Here is one version of the surprising revelation that shravakas may indeed be bodhisattvas.

Monks, listen carefully!
Because they have learned skillful means well,
The way followed by children of the Buddha [bodhisattvas]
Is unthinkably wonderful.

Knowing that most delight in lesser teachings
And are overawed by great wisdom,
Bodhisattvas become
Shravakas or pratyekabuddhas.

Using innumerable skillful means,
They transform all kinds of beings
By proclaiming themselves to be shravakas,
Far removed from the Buddha Way.

They save innumerable beings,
Enabling them to succeed.
Though most people are complacent and lazy,
In this way they are finally led to become buddhas.

Keeping their bodhisattva actions
As inward secrets,
Outwardly
They appear as shravakas.

They appear to have little desire
And to be tired of birth and death,
But in truth
They are purifying buddha lands. (LS 210—11)

The point is in part to emphasize the importance of embodying the Dharma in our lives, in our actions and behavior toward others. But equally important is the idea that anyone can be a bodhisattva for us, if we are open to seeing and experiencing the other as a bodhisattva. As is so often the case, this teaching, the idea that a shravaka can be seen to actually be a bodhisattva, is both about how we should regard ourselves and about how we should regard others, an idea that will be developed and emphasized over and over again in subsequent chapters of the Dharma Flower Sutra.

The Buddha, the text says, gives to living beings “buddha-wisdom, tathagata-wisdom, natural wisdom.” This phrase has sometimes been taken to refer to three different kinds of wisdom, but I think the three terms are intended to be equivalent, three different ways of saying “buddha-wisdom.” The fact that Tathagata, often translated as “Thus Come One,” is simply another of the ten epithets of the Buddha, would indicate that there is no difference between buddha-wisdom and tathagata-wisdom, and the logic of the phrase would suggest that if there is no difference between these two, there is no difference among the three; they are just three ways of talking about the same thing.

If this is correct, it means that buddha-wisdom, or at least the buddha-wisdom given to human beings, is a kind of natural wisdom. Natural wisdom is a kind of inherent wisdom, a wisdom that is not given from outside but arises naturally. Thus, we are being told here that in teaching Buddha Dharma we can rely on our own inherent wisdom. This is, of course, entirely consistent with the idea that we all have a buddha-nature, a capacity to be a buddha for others.

Such wisdom should not be understood, as terms such as “inherent” might suggest, as something independent of others. In the first place, it is not something we ourselves individually create. It is a gift to us, something we have all received. Second, just as having buddha-nature does not mean that we are already fully buddhas, having natural wisdom does not mean that our wisdom cannot or should not be developed and enhanced by knowledge. What it does mean is that we have a natural capacity to do this, a capacity to become better informed, more knowledgeable, wiser in dealing with others.

Our buddha-wisdom is like the inheritance of the poor son in the parable in Chapter 4 of the Dharma Flower Sutra and discussed in Chapter 7. Our inheritance is ours – it cannot be taken away from us. But it can be severely restricted in use, or it can be expanded greatly through experience and education.

In the missing half of [Chapter 5], there are two additional similes: a simile of light and one of clay and pottery. According to the first, just as the light of the sun and the moon illuminates the whole world – those living beings who do good and those who do ill, the tall and the short, things that smell good and things that smell foul – so too the light of the Buddha’s wisdom shines equally on all the living according to their capacities. Though it is received by each according to what it deserves, the light itself has no deficiency or excess. It is the same everywhere. According to the second simile, the simile of the clay and pottery, just as a potter makes different kinds of pots from the same clay – pots for sugar, for butter, for milk, and even for some filthy things – they are all made of the same clay, just as there is only one Buddha Vehicle.

It is worth noting in passing that in both of these similes there is an obvious inclusion of bad or unpleasant things. This is one of the ways in which the Dharma Flower Sutra expresses universality, the idea that there are no exceptions, no one is left out of the Dharma. Everything is affected by Buddha Dharma. One Vehicle is for all living beings.

Whereas the parable of the burning house can lead us to believe that the One Vehicle replaces the three vehicles just as the one cart seems to replace the three carts, here we can understand the Sutra’s intention to be inclusive of all beings. The many living beings, whether good, bad, both, or neither, are all nourished by the same rain, by the same Buddha Dharma.

