For someone who only reads English, the value of this opportunity to read, recite and study the Lotus Sutra cannot be explained by any calculation, parable or simile.
In my 46th and 47th cycles through the Lotus Sutra, I’m setting aside Gene Reeves translation, and picking up the BDK English Tripitaka translation of The Infinite Meanings Sutra, the Lotus Sutra and The Sutra Expounded by the Buddha on Practice of the Way through Contemplation of the Bodhisattva All-embracing Goodness.
I’m using this translation of these sutras because that’s the translation favored in Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side by Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Jacqueline I. Stone.
The Authors’ Introduction, explains the choice of texts:
All quotations from the Lotus Sūtra are taken from the translation done by Tsugunari Kubo and Akira Yuyama. See The Lotus Sūtra, rev. 2nd ed., trans. by Tsugunari Kubo and Akira Yuyama, BDK English Tripitaka Series (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2007). For the reader’s convenience, we have provided in-text page references to this translation after each quotation. Please note that the pagination of the printed version of the text (used here) differs from the pagination of the version presently available online.
Kubo and Yuyama based their translation on the celebrated Chinese version of the sūtra produced by the Central Asian scholar-monk Kumārajīva in 406. In several places, however, they chose not to follow traditional Sino-Japanese interpretation but have instead consulted the Sanskrit and, in a few instances, the Tibetan versions of the Lotus (see their “Translators’ Introduction,” xiv). One way in which their English version departs from Kumārajīva’s Chinese lies in the handling of proper names. Where Kumārajīva translated many names of figures appearing in the Lotus Sūtra, Kubo and Yuyama give them in the original Sanskrit. We have followed suit, not to give primacy to the Sanskrit text, but for consistency with the Kubo-Yuyama translation. However, some of the longer Sanskrit names can prove daunting to readers unfamiliar with that language. We have accordingly provided in parentheses with the first occurrence of such names the English rendering given by Leon Hurvitz in his translation of the Lotus Sūtra: Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma (the Lotus Sūtra), published by Columbia University Press (1976; rev. 2009), or a translation of our own.
The opening and closing sutras are included in the BDK English Tripitaka Tiantai Lotus Texts, which also includes The Commentary on the Lotus Sutra by Vasubandhu and A Guide to the Tiantai Fourfold Teachings by the Buddhist Monk Ghegwan. A PDF copy of the book is available here.