What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Discuss and learn about the traditional Mahayana scriptures, without assuming that any one school ‘owns’ the only correct interpretation.
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What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by tonysharp »

How were you introduced to it? Do you have a favorite teaching, quote, or chapter? How often do you read or recite it? I have a very conflicted relationship with this text, and I'm looking to learn more about its appeal.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by WeiHan »

There are two main reasons that appeal to me.
1. The Chinese translation is extremely beautifully poetic.
2. Many ancient masters and lay people have attained high or some realization buy reciting it. Chinese text has taken the trouble to record these cases which goes to show the popularity of this sutra in ancient China.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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I am curious to why are you conflicted?
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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tkp67 wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 1:33 pm I am curious to why are you conflicted?
I probably shouldn't say... :emb: But I'll say it. To put it politely, the text doesn't seem to teach very much other than how great the text itself is. Admittedly, I haven't read all of it. Maybe I wasn't patient enough.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by tkp67 »

tonysharp wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 4:10 pm
tkp67 wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 1:33 pm I am curious to why are you conflicted?
I probably shouldn't say... :emb: But I'll say it. To put it politely, the text doesn't seem to teach very much other than how great the text itself is. Admittedly, I haven't read all of it. Maybe I wasn't patient enough.
Based on the interpretation your feelings are quite valid. I interpret it a bit differently myself, but I did so through the commentary not through direct study.

The real context of superiority * LIMITED TO MY INTERPRETATION * is really in regards to it as a vehicle for which all previous teachings which are reconciled within. In this manner it doesn't invalidate the other teachings but puts them in context to a greater realization. I don't find the other teachings any less sacred or important or their practitioners any less valuable as humans or as buddhists. posting.php?mode=edit&f=41&p=495938#

If I felt the true meaning of this sutra was to create a hierarchy of personal righteousness based on application I would not be a practitioner. In fact understanding is that it teaches a core belief that everyone possesses a latent buddha nature that simply needs to be realized to be engaged. This is an important characteristic for me.

I can even add that it was faithful practice of the lotus school that years later allowed my mind to become settled enough that I could engage in sitting meditation. This was impossible for me before hand and has seemingly become an innate feature of my being some years later so it doesn't seem to manifest a nature foreign to that to which other practices also seek.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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First of all, I am very sympathetic with your reaction to the sutra, and wonder that many may share the same feeling. When I first read the sutra, I was on the one hand attracted to it in a way I could not fathom or describe, but on the other hand quite perplexed: besides the praises of the merits of the sutra, was there anything else in the text other than a series of parables and stories? How could this sutra as such be profound or considered the king of all sutras? So at beginning I set the sutra aside though I kept the habit of reciting chapters from it occasionally, until I met with Ven. Zhiyi's commentaries on it (Zhiyi was the de facto founder of Tiantai/Tendai, also known as the Lotus School). His commentaries, which are not fully available in English unfortunately, made the complete sense of the greatness of the sutra to me. Besides this experience that led to my personal conversion to Tiantai, I also think the way he interpreted the sutra partly accounted for the popularity of the sutra and the high regard people paid to it in East Asia.

