Readings of the Lotus Sutra

Stephen Teiser, Jacqueline Stone

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780231520430
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

The Lotus Sutra proclaims that a unitary intent underlies the diversity of Buddhist teachings and promises that all people without exception can achieve supreme awakening. Establishing the definitive guide to this profound text, specialists in Buddhist philosophy, art, and history of religion address the major ideas and controversies surrounding the Lotus Sutra and its manifestations in ritual performance, ascetic practice, visual representations, and social action across history. Essays survey the Indian context in which the sutra was produced, its compilation and translation history, and its influence across China and Japan, among many other issues. The volume also includes a Chinese and Japanese character glossary, notes on Western translations of the text, and a synoptic bibliography.

INTERPRETING THE LOTUS SŪTRA

Stephen F. Teiser and Jacqueline I. Stone

THE LOTUS SŪTRA asserts a bold set of claims about the Buddhist religion. Pitting itself against what the text views as immature followers of the Buddha, the Lotus champions the cause of the bodhisattva (a being intent upon supreme enlightenment), who seeks salvation for all sentient beings. The text portrays earlier models for the practice of Buddhism as preliminary or incomplete—or effective only after their provisional nature is understood. The Lotus Sūtra propounds the doctrine of skillful means, or expedient devices (Skt.: upāyakauśalya, or upāya), according to which all earlier teachings are temporary measures created by buddhas (fully enlightened beings) to match the individual circumstances of their followers. In the narrative of the Lotus Sūtra, buddhas from other realms travel to the scene where the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni, is preaching the Lotus, thus demonstrating the sūtra’s validity. The text goes on to assert that all buddhas preach the Lotus as their final message. Śākyamuni warns of enemies who will malign the teachings of the Lotus, and he enjoins devotees of the sūtra to uphold the text by chanting it, reciting the spells it contains, and using the text itself as a template for religious practice.

These claims and others, in concert with the religious and social forces animating Buddhist history, have generated a wide range of interpretation, and it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the Lotus Sūtra has been the most influential Buddhist scripture in East Asia. The goals of this book, the first in a series on great works of Buddhist literature, are to introduce the Lotus Sūtra to first-time readers and to survey some of the major issues in how the text has been understood within the rich history of Buddhism. As an introductory text, this book provides suggestions for further reading among the most important studies in English. Furthermore, since the Lotus Sūtra was created in ancient India but achieved its greatest influence in China and Japan, most of this book focuses on East Asia.

In the Indian context in which it was originally compiled—perhaps shortly after the beginning of the Common Era—the Lotus offered not only a new form of Buddhism but also a sophisticated theory about how its own innovations stood in relation to past and future forms of the religion. Many ideas in the Lotus are consistent with teachings of other Mahāyāna movements, which claimed to be more magnificent and more inclusive than preceding forms of Buddhism. That highly charged allegation is crystallized in the general name many such groups used to refer to themselves, Mahāyāna, which means “Great Vehicle.” In many contexts the term implies the derogation of other forms of Buddhism as Hīnayāna, meaning “Small Vehicle” or “Lesser Vehicle.” Mahāyāna groups agreed also that the highest paradigm for religious practice was the bodhisattva. Rather than aiming for cessation of rebirth (nirvāṇa; literally, “extinction” or “blowing out”), a goal attributed to earlier followers of the Buddha, the bodhisattva sought a more expansive result, voluntarily remaining in the realms of suffering to lead all beings to liberation. According to some Mahāyānists, this more exalted objective was not merely a termination of one’s own suffering and ignorance but a long-term, selfless dedication to bringing salvation to others. Mahāyāna followers believed that they were returning to the model of religious life established by the historical Buddha, who sacrificed himself in countless incarnations for the benefit of other beings. (The variety of new teachings claiming to represent a “Great Vehicle” are outlined in a later section of this chapter, “The Lotus Sūtra and Mahāyāna Movements.”)

Of the numerous Mahāyāna sūtras produced in the first centuries of the Common Era, few have provoked more questions than the Lotus Sūtra. Some reasons for this diversity of interpretation are internal to the text. For example, the Lotus makes extensive use of imagery and parables, which have invited multiple readings. Another puzzling feature of the Lotus Sūtra is its self-referential or circular quality. In many places the Lotus seems to justify the reasons for believing in the text by referring to the text itself. The main speaker in the scripture, Śākyamuni Buddha, states that only fully awakened beings like himself can understand the Lotus—but then he proceeds to preach it to nonbuddhas in the original audience of listeners anyway. In some portions of the sūtra, Śākyamuni portrays the text as a final statement that puts in their place all previous explanations of liberating truth. In other portions, however, he suggests that all teachings have only relative truth. According to this theory, truly effective vehicles of salvation are created in specific historical circumstances, for particular audiences, by buddhas, and hence the truth value of any religious method can be judged only in relation to its context. At one point in the text, the Buddha explains that his own entry into final nirvāṇa was merely a pedagogical device, intended to spur his followers to aspire to their own liberation, and that he is in fact always present, teaching and guiding, even though unenlightened people do not see him. In reaction to such pronouncements, those who hear the Buddha’s sermon in the story—like the reader of the text—become quite bewildered, not only confused by the new doctrines but uncertain about how to evaluate the validity of the new teachings and how to assess their legitimacy within Buddhism.

