Some readers may get the impression from [Chapter 16] that this everlasting, imperishable Shakyamuni Buddha is the personal God of monotheism. Hendrik Kern, who edited the Sanskrit text of the Lotus Sutra and translated it into English, had such an impression. His research led him to conclude that the Lotus Sutra is similar to the Bhagavad Gita and had been influenced by it. The Bhagavad Gita is presumably from about first century India. Its ancient religious poetry is full of songs of praise for a monotheistic and personal God. Most Indian people, down to the present, have come to love to recite its beautiful and passionate verses. …

Yet there is reason to disagree with this. Gita teaches a Creator and a cosmic creation, while in the Lotus Sutra the Everlasting Buddha is not regarded as the Creator, and there is no term equivalent to “creation.” Furthermore, the Bhagavad Gita emphasizes passionate and fanatical devotion (bhakti) to God, while we cannot find the idea of passionate and fanatical devotion to God anywhere in the Lotus Sutra.

Chapter 16, responding to the perplexity of people in chapter 15, explains that Shakyamuni Buddha is really the Everlasting Original Buddha using the metaphor of the five hundred dust particles worth of eons. Suppose someone ground into fine dust five hundred thousand billions of myriads (nayuta) of countless (asaṃkhya) three-thousand great thousandfold worlds, and just one particle of this dust was deposited on every five hundred thousand billions of myriads of innumerable lands until all of the dust was exhausted, and then all of these worlds, those with a particle of dust and those without, were ground into dust. If one particle of dust is regarded as equivalent to an eon, the period of time equivalent to all of the dust particles is nowhere near as long as it has been since Shakyamuni became a buddha.

An eon is a long time. A nayuta is usually taken to mean one hundred billion. The word asaṃkhya means an uncountable number. And “three-thousand great thousandfold worlds” refers to the result of adding together three kinds of thousandfold world—small, medium, and large. It is said that a small thousandfold world corresponds to the solar system, a medium one to the galaxy, and a large one to a nebula. In chapter 7, there is a story in which one of these three-thousand great thousandfold worlds is ground into particles of dust and one particle is deposited on every thousandth world. It is called “the parable of the three thousand dust particles of eons.” In short, the story emphasizes the Buddha’s eternal life by means of these similes of very large numbers.

Concerning this way of being a bodhisattva, the last verse section of chapter 15 includes the phrase, “. . . and [they] are untainted by worldly things, just as the lotus flower in the water emerges from the earth.” The lotus grows only in muddy water, yet its beautiful flowers bloom without being tainted by the muddy water. Thus, a bodhisattva should live in this actual world without being tainted by the mud of the world, like beautiful flowers blooming with truth.

This is the gist of chapter 15: The most important thing in it is that the chapter praises this Sahā world—that is, it praises those who make great efforts while enduring suffering in this actual human world. They are the true disciples of the Buddha. The chapter is critical of those immediate disciples of the Buddha who preach the bodhisattva practice of enduring suffering in this world while separating themselves completely from the actual world.

Also, we should not neglect the idea that these bodhisattvas live in the empty sky under the Sahā world. I have already pointed out that the term “empty sky” also means “unlimited,” and is used in a way parallel to “emptiness.” That is to say, living in the emptiness in the Sahā world means to be in the midst of the swirl of the world of desire, without being dragged down by it, constantly maintaining a stance of unattached freedom.