The Lotus Sutra

The Mahayana Buddhist movement about 500 years after Shakyamuni’s time constituted a kind of Buddhist Renaissance, during which many new sutras were compiled, the Lotus Sutra being one of them. The Lotus Sutra describes Shakyamuni’s vow made in the distant past to elevate the life state of all living beings to that which he had attained. It states that this vow was fulfilled in teaching the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus Sutra repeatedly calls for acts of compassion in order to inherit and actualize Shakyamuni’s eternal hope.

The Lotus Sutra is a great literary work in the form of a dialectic that takes place between Shakyamuni and his disciples. Through these dialogues, we learn that all people possess the life condition of the Buddha and the Buddha’s wisdom. The Sutra also clarifies the path to enlightenment for all people. Secondly, it clarifies that the teachings in the Lotus Sutra represent the foundational teaching of all Buddhas. Thirdly, it teaches that at times when people have fallen into suffering, disbelief and worry, the teachings of the Lotus Sutra should be shared among the people as it will provide hope, courage and security. The Lotus Sutra expresses the essential wish to attain unshakable happiness for oneself and all others and reveals Shakyamuni’s core teaching of how to lead people to overcome the root cause of suffering.

Learning from this sutra, Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, T’ien-t’ai, Miao-lo and Dengyo devoted themselves to enabling people to reveal their unlimited potential within their respective cultural contexts. The Lotus Sutra has been transmitted and embraced down the centuries across numerous cultures. In India, Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu widely propagated the ideas and teachings of Mahayana Buddhism and the Lotus Sutra. In East Asia, in the sixth and eighth centuries respectively, T’ien-t’ai and Miao-lo from China wrote about the superiority of the Lotus Sutra over various other sutras. In the ninth century, Dengyo introduced their teachings to Japan and worked to promote widely the concept of enlightenment of all people, as expounded in the Lotus Sutra. Through this, the teachings of the Lotus Sutra and Shakyamuni’s true intent became clarified and universalized, gaining a multilayered richness.