It is quite possible to study the Dharma Flower Sutra by focusing on its teachings, perhaps using its parables and stories to illustrate those teachings. But by focusing on the stories, we will discover some things that we could not see by focusing on teachings.

In many ways the Dharma Flower Sutra is a difficult book that stretches beyond, and sometimes even makes fun of, the tradition in which it lives. It surprises. But it does so primarily in its stories, which force us to think, for example, about what it means to tell the truth, or what it means to be a bodhisattva or a buddha. And its stories call for, elicit, a creative response from the hearer or reader.