The chief way in which the Lotus Sutra enchants is by telling stories—parables and similes, accounts of previous lives, stories of mythical events, and so forth.
It goes without saying that the Lotus Sutra is rich in such stories. Rightfully famous for its parables, it is, perhaps above all, a book of stories. Though there are various ways of counting, it contains two dozen or so different stories. In the sutra, a great many traditional Buddhist doctrines are at least mentioned, such as the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the three marks of the Dharma, interdependent origination, the twelve-link chain of causation, the six perfections, and so forth. Even one of the sutra’s most emphasized teachings, that of the one vehicle of many skillful means, is initially presented as an explanation of why there is such a variety of teachings within Buddhism. There are plenty of teachings or doctrines in it, but if we want to approach a fuller understanding of what the Lotus Sutra teaches, we had better pay attention to its stories, and not merely to propositions within them or to sentences that explain them, but also to the overall thrust and function of the stories within this very unusual sutra.
It is not incidental that the original Lotus Sutra probably began with the chapter on skillful means, now chapter 2, and then, in the next chapter, now chapter 3, told a story, the parable of the burning house, to illustrate and explain skillful means. And this “parable” chapter is immediately followed by the “attitude” (adhimukti) chapter, which is built around another story—the parable of the rich father and the poor son.
As we have it now, the first twenty-two chapters of the sutra, except for chapter 12, constitute a single story, a story about a time when the Buddha was at the place called Sacred Eagle Peak and preached the Lotus Sutra. In other words, about 85 percent of the Lotus Sutra falls within a single story.
Thus while there are many stories in the Lotus Sutra, many of them are actually episodes within a larger story that begins with chapter 1 as a kind of introduction and continues through chapter 22, which provides a natural end for the sutra, as well as to the story that begins in the first chapter. Chapter 12 is inserted in order to emphasize the universality of the buddha-nature, and chapters 23 through 28 are added, for the most part, as illustrations of bodhisattva practice. Thus, chapters 12 and 23–28 are regarded by some scholars as a third group of chapters in terms of order of composition. In these chapters there are almost no references to many of the main ingredients of the story found in chapters 1–22: the stupa in the sky, the buddhas and bodhisattvas who have come from all over the universe, or the bodhisattvas who have emerged from the ground. Some of these appended chapters no doubt circulated as independent sutras, as does chapter 25, which is known as the “Kannon Sutra” to this day.
Within the longer story that ends with chapter 22, there are many other stories and parables, which in this series we will look at separately, while trying not to lose sight of the context, the larger story, in which they occur.
These stories are the primary skillful means through which the Lotus Sutra invites us into its world, which is at once our own world, albeit seen and experienced differently. But it goes without saying that not everyone will welcome such an invitation or read the stories in this way. Some will reject them as super-naturalistic miracle stories. Others will see them as nothing more than the intra-Buddhist polemics of more than twenty centuries ago. Some will judge them to be nothing more than quaint filler for a text which, as a kind of “miracle cure,” only seeks to promote itself. An invitation into an imaginative world can always be turned down or rejected. A religious text will not function as a religious text for everyone. There is no compelling science or logic to lead one into the world of the Lotus Sutra. Some good reasons to stay away can be given, but there is an enchanting dimension, perhaps even a kind of seduction, in such stories.
Affirmation of Language
There is no shortage in Buddhism of words expressing distrust of words. There is some of that in the Lotus Sutra as well, but not a lot.
Words are never quite up to the tasks we give to them. We can never put into language just what it is that we see or feel or think. Our experience is always vastly richer than we can express. Yet words are what we have; they are part of the rich world that is given to us. Though always inadequate, and not the only way, they are probably the most important way in which human beings communicate. Like nothing else, they make it possible for us to travel across vast distances of both space and time. And, as we have seen, they can invoke a certain kind of concreteness.
It is not very clear to me just how it is that stories function to affirm the concrete. Is it merely that they are less abstract in some way than doctrines? “Everything is impermanent” is, after all, about as abstract (and as metaphysical) as one can get. Stories do have a kind of concreteness about them, more, as it were, flesh and blood in them. But I do not think that is the complete account of how they can function to elicit the concrete.
Perhaps it is that to tell a story is to trust words, despite the fact that they are unreliable both in the sense that they are inadequate to the tasks of expressing or describing and in the sense that a speaker or writer can never know what kinds of associations or connotations will be suggested to the reader or hearer.
But, so far at least, words are, for many purposes, the best communication tool we have. Sometimes there is communication: questions get answered, feelings shared, descriptions used, images aroused, moral and practical purposes served.