We could talk about the Tiantai interpretation of the Lotus Sutra incessantly but I think it is not appropriate to do in this thread. Putting Tiantai aside, I would like to mention the one aspect of this sutra that appealed most greatly to me: the soteriological inclusiveness.
In the traditional Buddhist scholastic thoughts, arhats and pratyekabuddhas once having attained the nirvana could no longer attain the Buddhahood since they are no longer in the samsara, have a body or consciousness etc., to progress, roughly speaking. In contrast, bodhisattvas shall remain defiled until their last reincarnation so that they could remain in the samsara and accumulate merits. This doctrine was inherited by early Mahayana and widely present in various sutras and sastras. At least in Yogacara, this doctrine was later considered crucial and the possibility of arhats attaining Buddhahood was categorically denied.
Moreover, you also have the notion of icchantika, sentient beings that can never attain the liberation.
And you have a chapter in which a lay, child, female animal who suddenly attains Buddhahood without intermediate reincarnations, which was considered unacceptable (the devadatta chapter).
While the doctrine mentioned above and all soteriologically restrictive thoughts were explicitly denied in the Lotus Sutra, it is hard to find much related discussion in other sutras, and such categorical denial is rarely present in other texts with, of course, a few exceptions.
Also, in my daily life, I was worried about my parents, relatives, friends and teachers who were not Buddhists concerning whether they would have a good reincarnation in the future. But the Lotus Sutra promises that whoever has even the slightest connection with Buddhism, however naive or simple it is, would attain the ultimate Enlightenment. This eased my worries greatly.
So in this way I thought Westerners may find it much easier to accept the sutra: is it not a Buddhist version of the Gospels? In this text, the once excluded, i.e., the arhats and pratyekabuddhas, icchantikas,the seemingly lay, immature, female, low-class and defiled sentient beings are offered the opportunity to achieve Buddhahood. Not only liberation, but all the wisdom, merits and the highest achievement are now for all. Furthermore, at least in the orthodox-y Christianity I am acquainted with, one has to become a Christian in the present life otherwise we should worry about her, right? But according to the Lotus Sutra, there is no such burden and pressure on conversion in the present life.

Remember that this is an early Mahayana text. And if you put it in the historical context and the development of Buddhist doctrines, you would find how revolutionary and provocative it was. At least this is the part of it that I found the most intriguing.
(To continue on the analogy to the Gospels, I feel that any later Christian texts are not parallelable to the four in terms of a feeling, a spirit that is hard to explain. Maybe just the chrisma of Jesus. So do I find in the Lotus Sutra: a spirit of confidence, inclusiveness, morning-ishness that is unparalleled in later texts. But I choose not to further develop it here.)
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by narhwal90 »

I find the Lotus sutra interestingly lacking in instruction as compared to many others. OTOH I read sutras looking for instruction as to conduct not for things to believe in. Which isn't to say I think the Lotus sutra is not important, but perhaps the instructions are more subtle. Peaceful Practices (14) is informative, and the various parables suggest attitudes that a practitioner might try to develop.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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I appreciate your replies.

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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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tkp67 wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 4:40 pmBased on the interpretation your feelings are quite valid. I interpret it a bit differently myself, but I did so through the commentary not through direct study.
This seems to be a common approach for this text.
In this manner it doesn't invalidate the other teachings but puts them in context to a greater realization.
Good point. The same could be said for many of the Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings.
In fact understanding is that it teaches a core belief that everyone possesses a latent buddha nature that simply needs to be realized to be engaged. This is an important characteristic for me.
Inclusivity is a very important issue for me, and one of the factors I use when considering an ideology. Can only select people benefit from the teachings, or do they work for everyone—in the same way—regardless of class, gender, or ethnicity? From what the late Gene Reeves says in this video, the Lotus Sutra is, indeed, inclusive.


I can even add that it was faithful practice of the lotus school that years later allowed my mind to become settled enough that I could engage in sitting meditation. This was impossible for me before hand and has seemingly become an innate feature of my being some years later so it doesn't seem to manifest a nature foreign to that to which other practices also seek.
This is great to hear.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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FromTheEarth wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 5:15 pm First of all, I am very sympathetic with your reaction to the sutra, and wonder that many may share the same feeling. When I first read the sutra, I was on the one hand attracted to it in a way I could not fathom or describe, but on the other hand quite perplexed: besides the praises of the merits of the sutra, was there anything else in the text other than a series of parables and stories? How could this sutra as such be profound or considered the king of all sutras? So at beginning I set the sutra aside though I kept the habit of reciting chapters from it occasionally, until I met with Ven. Zhiyi's commentaries on it (Zhiyi was the de facto founder of Tiantai/Tendai, also known as the Lotus School). His commentaries, which are not fully available in English unfortunately, made the complete sense of the greatness of the sutra to me. Besides this experience that led to my personal conversion to Tiantai, I also think the way he interpreted the sutra partly accounted for the popularity of the sutra and the high regard people paid to it in East Asia.

