In [the Parable of the Priceless Gem in the Top-Knot], we are told, the jewel kept in the king’s topknot represents the Dharma Flower Sutra. Here the symbolic meaning of “jewel” is quite different from that in the story in Chapter 8 of the “hidden jewel,” where the jewel symbolizes the potential that lies dormant within all living beings to become awakened. The main point here, once more, is to describe symbolically the relationship between earlier forms of Buddhism and the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, and to explain why the Dharma Flower Sutra was not taught earlier. Here, the Dharma Flower Sutra is seen as the crowning achievement of the Buddha and Buddhism. The Buddha has given many gifts and treasures, many sutras, many practices, and so on, but there is one that stands above all the others – the Wonderful Dharma Flower Sutra.

It is important, however, to see here that the earlier or “lesser” rewards really are, first and foremost, rewards. There is no suggestion that the earlier teachings of the shravaka way are wrong or bad or even misleading. Just as in the very first parable in the Lotus Sutra, the parable of the burning house, it is by pursuing the three small vehicles that the children are led to the great vehicle; here too there is no hint of going from bad to good, or from wrong to right, or from false to true. It is the case that the Dharma Flower Sutra proclaims itself to be better in some sense than other sutras, but this is a relative difference. The holy wheel-rolling king rewarded his soldiers with all sorts of good and valuable things before deciding that one was worthy of the jewel in his topknot.