Of course, storytelling is not the only or even primary function of words. So this does not tell us very much about the power of stories to express the concrete. I think that what is special about stories in this regard is that they can use concrete images. The images of a burning house that each of us has when reading that parable may all be different from each other, but each is concrete in that it is an image of a particular house, and not at all like the abstract notion of “house.”
Concrete images are, of course, in our minds. There is no need for me to have seen any burning house, much less any particular burning house, for a house to burn in my mind, as a kind of reality created in part by the words on the page. The image, in a sense, testifies to the efficacy of words—it provides evidence that words can make things live, at least in our imaginations.
If words can evoke images of concrete imaginary realities, can they not evoke images of concrete, nonimaginary realities as well? Can they not, in other words, help us to be in touch with the concrete world that always envelops us? If so, might it not be the case that stories, by being concrete themselves, function to draw our attention to the concrete, to the world of everyday plants and people, houses and vehicles?
It is, of course, quite possible to study the Lotus 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 Lotus 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.
Invitation to Creativity
What is the purpose of all this enchantment and magic? Entertainment? In one sense, yes! It is to bring joy to the world. Stories are for enjoyment. But not only for enjoyment. Not in all, but in a great many of the stories in the Lotus Sutra, especially in those that are used to demonstrate the meaning of skillful means, it is important to recognize that what is being demanded of the reader is not obedience to any formula or code or book, not even to the Lotus Sutra, but imaginative and creative approaches to concrete problems. A father gets his children out of a burning house; another helps his long-lost adult son gain self-respect and confidence through skillful use of psychology; still another father pretends to be dead as a way of shocking his children into taking a good medicine he had prepared for them; and a rich man tries to relieve his friend’s poverty.
Creativity requires imagination, the ability to see possibilities where others see only what is. It is, in a sense, an ability to see beyond the facts, to see beyond the way things are, to envision something new. Of course, it is not only imagination that is required to overcome problems. Wisdom, or intelligence, and compassion are also needed. But it is very interesting that the problems encountered by the Buddha figures in the parables of the Lotus Sutra are never solved by the book. They do not pull out a sutra to find a solution to the problem confronting them. In every case, something new, something creative, is attempted; something from the creative imagination.
Of course, creativity is not always successful. In the first parable of the Lotus Sutra, the parable of the burning house, before the father comes up with an effective way to get his children out of the burning house, he tries some things that do not work. He shouts at his children, telling them to “get out.” He considers forcing them out by wrapping them in robes or putting them on a tablet and carrying them out. And when one approach does not work, he tries another. Or consider, perhaps as a better example, the parable of the hidden treasure, the gem in the hem, in chapter 8. Here a rich friend tries to help out his poor friend by sewing an extremely valuable gem into his robe. And this does not work. The poor man does not realize that he has this great treasure until he is told so in a subsequent encounter with his rich friend. The possibility of failure is always a part of any creative effort, requiring additional creativity.
We do not find mistakes in all the stories by any means, but in many there is still an element of surprise, creativity, and inventiveness. The guide along the difficult way conjures up an illusion, a castle in which the weary travelers can rest. The dragon princess does her little thing with the jewel. Even the Buddha Excellent in Great Penetrating Wisdom of chapter 7, after achieving supreme awakening only with the help of many gods and promising to preach, surprises everyone by waiting twenty thousand eons before preaching the Lotus Sutra, which he then proceeds to do without resting for eight thousand eons, then (exhausted?) retreats into deep meditation for eighty-four thousand eons, forcing sixteen bodhisattva novices to teach and explain the sutra for eighty-four thousand eons. Clearly there is a lot of imagination at work in the creation of these stories.
Creativity involves being free from karma, from past actions. In the Indian context in which Buddhism arose and the Lotus Sutra was compiled, this was especially important. A religiously based, rigid caste system apparently forced many to despair. Many became resigned to a Hindu fatalism that taught that everything is as it should be and that if you follow the rules you may be able to be born in better circumstances in your next life. Buddhism offered a way out of this system of thought and social structures, a new world in which one could exercise the imagination, in part at least to gain control of one’s life.
But fatalism is by no means unique to India. In the West it could take the form of debilitating doctrines of divine omnipotence and providence. Liberation from such fatalism is important. But creativity is needed not only for breaking the bonds of such karma. People can be victims of other kinds of karma, of dull habits, or of lack of self-confidence and shyness, or of terrible mental states. People can also be victims of abusive parents or siblings. And people can be held in bondage by unjust political or social systems.