We could talk about the Tiantai interpretation of the Lotus Sutra incessantly but I think it is not appropriate to do in this thread. Putting Tiantai aside, I would like to mention the one aspect of this sutra that appealed most greatly to me: the soteriological inclusiveness.
In the traditional Buddhist scholastic thoughts, arhats and pratyekabuddhas once having attained the nirvana could no longer attain the Buddhahood since they are no longer in the samsara, have a body or consciousness etc., to progress, roughly speaking. In contrast, bodhisattvas shall remain defiled until their last reincarnation so that they could remain in the samsara and accumulate merits. This doctrine was inherited by early Mahayana and widely present in various sutras and sastras. At least in Yogacara, this doctrine was later considered crucial and the possibility of arhats attaining Buddhahood was categorically denied.
Moreover, you also have the notion of icchantika, sentient beings that can never attain the liberation.
And you have a chapter in which a lay, child, female animal who suddenly attains Buddhahood without intermediate reincarnations, which was considered unacceptable (the devadatta chapter).
While the doctrine mentioned above and all soteriologically restrictive thoughts were explicitly denied in the Lotus Sutra, it is hard to find much related discussion in other sutras, and such categorical denial is rarely present in other texts with, of course, a few exceptions.
Also, in my daily life, I was worried about my parents, relatives, friends and teachers who were not Buddhists concerning whether they would have a good reincarnation in the future. But the Lotus Sutra promises that whoever has even the slightest connection with Buddhism, however naive or simple it is, would attain the ultimate Enlightenment. This eased my worries greatly.
So in this way I thought Westerners may find it much easier to accept the sutra: is it not a Buddhist version of the Gospels? In this text, the once excluded, i.e., the arhats and pratyekabuddhas, icchantikas,the seemingly lay, immature, female, low-class and defiled sentient beings are offered the opportunity to achieve Buddhahood. Not only liberation, but all the wisdom, merits and the highest achievement are now for all. Furthermore, at least in the orthodox-y Christianity I am acquainted with, one has to become a Christian in the present life otherwise we should worry about her, right? But according to the Lotus Sutra, there is no such burden and pressure on conversion in the present life.

Remember that this is an early Mahayana text. And if you put it in the historical context and the development of Buddhist doctrines, you would find how revolutionary and provocative it was. At least this is the part of it that I found the most intriguing.
(To continue on the analogy to the Gospels, I feel that any later Christian texts are not parallelable to the four in terms of a feeling, a spirit that is hard to explain. Maybe just the chrisma of Jesus. So do I find in the Lotus Sutra: a spirit of confidence, inclusiveness, morning-ishness that is unparalleled in later texts. But I choose not to further develop it here.)
:good:

I would put it this way - the Lotus points to the enlightenment of buddhas (not just Buddha), annuttara samyak sambodhi, and orients the dharmadhatu accordingly, revealing samsara as not just some pointless cycle of suffering but all of it as the cause and effect of awakening. Critical to this view is the particular explanation of upaya which is declared as the single Buddha Vehicle taught as Three Vehicles as appropriate.

There is a teaching on practice that imho is as vast and profound, and in no event surpassed, and more difficult than anything you find in any other text: greeting all beings as buddhas. According to the text it's the cause that enables one to quickly awaken and attain buddhahood.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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FromTheEarth wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 5:15 pm First of all, I am very sympathetic with your reaction to the sutra, and wonder that many may share the same feeling.
Apparently, a lot of people do. The opening chapters of Introduction to the Lotus Sutra by Yoshiro Tamura attempts to ease the concerns others have had. It's been a good read.
His commentaries, which are not fully available in English unfortunately, made the complete sense of the greatness of the sutra to me.
Do you know where I could find Zhiyi's commentaries that are available in English? I'd love to read them.
And you have a chapter in which a lay, child, female animal who suddenly attains Buddhahood without intermediate reincarnations, which was considered unacceptable (the devadatta chapter).
Chapter 12 has been mentioned a few times now. I'm going to start it soon.

