For example, in building a huge tower, a scaffold is assembled from many small pieces of wood set up ten or twenty feet high. Then, using this scaffold, the huge tower is built with lumber. Once the tower is completed, the scaffold is dismantled. The scaffold here represents all Buddhist scriptures other than the Lotus Sutra, and the Great Tower is the Lotus Sutra. This is what is meant by “discarding the expedient.” A pagoda is built by using a scaffold, but no one worships a scaffold without a pagoda.
Nichiren wrote this passage in his Response to My Lady the Nun, Mother of Lord Ueno (Ueno-dono Haha-ama Gozen Gohenji). In this simile, Nichiren compares the Buddha’s expedient teachings to the Wonderful Dharma he provides in the Lotus Sūtra.
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I am now joyful and fearless.
I have laid aside all expedient teachings.
I will expound only unsurpassed enlightenment
To Bodhisattvas.
The Buddha sings these verses in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sūtra. When the Buddha says he only teaches Bodhisattvas, he does not mean that he holds his highest teaching back from anybody. For us to be able to hear what the Buddha teaches, we must awaken our image of ourselves as Bodhisattvas who chose to come into this world of conflict and delusion. If we try to use the Buddha’s teaching to gratify our own delusions, we will only create more suffering. It is only when we set aside our habits of fear and doubt that we can gain wisdom through practicing the Wonderful Dharma.
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All this while Śākyamuni Buddha sat in silence. The four kinds of devotees also kept silence for the fifty small kalpas. By his supernatural powers, however, the Buddha caused the great multitude to think that they kept silence for only half a day.
We find this description of the Buddha and his congregation in Chapter Fifteen of the Lotus Sūtra. Innumerable Bodhisattvas have sprung up from underground and come to pay their respects to the Buddha. This passage shows that in our suffering and attachment, we have a different concept of time than the Buddha. The kalpas the Lotus Sūtra uses to measure time are unimaginably long periods. When a stone a mile on each side is worn down to a pebble by a celestial being flying past it every thousand years and brushing it with her veil, a kalpa expires. When we see the world on this scale of time, rather than the limited years we have in our lives, it opens us up to the Buddha’s wisdom.
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Good men! I think that the Buddha, the World-Honored One, wishes to expound a great teaching, to send the rain of a great teaching, to blow the conch-shell horn of a great teaching, to beat the drum of a great teaching, and to explain the meaning of a great teaching.
Mañjuśrī declares this to Maitreya and all others gathered to hear the Buddha teach in Chapter One of the Lotus Sūtra. The Buddha had just produced the light from between his eyebrows illuminating the worlds of the ten directions, a sight none but Mañjuśrī had experienced. The great teaching the Buddha was about to expound is the Lotus Sutra. This statement awakens our interest and shows us how to listen to this teaching, as if it were a great cooling rain or the loud call of a conch-shell or drum.
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Anyone who protects this sūtra
Should be considered
To have already made offerings
To Many-Treasures and to me.
The Buddha makes this declaration to all those assembled to hear him teach the Dharma in Chapter Eleven of the Lotus Sūtra. In the story, Many-Treasures Buddha has just appeared to confirm the truth of the sūtra, and the Buddha has asked who will protect and preserve this sūtra after his extinction. By considering anyone who defends the meaning of the Lotus Sūtra to be one who has been personally present before these Buddhas, the Buddha invites us to consider not just our previous lives, but our current lives. We repay these Buddhas for this wonderful teaching by bringing it to life ourselves. As Nichiren wrote, “even if only a word or phrase, spread it to others.”
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Sometimes he chided him, saying:
“Work hard!”
At other times he coaxed him, saying:
“I will treat you as my son.”
These verses are part of the story of the Wayward Son told by Subhūti, Mahā-Kātyāyana, Mahā-Kāśyapa, and Mahā-Maudgalyāyana in Chapter Four of the Lotus Sūtra. The son in the story has become attached to his lowly existence. The father must teach him slowly with expedients to prepare him to come into his inheritance. The story explains the disciples’ understanding of how the Buddha uses expedients to prepare us to aspire for enlightenment. The Buddha leads each of us differently, and as we progress in our wisdom, he changes how he teaches us. All this is preparation for us to come into the Buddha’s own mind and enjoy his wisdom.
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He should expound the Dharma to them,
Wishing only two things:
To attain the enlightenment of the Buddha
And also to cause them to do the same.
This is a peaceful offering to them.
This offering will bring them a great benefit.
The Buddha sings these verses to Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva in Chapter Fourteen of the Lotus Sūtra. In our desire to benefit others, we often have expectations for how they should change in response to what we give them. The Buddha reminds us to abandon these expectations. People will make changes and progress towards enlightenment based on their own capacities rather than what we want for them. When we stay focused on the goal of awakening, both for ourselves and others, then we can keep the perspective of the Buddha and see things for what they are.
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But the merits to be given to the person who fills the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds with the seven treasures and offers that amount of the seven treasures to the Buddhas, to the Great Bodhisattvas, to the Pratyekabuddhas, and to the Arhats, are less than the merits to be given to the person who keeps even a single gāthā of four lines of this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.
The Buddha gives this explanation to Star-King-Flower Bodhisattva in Chapter Twenty-Three of the Lotus Sūtra. Generosity is the first of the perfections of a Bodhisattva, a being who vows to delay their own enlightenment so that they can benefit others. The offering of material goods helps remove the suffering caused by our sense of self-importance, and prepares us for the Buddha’s highest teaching. By offering the Buddha’s wisdom, embodied in this Lotus Sūtra, we benefit all beings.
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A bhikṣu who expounds this Sūtra
Of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
With patience
After my extinction,
Will be emancipated
From jealousy, anger, and other illusions,
That is to say, from all obstacles.
The Buddha sings these verses to Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva in Chapter Fourteen of the Lotus Sūtra in which he describes the peaceful practices of a Bodhisattva. We may realize that jealousy and anger are not desirable states, but only because what these states do to our moods. No matter how justified we may feel in our jealousy or anger, these are not pleasant states to be in or even to be around. The Buddha reminds us that the real problem with these states is that they keep us from seeing things as they are. Jealousy exaggerates the importance of what we want but do not have. Anger exaggerates the bad qualities of the targets of our anger. When we focus on this wonderful teaching, develop our patience, and remain determined to benefit all beings, we see things for what they are, and are liberated from illusions.
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The two sons, Pure-Store and Pure-Eyes, came to their mother, joined their ten fingers and palms together, and said, ‘Mother! Go to Cloud Thunderpeal-Star-King-Flower-Wisdom Buddha! We also will go to attend on him, approach him, make offerings to him, and bow to him because he is expounding the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma to all gods and men.
The Buddha tells the story of King Wonderful-Adornment in Chapter Twenty-Seven of the Lotus Sūtra. The two sons chose to be born at a time when Cloud-Thunderpeal-Star-King-Flower-Wisdom Buddha was alive and led their parents to follow that Buddha and learn the Wonderful Dharma from him. They overcame their father’s attachment to wrong views, not by arguing against those views, but by demonstrating the wonders that come from the Buddha’s great teaching. This shows how when we as Bodhisattvas live this difficult teaching we lead others to it.
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