The Threefold Lotus Sutra: Buddhas Within and Without

Seikon

The lotus, while rooted in muddy water, opens into a beautiful and pure flower, unsoiled by its muddy origins.

The Threefold Lotus Sutra (I’m using the translation of Kato et al. 1975) is a triptych, consisting of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law, flanked by the shorter opening Sutra of Innumerable Meanings and closing Sutra of Meditation on the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue. This Sutra was the most popular Buddhist scripture in medieval China, and is recognized as containing the fundamental sources of teaching within the Mahayana school of Buddhism. It is commonly said to be a record of the sayings of Shakyamuni Buddha in the final period of his teaching, and is thought to have been written c. 200 C.E., some 700 years after Shakyamuni’s death. It was translated from Sanskrit into Chinese c. 400 C.E. (Kumarajiva’s is a popular translation) and into Japanese c. 600 C.E. It is widely thought to be the most important sutra in shaping Chinese and Japanese Buddhism.

At first (and maybe second and third) glances, the Sutra is unapproachable. We try to read, but after considerable seemingly needless repetition, and failure ever to come to the point, we find ourselves slumped over the book asleep, or impatiently skimming pages for something to latch on to. It is not that it’s without incident. On the contrary, it is full of outlandish scenarios and incidents, and difficult to relate to life today. We discover a house on fire that sends everyone into an uproar, “a father who feigns death to scare his wayward, poison-taking sons, a phantom city conjured up on a perilous terrain and wiped out just as easily, a stupa that floats in the sky like a spaceship while carrying Buddhas and their adoring assemblies, and a young woman who soars into the air and instantly becomes a Buddha” (Wang, E., Shaping the Lotus Sutra, University of Washington Press, 2005). What are we to make of all this?

Another difficulty is that the Sutra never, ever cuts to the chase. In the opening scene, innumerable sages, princes and gods gather to hear Shakyamuni speak. After much coming and going, the Buddha emits a bright light from the tuft of white hair between his eyebrows to illuminate the entire universe. Maitreya recalls a sense of déjà vu, in that all this has happened before when the Buddha preached the “Lotus Sermon” in the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings (see above). However this sermon is not revealed, either in the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings or in the opening scene of the Lotus Sutra itself. So an expectation arises in the reader, and presumably in the multitude – what is this great message to be delivered? Well, in Chapter 2, the Buddha gets up and says its all too hard for non-Buddhas to understand, and says it can only be appreciated by means of indirect methods - expedient devices. In Chapter 3, Shakyamuni dances with joy – what a great message is to be proclaimed. Next, we have a parable, and then a succession of praises for this wonderful sutra. By now, we and the multitude may have forgotten that the Lotus Sermon has not actually, and in fact will not be, expounded. The Lotus Sutra is therefore empty at its core! It provides context and ornamentation for an empty center. This itself is an interesting metaphor.

So how should one respond to this vast, baroque cathedral with an empty core? There is in fact an enormous body of painting, sculpture, literature and poetry in response to the Lotus Sutra. The way it works is rather than respond to the whole, respond to the part, sometimes a very small part, and actually sometimes a part that is not even in the Sutra.

The focus of this paper will be on the nature of Buddha, as interpreted by the Lotus Sutra. From the very beginning it is clear that Buddha is more than the historical Shakyamuni. We are introduced to Buddha Sun Moon Light, who expounded the same teaching millions of eons before; to Maitreya, who will expound the teaching millions of eons in the future, and to a “hundred thousand myriad kotis (millions) of Buddhas.” In chapter 11 (Beholding the Precious Stupa) we have a vision of the Buddhas of the “five hundred kotis of nayutas (ten billions) of domains,” and now we come to a key phrase, “emanated from the World-Honored One.” This provides a hint as to how to see this great firmament of beings.

Where are all these Buddhas? Well, as in chapter 10 (A Teacher of the Law)

The abode of the Tathagata is the great compassionate heart within all living beings;

The robe of the Tathagata is the gentle and forbearing heart;

The throne of the Tathagata is the voidness of all laws.