For me, soteriological inclusiveness, as you stated, is indicative of whether a text was composed by people with genuine wisdom or chauvinists. A predetermination, based on superficial distinctions, of someone's ability would contradict some notable Mahayana texts (i.e., the Heart Sutra). Such distinctions are said to be illusory.
Remember that this is an early Mahayana text. And if you put it in the historical context and the development of Buddhist doctrines, you would find how revolutionary and provocative it was. At least this is the part of it that I found the most intriguing.
Good point.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by FromTheEarth »

tonysharp wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 5:11 pm
For me, soteriological inclusiveness, as you stated, is indicative of whether a text was composed by people with genuine wisdom or chauvinists. A predetermination, based on superficial distinctions, of someone's ability would contradict some notable Mahayana texts (i.e., the Heart Sutra). Such distinctions are said to be illusory.
I would dispute this point. Prajna sutras do include paragraphs that eliminate the distinctions we commonly make among various persons and phenomena. However, such elimination is often treated as a reflection of the perspective of the ultimate truth, besides which there is also the one of conventional truth. It is in the POV of the conventional truth that we could possibly discuss soteriology, i.e., the possibility of nirvana, who could achieve nirvana etc. Arguably, that we do not have the notion of different predeterminations in the POV of the ultimate truth does not entail that in the conventional truth all sentient beings are qualified to achieve Buddhahood.
Note that in the prajna sutras, sometimes it is mentioned that the accomplished Śrāvaka practitioners' and Pratiyekabuddhas' liberation and wisdom are identical with Bodhisattvas' achievement of anutpattika-dharma-kṣānti (“...[二乘]若智若斷。是菩薩無生法忍”). That said, it seems that the distinction is still preserved in the sense that despite their equal liberation etc., the non-Bodhisattva sages are still inferior to the Bodhisattvas since they have neither completed the six Paramitas nor accumulated those many merits or knowledge of expedient means to liberate other sentient beings.
Overall, based on my very limited knowledge of at least one kind of Mahayana texts, i.e., the Prajna sutras, the soteriological inclusiveness that I referred to is not explicitly present there. I sincerely apologize in advance for possible inaccurate representations as I clearly have not exhausted all prajna sutras in my reading.

My main contention is that, however unpleasant the view that some people are soteriologically doomed, be they defiled Icchantikas or arhats, is, it is not an uncommon theme among mainstream Mahayana texts, including Prajna, Avatamsaka, Vaipulya sutras, and, orthodox Yogacara commentaries. And the authors of these texts may hold the view for understandable reasons: Abhidharma scholars and most Mahayana Buddhists believe that once you have eliminated the defilement, you would never return to the samsara to be able to accumulate more merits -- this is taken as how nirvana and the Buddhist path work and to challenge that view it seems you need to risk re-writing some fundamental doctrines of Buddhism. Later people who embrace texts such as the Lotus Sutra came up with intricate solutions but prior to that, people who hold such view need not to be called chauvinists (at least for this reason: the whole concept of Mahayana seems to me inseparable from the opposite term H**ayana, which is definitely a disrespectful, chauvinistic one).
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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tonysharp wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 5:11 pm
Do you know where I could find Zhiyi's commentaries that are available in English? I'd love to read them.
To be honest, I have no idea concerning reading recommendations... My apology. I would humbly defer to the Tendai subforum here.
The relevant part of his teachings I referred to in my reply, however, is commonly summarized as Five Periods and Eight Teachings, in which Ven. Zhiyi classifies all sutras into five periods of Buddha's pedagogical life, doctrines into four categories, and, pedagogical methods into four categories. The most interesting part is that in accordance with the four different teachings/doctrinal categories, each time a different understanding of the Four Noble Truths, the Twelve Nidanas, emptiness and path to awakening is presented. One would be amazed by seeing how all seemingly contradictory Buddhist teachings coherently fit into this one system. But the two texts that best explained this idea have not been translated yet to English to my knowledge (四教義 and 教觀綱宗).

