Because the Mahayana sutras all possess to some extent the underlying conviction that their task was to win others over to their belief, it is very difficult to distinguish, among the intermingling of intellectual influences, exactly which ideas were borrowed and which were lent. Further, unlike the treatises of the Abhidharma, the authors of the Mahayana sutras did not lend their names to their works, but put them in the mouth of Ānanda; it is therefore all the harder to clarify the actual circumstances of transmission.

The first half of the Lotus Sutra (the theoretical teachings, called the “secondary gate”; Jpn., shakumon) is concerned with giving concrete expression to the idea of “explaining the three and revealing the one” in the “Tactfulness” chapter, giving predictions of future buddhahood to the arhats and pratyekabuddhas and including all three vehicles in the one. This reflects a powerful new viewpoint. From the time of early Mahayana and the Perfection of Wisdom sutras, the bodhisattva vehicle had been praised as superior to the others, and the possibility of arhats and pratyekabuddhas gaining buddhahood was not acknowledged. The possibility of buddhahood for women and for Devadatta, who had fallen into hell for slandering the Dharma, remained unadmitted. When a movement grew up within Mahayana demanding the potential of enlightenment for all beings through the enlarged compassion of the Buddha, the formation of the “Devadatta” chapter became a necessity. This trend reached its culmination in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, which taught that all beings without exception possess the buddha-nature and buddhahood is possible even for icchantikas (incorrigibles), even though they have no aspiration for enlightenment (bodhicitta). This is clearly in the line of Lotus thought.

The latter half of the Lotus Sutra (the essential teachings, called the “primary gate”; Jpn., honmon), deals with the true and expedient teachings of the Eternal Original Buddha, set forth in the chapter “Revelation of the [Eternal] Life of the Tathāgata.” This development may be traced as stemming from the monotheistic tendencies of the early Mahayana sutras coupled with the growth in Hinduism of faith in a supreme deity. The idea of an eternal, original Buddha exerted an influence on the concept of Amitābha/Amitāyus (characterized by eternal light and eternal life) in the Pure Land sutras, and on Vairocana Buddha (the Dharma Body of Wisdom) of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra.

These, then, are two aspects that portray the continuity and development of Lotus thought in Mahayana sutras.

According to Tendai’s “Branches of the Lotus Sutra,” the parables are divided into two portions, the exposition and the explanation of correspondences.

Correspondences for the Parable of the Burning House

The elder is the Tathāgata, the father of all the worlds. He has already cut off and ended all fear, distress, sadness, ignorance, and darkness; he has perfected his boundless knowledge, powers, and fearlessness; possessing great superhuman power and the power of knowledge, he is endowed with skillful means and the pāramitā of wisdom.

The five hundred people living in the elder’s house represent living beings for whom the Tathāgata is greatly compassionate and tireless, and ever seeks the good, benefiting all.

The thirty children in the burning house are the living beings for whose sake the Tathāgata is born in the triple world (of the desire, form, and formless realms) to save them from the fires of birth, old age, illness, death, grief, sadness, suffering, lamentation, and the three poisons, and to teach them to attain perfect and supreme enlightenment.

Just as the elder sees the conflagration spring up on every side, living beings are scorched by the fires of birth, old age, illness, death, grief, sadness, suffering, and lamentation, and suffer because of the five desires and the greed for gain. They suffer in hell, or as animals or hungry spirits, and experience as heavenly or human beings the sufferings of poverty and distress, separation from loved ones, and meetings with those they hate.

Just as the elder tells the children that there are various carts outside the gate, in order to get them to leave the burning house, the Tathāgata, through wisdom and skillful means, saves living beings from the burning house of the triple world, teaching three vehicles, the śrāvaka, the pratyekabuddha, and the Buddha (“bodhisattva” in the Sanskrit text) vehicles. The Tathāgata by these skillful means brings living beings forth, saying, “This Dharma of the three vehicles is praised by the sages. In them you will be free and unbound, depending on nothing else. Riding in these three vehicles you will gain peace and joy through the roots, the powers, perceptions, ways, concentrations, emancipations, and contemplations.” In the same way the children seeking the goat carts come out of the burning house, if there are living beings who have a spirit of wisdom within, and hearing the Dharma from the Buddha, the World-Honored One, receive it in faith and zealously make progress, desiring speedily to escape from the triple world and seek nirvana for themselves, they will be named the śrāvaka vehicle.

