In Chapter 23 of the Lotus Sutra we find these twelve similes:
This sutra can bring great and abundant benefit to all the living and fulfill their hopes.

Just like a clear, cool pool, it can satisfy all who are thirsty. Like fire to someone who is cold, like clothing to someone naked, like a leader found by a group of merchants, like a mother found by her children, like a ferry found by passengers, like a doctor found by the sick, like a lamp found by people in the dark, like riches found by the poor, like a ruler found by the people, like a sea lane found by traders, and like a torch dispelling the darkness this Dharma Flower Sutra can enable all the living to liberate themselves from all suffering, disease, and pain, loosening all the bonds of mortal life. (LS 359)

This passage can readily be understood to be not only describing the wonderful powers of the Dharma Flower Sutra but also expressing hope for all those in need:

May those who are thirsty find cool, clear water.
May those who are cold find a warm fire.
May those who are naked find clothing.
May those who are without leadership find a leader.
May children who are lost find their mothers.
May those who need to cross over water find a ferry.
May those who are sick find a doctor.
May those who are in the dark find a lamp.
May those who are poor find riches.
May those in need ofone find a ruler.
May those who trade find a sea lane.
May those in darkness find a light.

In other words, the twelve similes are not merely claims about what the Lotus Sutra can do, though they are that; they are also a poetic expression of the many kinds of human needs and of the hope that they be met.

Thus the meaning of “this sutra can save all living beings” is that if it is heard and applied – by us – people will be saved. Those who are thirsty will find cool water and those in the dark will find light.

In ancient India placing one’s hand on the head of another apparently was a sign of trust. Clearly something like that is intended here – but perhaps something more is involved. Though not in this chapter, in various places in the Dharma Flower Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha has said that he is the father of this world. Further, bodhisattvas are regarded as children of the Buddha. There is, in other words, a kind of familial relation, a relation of affection between the Buddha and bodhisattvas. Here, the placing of his hand on the heads of bodhisattvas indicates that the relationship is not only one of trust in a formal sense but displays a religious faith which goes beyond calculations of ability and such. Just as in early chapters of the Sutra he has assured shravakas of becoming buddhas, here the Buddha assures bodhisattvas that they can do the job that needs to be done.

The bodhisattvas, in turn, assure the Buddha that they will indeed carry on his ministry of spreading the Dharma. In other words, the relationship of trust between the Buddha and the bodhisattvas is a mutual one, based on personal assurance. The Buddha assures the bodhisattvas that they can do what needs to be done and they assure him that they will do it.

The divine powers displayed in this story are said to be ten in all, five having to do with the past and five with the future. The second five can be understood as consequences of the first five being widely implemented. While these ten are known as “divine powers,” they are actually events – events that display special, magical powers, some by buddhas, some by others.

We should notice that, as in the parable of the burning house of Chapter 3 of the Sutra, the dangers – the fire and many other terrible things in Chapter 3 and the poison in Chapter 16 – are found in the fathers’ houses. Some have raised questions as to why the Buddha would be so careless as to have such a fire-hazard of a house or why he would leave poison lying around in a house full of children. This kind of question probably presupposes that the Buddha is somehow all-powerful and creates and controls the world. But that is not a Buddhist premise. In the Dharma Flower Sutra the point of having the danger occur in the Buddha’s home is to indicate a very close relationship between the Buddha and this world. The world that is dangerous for children is the world in which the Buddha – like all of us – also lives. …

The parables in the Dharma Flower Sutra do not say that the fathers created the burning house or the poison found in the home of the physician. Shakyamuni Buddha has inherited this world, or perhaps even chose to live in this world, in order to help the living. The dangers in this world are simply part of the reality of this world. Indeed, it is because of them that good medicine and good physicians are needed here.

