect, a sign that, like Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva, we too have—to some slight but very important degree—taken the bodhisattva way that will lead to our awakening.

The fact that before becoming a fully awakened buddha Sun and Moon Light was a prince¹ living in a palace with eight sons reveals a recurrent theme of the Sutra: the idea that what is happening now is both new and unprecedented, and has happened many times before. Here, that Sun and Moon Light Buddha was a prince living in a palace shows a biographical connection to Shakyamuni Buddha. Most buddhas, perhaps all buddhas in the Dharma Flower Sutra, anticipate or replicate the life of Shakyamuni at least to a large extent. Their life stories are similar. That Sun and Moon Light had eight sons while Shakyamuni had only one indicates, however, that their lives were not the same in all respects.

So when Manjushri, talking about the light with which the Buddha has illuminated other worlds, indicates that he has seen many buddhas in the past do the same thing as Shakyamuni, he does not indicate that what they do is exactly the same. In the Dharma Flower Sutra, the present is always emerging from the past, never completely discontinuous from it. Patterns are repeated, sometimes over and over. The first of the buddhas named Sun and Moon Light taught the four truths and nirvana for those who wanted to be shravakas, the teaching of twelve causes and conditions for those who wanted to become pratyekabuddhas, and to lead them to supreme awakening and all-inclusive wisdom he taught the six transcendental practices to bodhisattvas. This threefold structure and division of three teachings is precisely what will be ascribed to Shakyamuni Buddha in the Sutra. Yet in this story there are twenty thousand buddhas, one after the other, all with the name Sun and Moon Light. That is very different from Shakyamuni. In this sutra we are not given the name of his predecessor, but we are told that his successor is to be Maitreya. There is only one Shakyamuni Buddha.

Perhaps the most important point here is that in this, as in many other things, the Dharma Flower Sutra does not subscribe to a rigid structure. As in our own experience, here the present both repeats the past and is different from it. History is always bound to the past, enormously influenced by it, but never completely so.

1

This is one of the rare places where Gene Reeves misstates the facts. As the Murano translation clearly states: The last Sun-Moon-Light Buddha was once a king, not a prince. While Reeves stretches the truth in an attempt to link this to Shakyamuni, it better matches the tale in Chapter 7, where we learn about Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha, a former king who had sixteen sons, one of whom becomes Shakyamuni Buddha. return

See Mistaken Facts

In the Lotus Sutra there are worlds, heavens, purgatories, and so on, making up a very rich imaginary cosmos. Much has been written about Indian and Buddhist cosmology, but none of it is very helpful in facilitating better understanding of the Dharma Flower Sutra. In this Sutra, cosmology is used, not as quasi-scientific description of the universe, but to enhance the place and importance of Shakyamuni Buddha, the Dharma Flower Sutra preached by him, and the world of Shakyamuni Buddha, this “saha world.” It is important to realize from the outset that the cosmological episodes – the mysterious and even magical events that occur in the Dharma Flower Sutra – are imaginative stories, used for the practical purpose of transforming the minds and hearts and lives of the readers or hearers of the Sutra. They are used for the purpose of having us understand – not only in our heads, but also spiritually, in the depths of our beings – that how we live our lives is important, not only for ourselves and those close to us, but for the whole cosmos as well.

Here, in Chapter 28 of the Dharma Flower Sutra, Universal Sage becomes the vehicle for specifying the four conditions necessary for acquiring the Dharma Flower Sutra. Three of these are matters of action, things we do or can do. At least to some extent we can choose to plant roots of virtue, choose to join those who are determined to be awakened, and choose to be determined to save all the living. The first of the four, on the other hand, is quite different. Being protected and kept in mind by buddhas is not something we can choose; rather, it is more like a gift. Faith, at least in one of its dimensions, is the trust and confidence that we are always under the care of buddhas.

Being under the protection and care of buddhas does not mean that no harm can come to us. We should know that even with the protection of buddhas, the world is a dangerous place. Shakyamuni Buddha, we should remember, was harmed more than once during his teaching career and probably died from food poisoning. We can never entirely escape from a whole host of dangers, including disease, aging, crime, and war. What the Lotus Sutra teaches is not that we can be completely free from danger, but that no matter what dangers we have to face, there are resources, both in ourselves and in our communities, that make it possible for us to cope with such dangers. By having faith in the Buddha, doing good by helping others, genuinely aspiring to become more and more fully awakened through wise and compassionate practice, and by extending our compassion not only to our family and our friends but to all living beings, the dangers we face will recede into the background. They will not go away, but we will not be dominated by them.

To have faith in the Buddha is to take refuge in the Buddha. It means that embodying the Buddha in our everyday lives is our highest good. This is to live in faith, to trust life itself. Such faith is not a license to stupidly do dangerous things, but it does make it possible to live an abundant life, without undue fear or caution, even perhaps in the eyes of the world to be a little foolish. This is part of what it means to be in the care of the buddhas.

It is interesting that we find the Dharma Flower Sutra here being sensitive to the possibility of families having members with different religious perspectives. Sometimes the term “heretical” has been used to translate the Chinese/Japanese term gedo, which literally means “off the path,” where the path is the Way of the Buddha. It simply means non-Buddhist. Actually, one could say that Buddhism itself is a Hindu heresy. “Heresy” means departure from something already established, some “orthodoxy,” and is always more or less within some tradition. Thus “Christian heresy” is possible and so is “Buddhist heresy” but that is not what is meant by gedo, especially here, where the King is a follower of brahman views, that is, of orthodox views.

The list of misfortunes from which one can be saved by calling upon Kwan-yin is interesting but not terribly important, as the meaning is quite clear – Kwan-yin can save anyone from any misfortune. The list simply provides concrete examples. This power to save is why early Jesuit missionaries to China invented the term Goddess of Mercy to refer to Kwan-yin and relate her to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Kwan-yin, in fact, has been and still is a goddess of mercy for a great many, answering their prayers and bringing them comfort.

Of course, those who would follow the bodhisattva way should see great bodhisattvas as models for us and not be looking to gods or goddesses for special favors.

This story [in Chapter 24] begins with an event not unlike that in the very first chapter of the Dharma Flower Sutra, in which the Buddha emits light of such power that it illumines very distant worlds. Since light is virtually always a symbol of wisdom, we can assume that here too we have a visual image indicating that the influence of Shakyamuni’s wisdom is not limited to his world, our world, but also goes to the far reaches of the universe. He is, in other words, the light of all the worlds. Though he is the Buddha of this world, he is also, in some way not clearly spelled out, the Buddha of all worlds. This has been indicated many times in the Dharma Flower Sutra, most dramatically perhaps in Chapter 11, where Shakyamuni Buddha assembles the buddhas and bodhisattvas from all over the universe.