But I would definitely recommend Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight, the recent complete translation of Ven. Zhiyi's magnus opus which has been repeatedly recommended by people here. The book is not cheap, but definitely something one should get whenever possible. It is a comprehensive practice (mainly shamata and vipashyana) guide founded upon the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. In contemporary China, the Buddhist community I grow in, masters often say that there are three encyclopedic Mahayana texts with the assistance of which alone you could achieve Buddhahood: Maitreya's Yogacarabhumi, Zhiyi's Mohezhiguan (this book), and, Tsongkhapa's Lamrim Chenmo. I guess you would agree they are not exaggerating after having read those texts.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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tonysharp wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 4:10 pm
tkp67 wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 1:33 pm I am curious to why are you conflicted?
I probably shouldn't say... :emb: But I'll say it. To put it politely, the text doesn't seem to teach very much other than how great the text itself is. Admittedly, I haven't read all of it. Maybe I wasn't patient enough.
Thanks for posting this thread, Tony. I had the same reaction, so I am interested to hear other folks' thoughts.

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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

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tonysharp wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 4:10 pm
tkp67 wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 1:33 pm I am curious to why are you conflicted?
I probably shouldn't say... :emb: But I'll say it. To put it politely, the text doesn't seem to teach very much other than how great the text itself is. Admittedly, I haven't read all of it. Maybe I wasn't patient enough.
I had same kind of first reaction to it, long ago in 1970's. It is a mysterious scripture, when you have read it through 3 to 7 times, you would have noticed in every reading of it passages "that were not there before!", passages that suddenly contained some wonderfully important precepts and/or information, that you had not seen before. You would have started to doubt that the scripture doesn't stay the same, when after a fifth, seventh or ninth reading you still get this same kind of experience!
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by Queequeg »

Aemilius wrote: Wed Jun 26, 2019 9:22 am
tonysharp wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 4:10 pm
tkp67 wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 1:33 pm I am curious to why are you conflicted?
I probably shouldn't say... :emb: But I'll say it. To put it politely, the text doesn't seem to teach very much other than how great the text itself is. Admittedly, I haven't read all of it. Maybe I wasn't patient enough.
I had same kind of first reaction to it, long ago in 1970's. It is a mysterious scripture, when you have read it through 3 to 7 times, you would have noticed in every reading of it passages "that were not there before!", passages that suddenly contained some wonderfully important precepts and/or information, that you had not seen before. You would have started to doubt that the scripture doesn't stay the same, when after a fifth, seventh or ninth reading you still get this same kind of experience!
There's an essay in a collection of contemporary papers on the text (Buddhist Kaleidoscope - edited by Genes Reeves who appears in the video posted above) that touches on this. Its a little different angle, though, suggesting the structure of the narrative causes the reader to be implicated in the story... Changing with the reader. Like the book in the movie Never Ending Story (my spin). Actually, in the Kumarajiva translation, the heart of the text, the Jigage of the Life Span chapter starts with the character for 'oneself' and ends with 'body' and it has been suggested that this refers to the Lotus Sutra being one's own body.

I've lately been reflecting on how the story told is like a literary representation or description of a phenomena like a mandelbrot graph... Zooming in or zooming out in scale one sees the same patterns - the growth of ordinary being into Buddha - though different details.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by Bodhisattva509 »

There is nothing unusual about the self-congratulatory nature of the Lotus Sutra. It's a common way that the Mahayana sutras establish their authority.
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by Caoimhghín »

Bodhisattva509 wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2019 2:24 am There is nothing unusual about the self-congratulatory nature of the Lotus Sutra. It's a common way that the Mahayana sutras establish their authority.
Certainly, if a Mahāyāna sūtra is supposed to be the bee's knees, it'll tell you so (and at great length!).

