Creativity is a path to liberation, and imagination is a path to liberation. That is why the Dharma Flower Sutra invites us into a world of enchantment – to enable us to enter the path of liberation, a liberation that is always both for ourselves and for others. Notice, please, that this first chapter of the Lotus Sutra does not come to us as an order; it is an invitation to enter a new world and thereby take up a new life, but it is only an invitation.

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 Dharma Flower 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.

This is why, while the Dharma Flower 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 “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.