Monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen, gods, dragons, satyrs, centaurs, ashuras, griffins, chimeras, pythons, humans and nonhumans, minor kings, and holy wheel-rolling kings, and others are all addressed by the Buddha in Chapter 1. What we should understand from this is that Buddha Dharma is not only for Buddhists, not only for those people who are good, and not only for human beings. Even gods and other heavenly creatures come to hear the Buddha’s teaching.

There is an important truth here. While the Lotus Sutra, like any book, is very much a human creation, its significance goes beyond the human. The range of concern, in other words, is not limited to the human species, but extends to all the living. In part, this sense of cosmic importance is a reflection of the rich Indian imagination at the time the sutras were being compiled. People simply assumed that the world was populated with a rich variety of what we regard as mythical beings.

This imaginative vision urges us to reach out beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can touch, to understand ourselves as being significantly related to a much larger universe that is located in and transcends ourselves, our families, countries, and even species. It is a vision that urges us to imagine ourselves as part of a vast cosmos in which our own lives are important.