In addition to such ambiguities within the Lotus itself, other, contextual factors help account for the multivocality and broad reach of the sūtra throughout the Buddhist cultures of East Asia. We should stress at the outset that interpretation of the Lotus Sūtra was very much an East Asian enterprise. Within the Indian cultural sphere, after the Lotus Sūtra was produced, it appears to have stimulated relatively little debate, analysis, literary production, or artistic reflection. Similarly, after its translation into Tibetan in the early ninth century—an enterprise requiring in-depth study of the text—the Lotus Sūtra did not substantially influence the Himalayan realm. In China, by contrast, the Lotus Sūtra blossomed in the cultural soil of the medieval period (lasting roughly from the third to the fourteenth centuries). The ascendancy of the Lotus Sūtra in China owes much to the sensibilities of one particular translator of the text, the central Asian monk Kumārajīva (Chinese name: Jiumoluoshi [344–413, or 350–409]). Kumārajīva’s writing style in Chinese accorded with the literary tastes of his own day and subsequently became the major standard for the canonical language of East Asian Buddhism. Philosophical, cultural, and institutional factors also help account for the popularity of the Lotus Sūtra in East Asia. Without Zhiyi’s (538–597) commentaries on the Lotus—in effect re-creating the text as a template for doctrinal understanding and meditative practice—it is hard to imagine that the Lotus Sūtra would have become a dominant conceptual scheme in China in later centuries. Deities, symbols, and many philosophical principles from the Lotus Sūtra also helped shape medieval Chinese religious culture. The text and Chinese forms of Buddhist thought and practice based upon it were also well known in Korea. The most extensive and long-lasting influence of the Lotus Sūtra, however, can be seen at the eastern edge of Asia, in Japan. There, official sponsorship was one avenue by which the Lotus Sūtra became widely known: by the ninth century, Japanese rulers decreed that the Lotus Sūtra be recited in temples for the well-being of the imperial family and the realm. It was also the Buddhist scripture most frequently read and recited by literate lay devotees. Ideas and images drawn from the Lotus not only influenced the art and literature of cultural elites but were disseminated across social classes through sermons, edifying tales, public lectures, debates, ritual performances, Noh plays, and even popular songs. It would be little exaggeration to say that, for many premodern Japanese people, the Lotus Sūtra was the principal medium for the reception of Buddhism itself.

The remaining pages of this chapter sketch a broader picture of the many ways in which the Lotus Sūtra has been interpreted and enacted. The initial sections deal with the composition of the Lotus Sūtra, the Indian Buddhist milieu in which the sūtra was compiled, and its place within various Indian Mahāyāna movements. Subsequent sections address the Lotus Sūtra’s major claims and the process of the sūtra’s translation into Chinese. Still later sections summarize the spread of the Lotus Sūtra in East Asia. They introduce religious activities and movements specific to the Lotus Sūtra, such as the production of Lotus commentaries and miracle tales as well as the Buddhist schools Tiantai (Ja.: Tendai) and Nichiren, which are based on the Lotus. A final section then touches on the broader diffusion of symbolism, deities, concepts, and practices related to the Lotus into the common religious culture. With this material as background, the individual chapters of the book explore interpretations of the Lotus Sūtra, especially in East Asia, in greater depth.

BUDDHIST LITERATURE AND THE COMPOSITION OF THE LOTUS SŪTRA

Nobody knows who the original authors of the Lotus Sūtra were, nor when they lived, nor what language they spoke. This situation is, however, far from unusual; little is known about the compilers of most Buddhist sūtras. Some discussion of the dynamics of composition and transmission in the Buddhist world will help us better understand the early history of the Lotus.

A sūtra is a discourse purporting to contain the words of the historical Buddha as transmitted by the Buddhist community after his death. (Some scholars calculate the years 487 or 486 b.c.e. as the date of the Buddha’s death, while others place it in 368 b.c.e.) The etymology of the word sūtra has been traced variously to the words for “well said,” “aphorism” (hence its extended meaning of discourse or words spoken by the Buddha), and “thread,” used to refer to texts or pieces of texts threaded together. In theory, the content of every Buddhist sūtra is made up of words spoken by Śākyamuni, who is always presented as the originator or creator of the discourse. However, the Buddhist community also played an indispensable (although seemingly invisible) role in the compilation and dissemination of sūtras, since the followers of the Budd...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1. Interpreting the Lotus Sūtra
• 2. Expedient Devices, the One Vehicle, and the Life Span of the Buddha
• 3. Gender and Hierarchy in the Lotus Sūtra
• 4. The Lotus Sūtra and Self-Immolation
• 5. Buddhist Practice and the Lotus Sūtra in China
• 6. Art of the Lotus Sūtra
• 7. Bodily Reading of the Lotus Sūtra
• 8. Realizing This World as the Buddha Land
• Translations of the Lotus Sūtra into European Languages
• Cross-References to Citations of the Lotus Sūtra
• Character Glossary
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index