[Shariputra] is transformed by the Dharma. While the Dharma can be thought of, and is, something that nourishes and sustains us, it can also transform us. Shariputra’s life was dramatically changed by the Dharma. Here, hearing the Dharma, he suddenly realizes that the goal he has been pursuing and the kind of life he has been living, while good, is not good enough. He realizes that the way he has taken can be a kind of gateway to more fully following the Buddha. No wonder he is filled with ecstasy! Indeed, almost everywhere you turn in the Dharma Flower Sutra, someone is receiving the Sutra with joy, or is full of joy, or has a heart that is dancing for joy.

The Buddha reminds Shariputra that Shariputra had learned this lesson before but had forgotten his own original vow. This is one of the many ways in which the Dharma Flower Sutra teaches that the potential for being a buddha is fundamental – something given to us originally. His life as a bodhisattva was always his life. Now, quite suddenly, he knows it.

To understand the Buddha Dharma as an ultimate truth about reality is to experience it as liberating. That Shariputra has received only some of the Buddha Dharma means that even though he is enlightened, liberated, and overcome with joy, this is only a new beginning, a rebirth, not a death in which there is nothing more to do. He is set free to live in the Dharma.

In Chapter 2 of the Lotus Sutra we find such expressions as this:

If anyone, even while distracted,
With even a single flower,
Makes an offering to a painted image,
They will progressively see countless buddhas. (LS 94)

If making an offering with just a single flower while being distracted can be a sign of taking the Buddha Way, surely such things as expressions of gratitude or apology, even superficial ones, can be signs of respect for others. Just as “merely formal” Dharma is better than no Dharma at all, small signs of respect are much better than no respect at all.

Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva tells everyone he meets, even extremely arrogant monks, even those who are angry, disrespectful, and mean-spirited, that they have taken the bodhisattva way. If what he says is true, surely whenever we make even superficial expressions of gratitude or apology, we are to some degree showing respect, a sign that, like Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva, we too have—to some slight but very important degree—taken the bodhisattva way that will lead to our awakening.

The fact that before becoming a fully awakened buddha Sun and Moon Light was a prince¹ living in a palace with eight sons reveals a recurrent theme of the Sutra: the idea that what is happening now is both new and unprecedented, and has happened many times before. Here, that Sun and Moon Light Buddha was a prince living in a palace shows a biographical connection to Shakyamuni Buddha. Most buddhas, perhaps all buddhas in the Dharma Flower Sutra, anticipate or replicate the life of Shakyamuni at least to a large extent. Their life stories are similar. That Sun and Moon Light had eight sons while Shakyamuni had only one indicates, however, that their lives were not the same in all respects.

So when Manjushri, talking about the light with which the Buddha has illuminated other worlds, indicates that he has seen many buddhas in the past do the same thing as Shakyamuni, he does not indicate that what they do is exactly the same. In the Dharma Flower Sutra, the present is always emerging from the past, never completely discontinuous from it. Patterns are repeated, sometimes over and over. The first of the buddhas named Sun and Moon Light taught the four truths and nirvana for those who wanted to be shravakas, the teaching of twelve causes and conditions for those who wanted to become pratyekabuddhas, and to lead them to supreme awakening and all-inclusive wisdom he taught the six transcendental practices to bodhisattvas. This threefold structure and division of three teachings is precisely what will be ascribed to Shakyamuni Buddha in the Sutra. Yet in this story there are twenty thousand buddhas, one after the other, all with the name Sun and Moon Light. That is very different from Shakyamuni. In this sutra we are not given the name of his predecessor, but we are told that his successor is to be Maitreya. There is only one Shakyamuni Buddha.

Perhaps the most important point here is that in this, as in many other things, the Dharma Flower Sutra does not subscribe to a rigid structure. As in our own experience, here the present both repeats the past and is different from it. History is always bound to the past, enormously influenced by it, but never completely so.

1

This is one of the rare places where Gene Reeves misstates the facts. As the Murano translation clearly states: The last Sun-Moon-Light Buddha was once a king, not a prince. While Reeves stretches the truth in an attempt to link this to Shakyamuni, it better matches the tale in Chapter 7, where we learn about Great-Universal-Wisdom-Excellence Buddha, a former king who had sixteen sons, one of whom becomes Shakyamuni Buddha. return

See Mistaken Facts

In the Lotus Sutra there are worlds, heavens, purgatories, and so on, making up a very rich imaginary cosmos. Much has been written about Indian and Buddhist cosmology, but none of it is very helpful in facilitating better understanding of the Dharma Flower Sutra. In this Sutra, cosmology is used, not as quasi-scientific description of the universe, but to enhance the place and importance of Shakyamuni Buddha, the Dharma Flower Sutra preached by him, and the world of Shakyamuni Buddha, this “saha world.” It is important to realize from the outset that the cosmological episodes – the mysterious and even magical events that occur in the Dharma Flower Sutra – are imaginative stories, used for the practical purpose of transforming the minds and hearts and lives of the readers or hearers of the Sutra. They are used for the purpose of having us understand – not only in our heads, but also spiritually, in the depths of our beings – that how we live our lives is important, not only for ourselves and those close to us, but for the whole cosmos as well.