Just as Buddhism breaks with conventional traditions, the Dharma Flower Sutra sometimes breaks from Buddhist traditions. Almost everywhere they are mentioned, including in other parts of the Lotus Sutra, there are six special bodhisattva practices, often called “perfections” from the Sanskrit term paramita, because they are practices through which bodhisattvas should try to perfect or improve themselves.

Though they have been translated in other ways, the usual six are: generosity in giving; morality, sometimes understood as following commandments or precepts; patiently enduring hardship; perseverance or devotion to one’s goals; meditation or meditative concentration; and wisdom. To these six a seventh is added in this chapter – the practice of skillful means.

On the one hand, it is appropriate that the practice of skillful means is added to the normal bodhisattva practices. Among other things, it makes clear that the use of skillful means is not, as some have said, something that can be done only by a buddha – but indeed by any Dharma teacher. Here it is made abundantly clear that use of skillful means is a practice of all who follow the bodhisattva path.

As you teach or share Buddha Dharma, you may want to devise your own list of bodhisattva practices. I once gave a talk about the eleven practices of the Lotus Sutra. If I were doing that talk again today, I would have to make it a list of twelve. The point is that the Lotus Sutra encourages us to adapt the Dharma and our ways of teaching it creatively, in accord with what is most likely to be useful in our own place and time.