There is also an organic growth and evolution in the production of Buddhist literature in historical Buddhist cultures. We can see this in the textual evolution of the Āryasaddharmapuṇḍarīkanāmamahayānasūtra, the Miàofǎ Liánhuá Jīng, 妙法蓮華經 (T262), which is the subject matter of this thread.

Seishi Karashima published an article, in which he illusrated, quite elegantly IMO, the Stūpasaṁdarśanaparivarta, the 11th division of the sūtra, containing a depiction of a specifically Gandhāran stūpa. I lack the credentials in Indian and Central Asian art history to be able to critically agree or disagree with Karashima's findings, so will simply present them here.

The LS exists in multiple Sanskrit, Chinese, & Prākrit recensions, all of which differ to different degrees. The multiple Sanskrit recensions make direct comparison much more possible than when comparing, for instance, EBT parallels between Sinitic and Indic languages. Karashima presents this account of the Stūpasaṁdarśāna ("the beholding of the stūpa") miracle in the LS and he compares two diverse manuscripts, one Nepalese and one Kashgari. Of these two, the Kashgari represents the more innovative tradition, leading the way towards the recensions that eventually find themselves in Chinese. In order to replicate how Karashima presents these two recensions, I will render the additions of the Kashgari manuscript in bolded italics.
Then, in front of the Lord, arose a stūpa, consisting of seven precious substances, from a spot on the Earth. In the middle of the Lord's assembly, the stūpa of five hundred yojanas (ca. 3,500 km) in height and of proportionate circumference, arose and stood up in the sky. It was aglitter, very beautiful, shining in various ways, nicely decorated with five hundreds of thousands of terraces with railings attached with flower ornaments, adorned with many hundreds of thousands of garlands of jewels, hung with hundreds of thousands of pieces of cloth and bells, with hundreds of thousands of ringing bells, emitting the fragrance of mangosteen and sandalwood, whose scent filled the whole world. The stūpa's rows of spires, made of seven precious substances — namely, gold, silver, lapis lazuli, sapphire, emerald, red coral, and chrysoberyl, rose as high as the divine palaces of the Four Great Kings. The gods of the thirty-three heaven scattered, bestrewed and spread divine māndārava and great māndārava flowers on that stūpa. The gods of the thirty-three heaven let fall a great rain of divine flowers, thus scattered, bestrewed and spread them on that stūpa. In addition to them, hundreds of thousands of gods, nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kinnaras, mahoragas, human beings and non-human beings worshipped, honoured, respected, revered and paid homage to that stūpa with all sorts of flowers, all kinds of incense, all kinds of garlands, hundreds of thousands of ointments, powders, cloth, umbrellas, flags, banners, streamers, and by the playing of hundreds of billions of musical instruments..

From the jewelled stūpa, then, the following voice issued forth: "Excellent, excellent, O Lord Śākyamuni! You have well expounded this religious discourse of the Lotus of the True Dharma. So it is, O Lord!; so it is, O Sugata! It is excellent, excellent, O Lord Śākyamuni, that you show and expound this religious discourse which is a compendium for bodhisattvas, an elucidation of the equality of great wisdom and which all buddhas embrace. So it is, O Lord!; so it is, O Lord Śākyamuni, as you have explained. You have expounded well this religious discourse and I came here to listen to this religious discourse.

Then, having seen that great jewelled stūpa which, having emerged from the ground, was standing in the sky, in the atmosphere, the fourfold assembly became thrilled, became delighted, filled with joy, delight and happiness, and then, they all stood up from their seats, held out their joined hands and remained standing while looking up at the stūpa.
(adapted from Karashima 471-472, linked above)
The manuscript history of the LS shows a dynamic editorial process that shocks modern sensibilities of how one interfaces with religious texts, but this should not be shocking to anyone critically engaged with the Mahāyāna. We are not practicing a sola scriptura tradition where texts and textual studies is the main vehicle of realization.