Just as the children seeking the deer carts come out of the burning house, if there are living beings who hear the Dharma from the Buddha, the World-Honored One, and receive it in faith, zealously make progress, seeking natural wisdom, delighting in the tranquility of their own goodness, and know the causes and conditions of the dharmas, these will be called the pratyekabuddha vehicle.

Just as the children seeking the bullock carts come out of the burning house, if there are living beings who, following the Buddha, the World Honored One, hear the Dharma, receive it in faith, diligently practice and zealously advance, seeking the complete wisdom, the wisdom of the Buddha, the natural wisdom, the wisdom without a teacher, and the knowledge, powers, and fearlessness of the Tathāgata, who take pity on and comfort innumerable creatures, benefit gods and men, and save all, these will be called the Great Vehicle. Because bodhisattvas seek this vehicle they are called mahāsattvas.

Just as the elder, seeing his children leave the burning house safely, going to a place free from fear, and, pondering on his immeasurable wealth, gives each of his children a great cart, the Tathāgata is the father of all living beings, and seeing innumerable beings escape from the suffering of the triple world and from fearful and perilous paths by the Buddha’s teaching, and gain the joys of nirvana, he reflects: “I possess infinite wisdom, power, fearlessness, and other Law-treasuries of buddhas. The living beings are all my children. I will give them equally the great vehicle. There will be no one who gains nirvana separately. All will gain nirvana by the same nirvana as the Tathāgata. They are able to produce pure, supreme pleasure.”

Just as the elder at first attracted his children by the three carts and afterward gave them only a great cart and is yet not guilty of falsehood, the Tathāgata first preached the three vehicles to attract the living beings and afterward saved them by the Great Vehicle alone. The Tathāgata possesses infinite wisdom, power, fearlessness, and the treasury of the dharmas, and gives all beings the Dharma of the Great Vehicle. Through their skillful means, the buddhas discriminate the One Vehicle and expound the three.

The central concern of the first half of the Lotus Sutra is the uniting of the three vehicles into the One. Early proponents of Mahayana, whose thought is expressed in the Wisdom sutras, denigrated the existing Buddhism as Hinayana, contending, in their efforts to give precedence to the practice of the bodhisattva as a candidate for buddhahood, that neither śrāvakas nor pratyekabuddhas were capable of attaining the buddha degree. As the compassion of the Buddha came to be emphasized more and more, though, it became necessary to resolve the question of the buddhahood of the other two vehicles. The “Tactfulness” chapter of the Lotus Sutra specifically addresses the issue, and following chapters repeat its ideas one by one, using a number of parables and allegories. The Buddha’s disciples, the śrāvakas, previously described as having as their ultimate goal the attainment of arhatship, receive in the Lotus Sutra, together with the pratyekabuddhas, predictions of their ultimate buddhahood. Therefore the sutra can truly be called adbhuta-dharma (“the unprecedented law and teaching”).

Buddhism employs a special word, vyākaraṇa, to express a prediction about someone’s future attainment of buddhahood. It had been used in sutras preceding the Lotus, and can be traced right back to the Jātakas (stories of the Buddha’s former lives) and other early scriptures. It has various forms of expression and, appearing in a broad spectrum of sutras, is a major contributor to the development of the idea of prediction in Buddhism. With the growth of the concepts of buddha-nature and tathāgata-garbha in middle-period Mahayana works, such as the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra and Śrimālādevi-sūtra, the idea of prediction gave way to those new ways of thinking.

