The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p53-54Even the very fancy carriage that the father gives to the children is, after all, only a carriage, a vehicle. All of our teachings and practices should be understood as devices, as possible ways of helping people. They should never be taken as final truths.
Appropriate means are means, not ends. In this sense they have only instrumental and provisional importance. While it is true that the notion of skillful means is sometimes used to describe something provisional, it is important to recognize that being instrumental and provisional does not mean that such methods are in any sense unimportant. At one point at least, the Dharma Flower Sutra even suggests that it is itself an appropriate means. The context is one in which the Sutra is praising itself and proclaiming its superiority over others (“those who do not hear or believe this sutra suffer a great loss”), but then has those who embrace the Sutra in a future age say:
When I attain the Buddha way,
I will teach this Dharma to them
By skillful means,
That they may dwell within it. (LS 273)
Category Archives: d5b
Leaving Our Burning House
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p56The parable is interpreted as saying that the world is like a burning house. … [T]he verse version of the parable goes to great lengths to describe the terrors inside the burning house, perhaps leading some to think that our goal should be to escape from the burning house that is this world.
But escaping from the world is not at all what the Sutra teaches. Elsewhere it makes clear that we are to work in the world to help or save others. The point here is more that we are like children at play, not paying enough attention to the environment around us. Perhaps it is not the whole world that is in flames but our own playgrounds, the private worlds we create out of our attachments and out of our complacency. Thus leaving the house is not escaping from the world but leaving behind our play-world, our attachments and illusions, or at least some of them, in order to enter the real world.
Means and Ends
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p53-54Even the very fancy carriage that the father gives to the children is, after all, only a carriage, a vehicle. All of our teachings and practices should be understood as devices, as possible ways of helping people. They should never be taken as final truths.
Appropriate means are means, not ends. In this sense they have only instrumental and provisional importance. While it is true that the notion of skillful means is sometimes used to describe something provisional, it is important to recognize that being instrumental and provisional does not mean that such methods are in any sense unimportant. At one point at least, the Dharma Flower Sutra even suggests that it is itself an appropriate means. The context is one in which the Sutra is praising itself and proclaiming its superiority over others (“those who do not hear or believe this sutra suffer a great loss”), but then has those who embrace the Sutra in a future age say:
When I attain the Buddha way,
I will teach this Dharma to them
By skillful means,
That they may dwell within it.
A More Generous and Inclusive Lotus Sutra
Today I continue my Office Lens housecleaning with another quote from Gene Reeves’ Translator’s Introduction to his 2008 translation of the The Lotus Sutra.
As in the case of the carriages in the parable of the burning house, the great vehicle can be understood as replacing the other vehicles, or as making skillful means unnecessary. There are passages in the sutra that suggest this interpretation. We might call this the narrow interpretation of the Lotus Sutra, a perspective taken by some followers of Nichiren. They insist that in the Lotus Sutra they have found the one truth in light of which all other claims, and all other forms of religion including all other forms of Buddhism, are to be rejected as false and misleading. Most of those who study the Lotus Sutra, however, understand the teaching of the one vehicle in a much more generous, inclusive way.
The one vehicle itself can be understood as nothing but skillful means. That is, without a great variety of skillful means there can be no one vehicle, since it is through skillful means that living beings are led toward the goal of being a buddha. Without skillful means the one vehicle would be an empty, useless vehicle. Furthermore, the one vehicle itself is a teaching device, a skillful means of teaching that the many means have a common purpose. (Reeves, p13)
Riding in Smaller Vehicles
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p51We should realize that in this story it is the lure of the three “lesser” vehicles that actually saves the children. In running out, the children are pursuing the shravaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva ways. And here, these three ways, including the bodhisattva way, are essentially equal, as they are equally effective, perhaps with one appealing to some of the children, another to others, and the other to still other children. These “smaller” vehicles, in other words, are sufficient for saving people, that is, for enabling them to enter the One Buddha Vehicle and become bodhisattvas, ones who are on the way to becoming buddhas themselves.
Shariputra Reborn
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p64Throughout the Dharma Flower Sutra two things are affirmed: 1) that the Sutra is continuous with what was taught and done in the early years of the Buddha’s ministry, and 2) that something new is happening. This is generally true of Mahayana sutras. They both affirm a continuity with older Buddhist traditions and claim that in Mahayana something new has emerged.
Thus, it is significant that Shariputra becomes further enlightened here, “re-born” as he puts it. This can be contrasted with some other Mahayana sutras, in which he is treated as merely stupid, meaning that Hinayana Buddhists are quite stupid and unworthy of the Dharma. In some cases, shravakas were even said to be icchanti – hopeless, incorrigible, utterly devoid of buddha-nature.
Many Paths Within the Great Path
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p50Parables are metaphorical; they are analogies, but never perfect ones. This parable provides an image of four separate vehicles. But if we follow the teaching of the Sutra as a whole, the One Buddha Vehicle is not a separate alternative to other ways; it includes them. Thus, one limitation of this parable is that it suggests that the diverse ways (represented by the three lesser carriages) can be replaced by the One Way (the great carriage). But the overall teaching of the Sutra makes it plain that there are many paths within the Great Path, and the Great Path integrates them all. They are together because they are within the One Vehicle. To understand the many ways as somehow being replaced by the One Way would entail rejecting the ideal of the bodhisattva way (the third carriage), which the Sutra clearly never does.
You Can Too
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p4-5All of these stories [of the Lotus Sutra] essentially say to the hearer or reader, “you too.”
If shravakas and evil monks and little girls can become buddhas, so can you. And the teaching that buddha-nature is universal, a teaching not explicitly presented but strongly implied in the Lotus Sutra, does the same thing. It basically says that there are no exceptions to having buddha-nature; therefore you cannot make an exception of yourself.
That, I think, is the core purpose of the Lotus Sutra, not merely the abstract notion of universal awakening, but the always-present possibility and power of awakening, which is a kind of flowering, in each one of us.
The Buddha says to Shariputra in Chapter 3 of the Lotus Sutra, “Did I not tell you before that when the buddhas, the world-honored ones, by using causal explanations, parables, and other kinds of expression, teach the Dharma by skillful means, it is all for the purpose of supreme awakening? All these teachings are for the purpose of transforming people into bodhisattvas.” (LS 112)
These stories, then, are instruments, skillful means, to help us see and embrace what we might not otherwise see or appreciate – the potential and power in each of us to take up the way of the bodhisattva, which is to become supremely awakened, which is to become a buddha.
The Difficulty of the Lotus Sūtra
In the “Life Span of the Buddha” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra the Buddha preaches about Himself, “I have been the Buddha since the eternal past, 500 (million) dust-particle kalpa (aeons).” We, ordinary beings, do not remember things in the past even things that occurred after our birth. How much more so can we remember things in the past life or two! How can we believe anything that took place as far away i