It is important to recognize that the bodhisattvas who spring up from the earth are not merely historical beings of the past. They include ourselves. Shakyamuni Buddha was a historical person. He was born, lived, and died on earth. So too were the leading shravakas who appear in the Dharma Flower Sutra – Shariputra, Ananda, Subhuti, Katyayana, Kashyapa, Maudgalyayana, and others. These are the names of historical people. But the famous, and not so famous, bodhisattvas are not historical, at least not in the same sense. Manjushri, Maitreya, Universal Sage (Pǔxián/Fugen/Samantabhadra), Earth Store (Dìzàng/Jizo/Kshitigharba), and Kwan-yin (Kannon/Avalokiteshvara) are the five most prominent bodhisattvas in East Asian religion and art. Though all, especially Manjushri, Maitreya, and Kwan-yin, are believed to have been embodied in a variety of historical figures, none is an actual historical figure. The same is true of other bodhisattvas who have important roles in the Dharma Flower Sutra, bodhisattvas such as Never Disrespectful, Medicine King, and Wonderful Voice, and the four leading bodhisattvas who emerge from the earth in Chapter 15. Although some are believed to have been embodied in one or more historical figures, none is historical in the sense that Shakyamuni, Shariputra, and you and I are historical. Rather, they are models for us, setting examples of bodhisattva practices that we can follow.

But the enormous horde of bodhisattvas who well up from the earth with the four leaders are perhaps a little different. They appear, not in historical time, but in a powerful story. The text says that the four groups, the monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen, could see these bodhisattvas “by the divine powers of the Buddha.” This is another way of referring to the human imagination, to the power that we all have to transcend everyday life, the power to see the buddha in others. The bodhisattvas are nameless, and, except for greeting and showing respect to all the buddhas, in this story and in subsequent chapters of the Sutra they do nothing. We can understand this to mean that in a sense they are not yet. The emergence of bodhisattvas from the earth is not a one-time event in ordinary time, but an ongoing process – bodhisattvas are emerging from the earth still. And not only, of course, in India, but virtually everywhere there are human beings. If we use our own powers of imagination, we can see bodhisattvas emerging from the earth all around us! We ourselves can be among them.

Some interpreters of the Lotus Sutra may prefer to think that this space below the earth is a symbolic reference to the popular Mahayana Buddhist idea of emptiness. These bodhisattvas, they claim, emerge from emptiness. This could be right. But the Lotus Sutra is not much concerned with the concept of “emptiness,” using it in a positive sense only very few times. So it seems to me to be unlikely that it is what is behind this story. What this story wants to affirm, I believe, is not the reality of emptiness, but the reality and importance of this world, this world of suffering, a world that is, after all, Shakyamuni Buddha’s world and our world.

That this girl is a dragon is interesting in itself. In the Indian text she is a naga, the daughter of the Naga King. Along with the garuda, nagas are very commonly found on South East Asian Theravada Buddhist temples. As was the case for most Indian mythical creatures, there were no corresponding mythical creatures in China. The Chinese had no nagas, but they did have dragons, and, both being associated with the sea, that was close enough to suggest translating “naga” into “dragon.” And so it is that in English one sometimes finds this girl referred to as a “Naga Princess.”

The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p157

Reeves offers this footnote:

Though repeatedly referred to as a dragon princess, in this story it is as if the girl were human, and, apart from her introduction, that is the way she is treated in the story, and in subsequent Buddhist art. Almost always she is not imagined or depicted as a dragon but as a girl.

The human death of Shakyamuni Buddha creates a problem for those who would follow after him – how to keep him alive despite his death, and how to keep his teaching, the Dharma, alive without him to teach it.

Chapter 11 introduces in a special way the idea that the solution to this difficult problem is a matter of embodiment – the Buddha can be kept alive by those who embody him by embracing and following his teachings. And it is precisely because Shakyamuni Buddha was a human being – with a human body and other human limitations – that we human beings can be expected to embody the Dharma, that is, be the Buddha, in our lives, despite our having human bodies and very human limitations. It is through being embodied in very imperfect human beings that the life of the Buddha can become so long that it can even be said to be “eternal.”