Notice the great amount of meta-narrative concerning the LS itself that is added in the innovative Kashgari tradition" ("It is excellent, excellent, O Lord Śākyamuni, that you show and expound this religious discourse which is a compendium for bodhisattvas..." [etc.]). It seems to perhaps have been a pious activity of the translators, copiers, and editors, to insert — perhaps this was thought of as merit-producing? — praise of the scripture they were dealing with, but that is sheer speculation on my part. This reminds of of when marginalia (translators notes, commentary, and assorted miscellany written in the margins of texts commenting upon the text itself) become incorporated into medieval recensions of the Bible (there is a fascinating tradition of depicting the Prophet Moses with horns, for instance, that arises much like this and it is particularly interesting IMO).

We also see dramatic inflations of hyperbolic numbers as the Kashgari adds (hundred of) thousands to the already large enumerations. Seeing this process in action, we see Mahāyāna developing the tradition, in this early scripture, of citing seemingly impossibly gigantic numbers (like asaṁkhyeya, equivalent to one hundred quinquadragintillion).
Then, the monks uttered this gāthā:

These bodies are like foam.
Them being frail, who can rejoice in them?
The Buddha attained the vajra-body.
Still, it becomes inconstant and ruined.
The many Buddhas are vajra-entities.
All are also subject to inconstancy.
Quickly ended, like melting snow --
how could things be different?

The Buddha passed into parinirvāṇa afterward.
(T1.27b10 Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra DĀ 2)
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Queequeg
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by Queequeg »

I would suggest the hyperbolic numbers are one of the main points.

A lot of people wonder why the Lotus is so highly regarded in E. Asia, because its short on the kind of explanations and instructions you get in other texts.

I would argue its because it is fundamentally about contextualizing Shakyamuni, and by extension, Buddhadharma as a whole in this world (as some will point out, No Shakyamuni, No Buddhadharma in Saha, which is pretty obvious but seemingly forgotten often. But then it becomes critical to know who Shakyamuni actually is.)

At the core is the Life Span chapter which opens with Shakyamuni saying, "Everyone thinks I was born at Lumbini, awakened at Gaya, first turned the wheel at Sarnath, and will die at the Sala Grove in Kusinagara. But actually, I attained enlightenment in the remote past..." He then explains his life span in terms of universes of dust motes, which is basically a math equation. Just one of those dust motes he describes represents an unfathomable length of time, and he's talking about numbers that are exponentially so much larger that even the greatest bodhisattvas in the assembly, all combining their ability, can't even conceive the smallest part of what he is describing. Time is one of the central teachings of the sutra. In the beginning of the text, Manjusri has to remind Maitreya that they've attended this teaching before a long, long, long, long time ago. So long that Maitreya, the next Buddha of this world who resides in heaven, has no recollection at all. Its that unfathomable span of time that frames who Shakyamuni is, and by extension, contextualizes our present relationship to the Buddha, to our practice.

The other day I took my kids to go see a dinosaur exhibit, and the exhibit starts with a path on which 50 million years is represented by a 1 foot by 1 foot tile. 50 MILLION years. The path starts with the formation of the Earth. A few billion years down, an imprint tells us the first simple life forms appeared. A few hundred million years before more complex organisms evolve, and its only in the last five or six blocks that dinosaurs appear. And man appears at the very edge of the very last tile. The magnitude of time described there was mind boggling to me. And the Buddha in the Lotus is talking about lengths of time magnitudes longer than that...
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Shiva
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Re: What appeals to you about the Lotus Sutra?

Post by Shiva »

tonysharp wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 7:25 am How were you introduced to it? Do you have a favorite teaching, quote, or chapter? How often do you read or recite it? I have a very conflicted relationship with this text, and I'm looking to learn more about its appeal.
1. I actually just heard about it first through a friend of mine of Soka Gakkai. Although I never ended there and went straight to Nichiren Shu. :namaste:

2. The whole Sutra is so precious to me but my favorite Chapters are: Expedient Means; Devadatta; Emerging from the Earth; The Life Span of the Tathagata and The Bodhisattva Never Disparaging.

3. I read it and recite it daily.

:namaste: :namaste: :namaste:
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