“The abode of the Tathagata is the great compassionate heart within all living beings.” This is the Buddha within all of us. Where is this place within? Actually within is without and without is within. There is a famous result in a branch of advanced mathematics called analytic topology, the Jordan Curve Theorem, originally conjectured by Camille Jordan in 1892 and finally proved by Oswald Veblen in 1905, that states (in a nutshell) that any simple closed curve (think of a loop) divides a surface into two parts, which we can call “within” and “without” (see figure, where white space is without and yellow/gray space is within).

(Thanks to Jill Britton, British Columbia)

This sounds such an obvious result as to not be worth proving, but its concepts cut to the heart of what is a surface and a curve, and what within/without mean, and its proof is far from elementary. The theorem may be generalized to higher dimensional spaces. So, for example, the Jordan-Brouwer Separation Theorem states that any imbedding of the n-1 dimensional sphere into n-dimensional Euclidean space, separates the Euclidean space into two disjoint regions, within and without again.

What relevance has this for us, and the Lotus Sutra? The mathematical point is that there can be no within and without unless we have a closed boundary. In the topological case, the boundary is a simple closed curve, or in three dimensions, a closed shell. What is the boundary for our discussion? My skin? My mind? My self? There isn’t one! This is the great message of the Sutra, and in my view this is why the Lotus Sutra is so fundamental to Mahayana Buddhism! There is no boundary between within and without. It is all one Heart, beating through the myriad cells of the universe; that is, beating within/without us. This is where the transcendental Buddha abides. Now we are at the heart of this sutra. Now this sutra is at the heart of us.

The remaining lines of this key and central passage develop this theme. “The robe of the Tathagata is the gentle and forbearing heart.” As with the first line, this Heart is great, compassionate, gentle, and forbearing. Practicing these qualities brings us closer to this abode. This abode radiates these qualities. “The throne of the Tathagata is the voidness of all laws.” All ways of conceptualizing, representing, talking about, writing about, this Heart miss the mark. It is experienced right now; we just have to be open to it in our experience. All forms are transitory. All laws are to some degree arbitrary. To say it is; to say it is not: neither is quite there. What do we say?!

Now the message is declared, how can this experience be accessible to us? How can we experience this oneness of within and without, which implies wholeness and oneness of the Universe. Again, chapter 10: A Teacher of the Law, gives us the method.

“Should anyone preach this sutra,

Let him enter the Tathagata abode,

Wear the Tathagata robe,

And sit on the Tathagata throne.”

We have to enter into it. Enter the heart; wear the robe of compassion and forbearance; give up attachment to all fixed ideas or representations of it. As written in the later chapter 14 (Happy life)

“If a bodhisattva-mahasattva abides in a state of patience, is gentle and agreeable, is neither hasty nor overbearing, and his mind is unperturbed; if, moreover, he has no laws by which to act, but sees all things in their reality, nor proceeds along the undivided way – this is termed a bodhisattva-mahasattva’s sphere of action.”

Again, to reiterate and expand on the third sphere of sitting on the Tathagata throne, providing the way of experience, chapter 14: (Happy Life) speaks out:

All laws or things are

Void and nonexistent,

Without permanence,

Neither beginning nor ending;

This is named the sphere

To which wise men resort.

The perverse discriminate

All laws as either existing or nonexisting,

Real or unreal,

Produced or unproduced.

Let the bodhisattva abide in seclusion,

Cultivate and control his mind,

And be fixed and immovable

As Mount Sumeru;

Contemplating all laws

As though they were not,

As if they were space,

Without solidity,

Neither produced nor coming forth,

Motionless and unreceding,

Ever remaining a unity.

As one of the koans in the Mumonkan puts it so succinctly, “Think neither good nor evil.” In similar vein, from Case 32 from the Book of Serenity, “The monk [asked Yangshan,] ‘Don’t you have any particular way of guidance?’ Yangshan said, “To say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate.”

Ultimately, the teaching is not one of fixity or dogma, but one of spaciousness and “upaya”, skilful means. The Lotus Sutra allows us to move beyond the meaning to us of the historical figure, Shakyamuni, to a universal understanding of the Buddha, transcending our concepts of space and time, and within and without; ultimately, transcending all concepts, including the concept of self, and even Buddha. Of course, all such teachings are pointers and representations. In the end, it is down to each of us, and to our individual experiences. This sutra ventures the possibility of individual experience being universal experience, grounded in love and compassion, and hence of universal liberation.