In the Chapter 28 story, Universal Sage Bodhisattva promises that if anyone accepts and upholds the Dharma Flower Sutra he will come to that person mounted on a white elephant with six tusks. This can be understood to mean that taking the Sutra seriously gives one extraordinary strength or power. The elephant itself is often a symbol of strength or power, the whiteness of the elephant has been taken to symbolize purity, and the six tusks have been taken to represent both the six paramitas or transcendental bodhisattva practices and purification of the six senses. But if the elephant is taken to be a symbol of power, we should understand that this is not a power to do just anything. It is a power to practice the Dharma, strength to do the Buddha’s work in the world, power to be a universal sage.

Though the image does not come from this story but from the much more involved visualization of the Sutra of Meditation on the Dharma Practice of Universal Sage Bodhisattva, the elephant on which Universal Sage Bodhisattva rides is very often depicted as either walking on blossoming lotus flowers or wearing them like shoes. If the elephant is not standing, a lotus flower will be under the foot of Universal Sage. Such lotus blossoming should be understood, I believe, as an attempt to depict in a motionless picture or statue something that is actually very dynamic – the flowering of the Dharma.