[Buddha-l] Re: lotus sutra question

[Richard Hayes]

> Hi Richard. Question for Richard, kibitzers all welcome. I'm
> wondering about some of the comments you've made about Lotus Sutra
> on Buddha-L over the years. I always seem to hear just the one-liner
> versions, but I'm supposing there are messages in the archive that
> fill out your complaint?

First, please excuse me for taking so long to reply. It has been a
busy week, and I haven't had time until now to write the kind of
response your message deserves.

A phrase frequently used by Quakers, when they hear something that
they find inspiring, is "that speaks to my condition." When something
does not speak to one's condition, one should examine one's own
conditioning at least as much as one examines that which does not at
the moment speak to it. So please forgive me if I respond to your
question by saying something about my own intellectual and emotional
limitations that serve as barriers to some (but by no means all) of
the Lotus Sutra.

First, as a card-carrying Universalist, I am usually quite receptive
to any message that assures that absolutely everyone---including
Republicans, jihadis, serial killers, Satan, Devadatta, and perhaps
(gulp!) even Texans---will eventually attain the greatest good
(however one wishes to describe that). So you'd think the Lotus Sutra,
repleat as it is with apparently Universalist tidings, would speak
strongly to my condition. So why doesn't it?

In partial answer to that question, I should say that the Buddhist
texts that speak most strongly to my condition are those that offer
clear and straightforward analysis of why people are troubled and then
offer equally straightforward suggestions on how people might get
beyond their troubles. Given that taste for down-to-earth and
unmystified teachings, I find that most of the texts I treasure the
most are in the Pali canon. I also really like the Prajñāpāramitā
literature, since it offers a useful antidote to the sort of rigidity
to which I have a persistent and apparently incurable allergy. I also
love jokes, puns, satire, irony and hyperbole, and such delightful
ornamentation abounds in some of my favorite Pali and Sanskrit
Buddhist texts. Once again, since the Lotus Sutra is full of
outrageous satire, parody  and hyperbole, you'd think it would speak
to my condition. Well, the outrageous satire and so forth in the Lotus
actually do delight me. But other parts of the text really alarm me,
and in fact they alarm me so much that they spoil the parts of the
text that inspire me.

What annoys me about the Lotus Sutra is that its Universalist message
often serves as a disguise for a relentlessly sectarian polemic. On
the one hand we apparently have a message that the Buddha taught no
inferior paths (hīnayāna); he really just taught one path, the
Buddhayāna. That sounds promising. But then we are told repeatedly in
various ways, especially through parables, that the one path is really
the Mahāyāna and NOT the so‐called hīnayāna. Indeed, the very term
"hīnayāna" literally means the discarded or rejected path. The
Universalism turns out to be an illusion, for the more persistent
message is that those pesky hīnayāninaḥ are pseudo‐Buddhists who are
leading people astray, deflecting them from the Sad‐dharma (the True
Dharma, which actually does end up being pretty sad). I once made a
list of all the passages in the Lotus in which people are condemned
for various reasons; seeing them all at once is pretty overwhelming.
About ten years ago I taught a course in which the only texts were the
Lotus Sutra and various interpretations of it, and a couple of years
ago I heard a series of excellent lectures on the text by Peter
Gregory. Neither of those experiences led me to think I had unfairly
judged the text.   

Something that has reinforced my resistance to the Lotus Sutra has
been the ugly and disturbing polemics I have witnessed on the Internet
over the years among followers of Nichiren. About a week ago, I
inadvertantly started a firestorm on the Unitarian‐Universalist
Buddhist Fellowship discussion list UUBF‐L by saying in passing that
Soka Gakkai is one of several Buddhist organizations that has done
some good humanitarian work. Some Nichiren follower tore me to shreds,
saying that saying something favorable about Soka Gakkai is on a moral
par with saying that Hitler or Stalin were as humane and compassionate
as Mother Theresa. Such emotive and esentially fanatical responses, I
have learned over the years, are not at all unusual among those who
see the Lotus Sutra as the only truly Buddhist text. A Japanese friend
of mine informs me that followers of Nichiren in Japan routinely issue
death threats against one another. Is that the Lotus Sutra's fault?
Probably not entirely. But the association of the text with fanaticism
does leave a bad taste in my mouth.

The Lotus Sutra says that those who resist its message invariably go
to hell for many aeons before attaining the Summum Bonum, so I should
perhaps try to reduce my time in hell a few minutes by saying that I
love the chapter on Avalokiteśvara. It speaks to my condition.

I hope this begins to answer your question, good sir.

Best wishes,
Richard

-- 
Richard Hayes
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes