The Lotus Sutra Translated by J. C. Cleary From the Chinese translation by Kumarajiva F Text copyright © 2016 J. C. Cleary All Rights Reserved Table of Contents Translator’s Introduction Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Skillful Means Chapter 3: Metaphor Chapter 4: Decisive Liberation Chapter 5: The Metaphor of the Medicinal Herbs Chapter 6: Predictions of Enlightenment Chapter 7: The Metaphor of the Illusory Citadel Chapter 8: Five Hundred Disciples Receive Predictions of Enlightenment Chapter 9: Predictions of Enlightenment Chapter 10: Teachers Chapter 11: The Appearance of the Jeweled Tower Chapter 12: Devadatta Chapter 13: Encouragement to Uphold the Sutra Chapter 14: Peaceful Joyful Action Chapter 15: Surging up from the Earth Chapter 16: The Lifespan of Those Who Arrive at Reality Chapter 17: Distinguishing Merits Chapter 18: The Merits of Joyous Accord Chapter 19: The Special Powers of Teachers Chapter 20: The Bodhisattva Who Never Looked Down on Anyone Chapter 21: The Spiritual Powers of Those Who Arrive at Reality Chapter 22: Entrusting the Teaching Chapter 23: The Deeds of the Bodhisattva Medicine King Chapter 24: The Bodhisattva Wondrous Sound Translator’s Introduction The Far Horizon What is a modern person to make of the classical Buddhist sutras? For the reader who has never before encountered Buddhism in its original presentations, the usual reaction is surprise: “I didn’t know Buddhism was like this!” It is difficult not to be impressed by the rush of images, by the expanded scales of time and space, by the power of the visions. In essence, Buddhist sutras are intended to communicate the teaching of enlightenment. Buddhist sutras are designed to interact with your mind, to show you another view of the world and another view of yourself. The challenge is to make yourself available for this interaction to take place. Of course, the Buddhist sutras can be approached as we would approach any classical texts. We can focus our attention on the concepts they set forth, the symbolism they use, the styles of the narratives, the methods of reasoning, the worldview the texts reflect. We can use the Buddhist sutras as a window into the culture and society and religious imagination of the classical Indian world. We can come at the Buddhist sutras with the orientations our contemporary culture applies to religious materials generally – wanting to believe, wanting to reject, wanting to argue, wanting to interpret. For those who are hungry for something transcendent to believe in, the sutras are marvelous for the emotions. They offer beautiful visions, promises of salvation, superhuman benefactors. They present visions of a grander reality that puts the trials and tribulations of everyday existence in the shade. For the skeptics, the sutras appear as mythology, as easy to reject as any religious belief system or any other body of religious texts. They describe supernatural beings and worlds beyond our world. They present visions spanning countless galaxies and measureless eons of time. But what if the sutras are metaphor, a code? What are the sutras really saying? The conceptual content of the sutras hits both those who are looking for something reassuring to believe in and those who consider themselves rational skeptics. People are either intrigued, or they are scandalized. The Buddhist sutras tell us that we are not who we think we are. They say that our perceptions are shaped by our social conditioning, that in our business-as-usual mindset we are out of touch with true reality, that our thoughts and emotions are like dreams and illusions. Who wants to hear this? The Buddhist sutras tell us that we are more than we think we are. They say that there is a way out of a petty, self-centered life dominated by hopes and dreams, fears and frustrations. They say we can live on another level. They assert that our true destiny is to function as enlightened beings and bringers of enlightenment to others. Who is ready to undertake such a mission? Conceptual Level: The Journey to Enlightenment The conceptual content of the Lotus Sutra poses a challenge to anyone in any era. The Lotus Sutra says to us: Expand your horizons, open up to reality as it is. There is more to reality than what the worldview of your culture offers you. There is more to you than what you imagine yourself to be, more to you than your personal dramas, your hopes and dreams, your feelings and ambitions. There is more to reality than the history of your time, as you and the people around you imagine your history to be. Expand your horizons, let reality in, so you can live in your local world free from illusions and ready to work to serve truth. In the Lotus Sutra , the Buddha explains the project like this: “The buddhas have appeared in the world because they wanted to show the enlightened perception of the buddhas to living beings. “They have appeared in the world because they wanted to enable living beings to awaken to the enlightened perception of the buddhas. “They have appeared in the world because they wanted to enable living beings to enter upon the path to the enlightened perception of the buddhas. “This is what it means to say that all the enlightened ones have appeared in the world for the sake of One Great Cause.” The principal narrator in the Lotus Sutra is Shakyamuni Buddha. He may be better known to you under the name Gautama, or Siddhartha, the historical founder of Buddhism. In the sutras of the Greater Journey, he is typically called Shakyamuni, “sage of the Shakyas,” after the name of the royal clan into which he was born in the sixth century before the Common Era in the territory of today’s Nepal. From the perspective of the Greater Journey, Shakyamuni Buddha was just one among the countless numbers of enlightened beings who set forth the teaching of truth in the past, present, and future in all worlds where there are intelligent living beings. Those who achieve enlightened perception are known as buddhas. The word “buddha” in Sanskrit means “enlightened one.” The buddhas are often referred to by another Sanskrit term that means “the ones who have arrived at reality.” Enlightened perception means seeing things as they are, without interposing an overlay of artificial categories, without measuring everything in terms of a self-centered agenda, without emotional and cognitive distortion. Enlightened perception brings the ability to see the true patterns of causation at work in the world and to take effective action – to see where the good lies and how it can be achieved. It brings freedom from the self-seeking, “me-against- them” orientation that comes to us with our human heritage. It liberates the mind from the delusion that the artificial categories imposed by language, culture, and social conditioning are anything more than artificial. The Buddhist teaching is that all of us have a potential for enlightened perception. The message of the Lotus Sutra is that developing enlightened perception is the ultimate goal of the Buddhist path, though the seeker may have to travel through many intermediate stations along the way. The idea that Buddhism takes a pessimistic view of life is a cliché found in many books on comparative religion in the West. But iIn fact, compared to our contemporary culture, Buddhism has an optimistic view of human potential. We are not just glorified animals, driven by our genetic programming to band together in hierarchical tribes and fight for supremacy, to strive for primal satisfactions and vie for social status. We are not inevitably prisoners of the worldviews we have been induced to follow or captives of their futile delusions. We are not just rats in the maze built for us by history and culture. According to the Lotus Sutra , there is more to us than that – we are all children of Buddha. We just have to set to work to reclaim our heritage and bring our inherent potential for enlightened perception to life. Skill in Means The Lotus Sutra repeatedly describes the basic methodology of the teaching of enlightenment, which is known as “skill in means.” Guided by the principle of skill in means, real Buddhist teaching does not follow any simple formula. It does not establish a set of doctrines that must be accepted as absolute truth by its adherents. It does not define itself in terms of a specific set of rules, rituals, texts, beliefs, commandments, or sacred scriptures. From a Buddhist point of view, a dogmatic approach to religion can only be another example of delusion in action. The Buddhist observation is that there is no single formulation that can encompass the totality of truth, no uniform technique that can lead everyone everywhere to realization. True teaching is what is conducive to progress toward enlightenment, in the context of a specific situation, audience, and moment in time. The teaching that works for you today might not be the teaching that worked for someone else yesterday. It takes the insight of the enlightened teacher to adjust the teaching to the needs of the particular person being taught, just as it takes the skill of the physician to prescribe medicine that will cure the sickness of the particular patient. The enlightened teachers designed their work with this in view. They knew that it is entirely possible for a particular concept or story or practice to help people in one community at a certain moment in history to wake up to their real situation, act more compassionately, become more generous, and make spiritual progress, while in another context, with another community, that very same concept or story or practice could become an idol or an obsession, reinforcing their delusions and leading them to spiritual stagnation.