It is also important to recognize that the kind of universalism affirmed in the Dharma Flower Sutra does not in any way diminish the reality and importance of particular things. The fact that the pots are made of one clay does not make the pots any less real. Similarly, that many beings of various kinds are illuminated by one light affirms both the oneness of the light and the many-ness of the living beings. Thus the universalism of the Dharma Flower Sutra is at the same time a pluralism, an affirmation of the reality and importance both of unity and of variety.

One of the basic lessons of the Lotus Sutra is that one can find in every situation that there is something to be learned. Sometimes an unpleasant situation or task can be understood as being a present given to us by the Buddha, an opportunity for learning and growth, just as the son in this story received from his father the present of shoveling dung. We can learn from just about any situation, even from very unpleasant ones, if we approach it with a right attitude.

In many stories in the Dharma Flower Sutra we find that characters who represent the Buddha have problems leading their children. In the early parable of the burning house, for example, the children in the burning house initially refuse to pay any attention to their father. Similarly, the children of the physician in Chapter 16 … also refuse to obey their father’s exhortation to take the good medicine he has prepared for them. The poor son in Chapter 4 is a runaway. In addition, we also often find sympathy being expressed for Shakyamuni Buddha because he is responsible for this world of suffering.

Collectively, both of these elements, disobedient children and sympathy from others, and many other things as well, point to the similarity of the Buddha to ordinary human beings. Some might think of the Buddha as being extremely distant and different from ourselves – along the lines of how the famous Christian theologian Karl Barth describes God: “totally other.” But in the Dharma Flower Sutra it is the opposite: the Buddha is very close to us, concerned about us, affected by us – thus similar to us. That is why the Buddha’s work, so to speak, is difficult. It is only because he cares about this world that his job is difficult.

We will often have the most difficulty leading those who are closest to us, our own children, or parents, or wives, or husbands. Often this can be a sign that things are as they can be. If life is difficult for the Buddha because he is close to the world, we should expect to have difficulties with those who are closest to us. Those difficulties should be taken as a sign that we should strive to improve our relationships with those closest to us, even though we can expect this to be difficult at times.

Let’s look further at each of the three things that Shariputra realized:
He is a child of the Buddha. Here, and throughout the Dharma Flower Sutra, the primary meaning of “child of the Buddha” is “bodhisattva.” Here, Shariputra realizes that while being a shravaka, he is also a bodhisattva, actually more deeply and profoundly a bodhisattva. But being a child of the Buddha has other implications as well.

What Shariputra originally set out to find was an understanding of the world in which death is not the end of everything – that is, a world in which everything comes to nothing. In other words, he sought meaning in life, he wanted his own life to be meaningful, to amount to something more than death.

Basically, he found two things. First, he found that nothing can separate us from what Christians call the love of God and Buddhists the compassion of the Buddha. The Dharma Flower Sutra teaches repeatedly that the Buddha is all around us, nearer than we think. He is the father of us all, the Compassionate One. The second important meaning of this metaphor is that we owe our lives not only to our biological parents and ancestors, but even more to the process, the Dharma, by which we live and are sustained. Chinese and Japanese Buddhism place enormous stress on the importance of biological ancestors, but in the teaching that we are all children of the Buddha, we should realize that biology is only one of the ways in which we inherit from the past. What we learn from our teachers – usually to be sure in the first instance from our mothers or primary caretakers, but also from a whole company of teachers, including those we encounter in books – has an enormous impact on shaping who and what we are. And those of us who are significantly drawn to the Buddha Dharma will be especially aware of our indebtedness both to the Buddha and to the tradition that has made his Dharma available to us. In an important sense, we ourselves are children of the Buddha.

While it can mean other things such as “way” or “method,” there are four chief ways in which “dharma” is used in Buddhism:

1. things—all the objects of experience that we can see, feel, hear, and touch, often translated as “phenomenon”;
2. the Buddha’s teaching, a use which is often extended to include Buddhist teachings and practices generally, and thus can mean Buddhism itself;
3. the truth that is taught in the Buddha’s teachings, especially the highest truth disclosed in the awakening of the Buddha; and
4. the reality that the truth reveals, that which enables and sustains all things in accord with interdependence.