[H]aving established through the powerful image of Buddhas coming to this world from all directions that the Buddha is somehow represented throughout the universe, the chapter ends with an appeal to those who can take up the difficult task of teaching the Dharma after the Buddha’s extinction to make a great vow to do so. The difficulty of teaching the Dharma is expressed in what has come to be known as “the nine easy practices and six difficulties.” They dramatically express the difficulty of teaching the Dharma. But this is not done to discourage us. The point, rather, is to have us understand that we too are called, even challenged, not to be teachers of a dead Dharma, of dead doctrine from the distant past, but to be teachers of the Dharma by embodying the very life of the Buddha, which is itself the Dharma, in our whole lives.

Through living the Dharma as much as possible ourselves, the Buddha too continues to live in our world.

Some traditions maintain that there are five kinds of Lotus Sutra practices taught here: receiving and embracing (or upholding) the Sutra, reading it, reciting (or chanting) it, explaining it (by teaching or preaching), and copying it.

“Receiving and embracing” involves really hearing and following the Sutra, giving yourself to it, so to speak. It is not merely a matter of hearing with one’s ears and mind, but also with one’s body. That is, it is a matter of making the Sutra a truly significant part of one’s life by embodying its teachings in one’s actions in everyday life.

By reading the Sutra, whether alone or with others, aloud or to oneself, and by reciting or chanting the Sutra, the teachings are likely to become more deeply rooted in our minds and hearts. The Sutra does not seem to support, however, the idea that mindlessly reciting the text has any value.

Reciting sutras once meant reciting them from memory. Memorizing sutras was once an extremely important responsibility of monks. For centuries it was the only way they had to store them, as writing had not yet been invented in India. Even after the invention of writing, without printing presses, copies of a sutra written on bark and such, especially copies of a sutra as long as the Lotus Sutra, must have been relatively rare.

Explaining the Sutra to others is good not only for learners, but also for teachers. All good teachers know that, in the process of teaching, they almost always learn at least as much as their students. Even now – after decades of teaching the Dharma Flower Sutra – I still always feel that in a classroom we are all learners and that I am being blessed with the greatest learning of all.

Copying a sutra originally meant, until relatively recently, writing it out by hand. With such a large quantity of sutras, this was a very important practice, the principal way of storing sutras for subsequent use. With written copies there could be much less reliance on memorized versions. But while copying Chinese characters by brush can be a pleasant meditative exercise involving concentration, I’m not at all sure that such copying is so important today. What is important is looking at every character or word in the text, not quickly skipping over parts that are boring or difficult. Translating also, I believe, can well serve the purpose of concentrating one’s focus on each part of the text. Such practice, too, can be beneficial both to the reader and to the translator.

While the term “buddha-nature” is never used in the Dharma Flower Sutra, this is a good example of the use of the basic idea behind the concept that would be developed after the Dharma Flower Sutra was compiled. One way we can understand the term is as a kind of “power” that makes it possible for any one of us to be a bodhisattva for someone else, a strength that makes it possible for us to share in doing the Buddha’s work of awakening all the living, a strength that makes it possible for us to go far beyond our normal expectations.

Buddha-nature, the potential to become a buddha, is not something we have to earn; it is something that all of us have received naturally, something that cannot be destroyed or taken away from us. It is, as the parable in Chapter 4 teaches, our inheritance; it is ours by virtue of our very existence. This is why we are taught in [Chapter 8, The Assurance of Future Buddhahood of the Five Hundred Disciples] that our treasure is very close.

Our buddha-nature is, in one sense, part of the basis of our very existence. Nothing could be closer. On the other hand, unless we learn to make use of this ability and put it into practice in our daily lives, the goal of realizing it, of becoming a buddha, remains very distant. In light of these two views, gaining the treasure is a matter of more fully understanding and realizing something that was always within us. While our treasure is very close, that full realization and appropriation of it always remains very distant.