Through the very act of creating a community of monks, which became the Buddhist Sangha, the Buddha recognized, and enabled others to recognize, that social structures do not have to be as they are. This was recognized as well, I think, by some Japanese followers of the Lotus Sutra in the nineteenth century, long before anyone in Japan was influenced by modern Western sociological ideas. Poor people would have something like a parade in which there was too much drinking perhaps, and crossdressing, and other forms of unusual, custom-breaking, behavior. Even the homes of rich people were invaded and people took whatever they wanted, asking, “Why not?”
Creativity is a path to liberation, and as Kenji Miyazawa saw clearly, imagination is a path to liberation. That is why the Lotus Sutra invites us into a world of enchantment—to enable us to enter the path of liberation, a liberation which is always both for ourselves and for others. Notice, please, that this first chapter of the Lotus Sutra is not an order, it is an invitation to enter a new world and thereby take up a new life.
But this invitation also carries a warning—enter this world and your life may be changed. It may be changed in ways you never expected. The Lotus Sutra comes with a warning label. Instead of saying “Dangerous to your health,” it says, “Dangerous to your comfort.” The worst sin in the Lotus Sutra is complacency and the arrogance of thinking one has arrived and has no more to do. The sutra challenges such comfort and comfortable ideas. Danger can be exciting. It can also be frightening. We do not know if we can make it. We do not know whether we even have the power to enter the path, the Buddha Way.
Empowerment
This is why, while the Lotus Sutra begins with enchantment, it does not end there. It goes further to announce that each and every one of us has within us a great and marvelous power, later called the “buddha-nature.” The term “buddha-nature” does not appear in the Lotus Sutra, probably because it had not yet been invented, but the idea that would later be called “buddha-nature” runs through these stories not as a mere thread, but as a central pillar, albeit a very flexible one.
Stories can be understood, of course, as illustrating teachings, which in a sense they do. But to see them only in that way, as something designed to improve our understanding of others, is, I believe, to miss their meaning. These little gems of stories have within them the power to persuade readers that they have the potential and power not only to make more of their own lives but also to make a contribution to the good of others.
And since according to the stories, the Buddha—now no longer existing in this saha world in the way he once was—needs others to do his work in this world, what readers do with their own potential to be buddhas makes a cosmic difference, that is, determines to what degree the work of the universal Buddha Shakyamuni gets done in this world. Using that power can cause the whole universe to shake in six different ways! It can even cause a magnificent stupa to come flying to where we are.
The fireworks in the Lotus Sutra are not mere entertainment. They are, I believe, to stress the reality and importance of this world, which is the world of Shakyamuni Buddha, the world in which he preached the Lotus Sutra, bringing joy to countless millions.
Stories of such cosmic events—drums rolling in the heavens; flowers raining down from the skies; beams of light, or even long tongues, streaming from a buddha; dark places becoming illuminated; things and bodhisattvas flying through space—all such things are an invitation to exercise the imagination. There is no hint of anything like an abhidharmic or scientific cosmology.
Perhaps the most important of the stories in this connection is the one about the great horde of bodhisattvas who spring up from below in chapter 15. The chapter begins with all of the millions and millions of bodhisattvas who have come from other worlds asking the Buddha to allow them to stay and help him out by preaching the sutra in this world. But the Buddha promptly declines on the ground that there are many bodhisattvas already in this world who can protect, read, recite, and teach the Lotus Sutra. Whereupon the ground quakes and a fantastically enormous number of such bodhisattvas and their attendants emerge from below the earth, where they had been living. Maitreya and the others almost go into shock from unbelief when told by the Buddha that these bodhisattvas are his own disciples, whom he has been training for countless millions of eons. Why, it is as impossible to believe as a twenty-five-year-old man claiming to have a hundred-year-old son! But the point has been made—it is not by bodhisattvas from other worlds that we are to be saved, but by those who belong to this world.
These kinds of stories are like invitations to unfreeze our imagination, or creativity, so that we too might be empowered through these stories to make use of the power that is within us to be the Buddha, which means nothing more nor less than being representatives of Shakyamuni Buddha in this world by practicing, like him, the bodhisattva way.
The purpose of the enchantment is in part to have us know not only intellectually that we have the buddha-nature, but also to have us know it physically, in our very muscles and bones. Then we can become the hands and feet of, the very body of, the Buddha. We are empowered by the Lotus Sutra to take charge of our lives, so that the world will be a better place because of our choices and our actions. In this way, the Lotus Sutra, chanted and studied and embraced, can give us fantastic power, helping us to realize that we too have this fantastic ability to be creative, to use our imaginations and our energy to make ourselves and those around us, that is the entire world, a bit better than it would be otherwise.
Right now in this year, right now in Tokyo or New York or Colombo or wherever you are, let the flowers rain, let the drums sound, let the world shake, and let the Dharma-wheel roll on!