According to the Mahāvastu, a biography of the Buddha in the Lokottaravādin Vinaya, the bhāṇaka (memorizer of the sutras) was classified as a musician (gandharvika), together with jugglers, court bards, actors, dancers, athletes, wrestlers, singers, etc. The early Mahayana scriptures, however, looked on the dharma-bhāṇaka (preacher of the Dharma) as the transmitter of Mahayana, and forbade that he be slighted or ridiculed. The fact that the chapter of the Lotus Sutra entitled “A Teacher of the Law” (Dharmabhāṇaka-parivarta) sets forth the five kinds of practice for the dharma-bhāṇaka and the three rules of preaching shows that the dharma-bhāṇaka had been entrusted with the transmission of the Lotus Sutra.

As we have seen in the chapter called “Tactfulness,” advocates of the Lotus Sutra did not set out to deny the doctrines of the two vehicles that had already been preached; rather, they affirmed the value of each of the three vehicles (Ch., k’ai-ch’uan hsien-shih or k’ai-san hsien-erh) by embracing them all within the One True Vehicle as expedient means. The various motifs in each chapter concerning receiving and keeping the Lotus Sutra are the sermons based on the experience of faith chanted and transmitted by the various dharma-bhāṇakas, and the texts of the Lotus Sutra we now possess are the recorded forms of these.

The Commentary on the Lotus Sutra, Fa-hua lun (Saddharmapuṇḍarīkopadeśa, T. 1519, variant T. 1520), by Vasubandhu and translated into Chinese twice early in the sixth century, states:

The chapters following teach seven parables for the sake of living beings and the seven kinds of defilements they possess, in order to overcome the seven kinds of overweening pride.

It summarizes the seven parables as follows:

1. The parable of the burning house has been narrated for those who, seeking after power, perversely vaunt their assertion that they possess the Truth and seek after merits. In this world they burn the greatest from the fire of the various defilements and seek after reward in terms of the state of a heavenly being, which remains defiled with the outflows that obstruct enlightenment. These people are enabled to accumulate roots of goodness and the merits of samādhi in this world, and to be gladdened by expedients, so that later they will be able to enter true nirvana.
2. The parable of the poor son has been narrated for those who, seeking the liberation of a śrāvaka, possess a singly directed pride in superior knowledge. They reason perversely that their own vehicle is no different from that of the Tathāgata. Through this parable, such people will be enabled to board the Great Vehicle, the one revealed through the three.
3. The parable of the rain has been narrated for those who, seeking the Great Vehicle, have the arrogance of a singly directed resolve, reasoning perversely that there is no such thing as a śrāvaka or a pratyekabuddha vehicle. The parable allows them to know that there are other vehicles. Though the buddhas and tathāgatas preach the Dharma equally without discrimination, the seeds that sprout within living beings depend on the various roots of goodness.
4. The parable of the magic city has been narrated for those who arrogantly believe that what is not real has being. They perform the samādhis (concentrations) and samāpattis (final, unperturbed samādhis) that are still defiled by the outflows, and though they know that nirvana is not real, they still pursue it. They are enabled through skillful expedients to enter the magic city, the city of nirvana, which is the city of the dhyānas and the samādhis. They pass through this city and enter the city of true nirvana.
5. The parable of the priceless jewel has been narrated for those who, though not having false illusions, still do not realize that they have long possessed the roots of goodness of the Great Vehicle. They do not seek the Great Vehicle, but their narrow and inferior minds give rise to deluded understanding so that they think theirs is the first vehicle. Through the parable they are able to recall their past roots of goodness and learn to enter samādhi.
6. The parable of the king’s jewel has been narrated for those who are arrogant in the accumulation of merits. Though they hear the teaching of the Great Vehicle, they attach themselves to teachings that are not of the Great Vehicle. The parable enables them to hear the teachings of the Great Vehicle, and through them receive the secret predictions of the buddhas-tathāgatas, the same as if they had completed the ten stages.
7. The parable of the physician has been narrated for those who have pride in not accumulating merits. Remaining in the first vehicle, they have not in the past practiced and accumulated roots of goodness, so that even though they hear of the first vehicle, they cannot in their hearts believe in it. The parable shows them “the proper quantity of nirvana” … by enabling them to bring to fruition those roots that have not yet borne fruit.