Lotus Sutra

Impact

The Lotus Sutra appears to have had little impact upon Indian Buddhism. Similarly, its influence within Tibetan and related forms of Buddhism has been marginal. The text first flourished in China, owing to the various Chinese translations from the third through fifth centuries and its adoption by the Tiantai sect—one of the foremost Mahayana branches—and then spread to Korea and Japan. Although Dharmaraksa’s third-century translation may be the earliest Chinese version, it was the translation in 406 by Kumarajiva that proved most successful as the Lotus Sutra spread throughout East Asia. Kumarajiva’s work was furthered in the late sixth century by the Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi, who wrote several works extolling the power and significance of the Lotus Sutra. In addition, beginning in medieval China and extending to Japan, a number of so-called miracle tales focusing on the power of the Lotus Sutra began to circulate. Although these tales were not necessarily intended for a popular audience, they no doubt contributed to the spread of devotion to the Lotus among the nonliterate population in both countries. The story of the medicine king, in which a bodhisattva burns himself to death as an offering to the Buddha, inspired a tradition of self-immolation among certain Chinese and, more recently, Vietnamese monks. In addition, the Lotus Sutra played a role in spreading the cult of the bodhisattva Guanyin, the most popular Buddhist figure in East Asia. Finally, though its impact on politics and society is less pronounced in China than in Japan, images and scenes from the Lotus can be seen throughout medieval Chinese art and literature, including many of the spectacular Buddhist murals adorning caves along the Silk Road.

In Japan, from an early period, the Lotus Sutra was understood as a spiritual protector of the imperial family and the realm. One of the earliest commentaries is attributed to Shotoku Taishi (573–621), the semilegendary regent of Japan and “father of Japanese Buddhism.” From the early medieval period, monasteries were constructed throughout the nation with the express purpose of reciting the Lotus Sutra. As noted, the Lotus Sutra was central to the Japanese Tendai sect, founded by Saicho, which would dominate Japanese Buddhism for several centuries and give birth to the various new Buddhist movements of the Kamakura Period (1185–1333). Saicho lectured on the Lotus Sutra before the Japanese emperor and court. Whereas Tendai embraced devotion to the Lotus Sutra as one path among many, Nichiren broke from Tendai eclecticism by insisting that the sole effective path to buddhahood ran through the Lotus Sutra and that this could be achieved simply by chanting its title in good faith and with pure heart in a prayer known as the daimoku. For Nichiren and his followers, this prayer—Namu myoho renge kyo, or “devotion to the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma”—encapsulates all the teachings contained within the Lotus Sutra and thus, by extension, all the practices and merit accumulated by Shakyamuni Buddha through countless eons, which can then be transferred to the believer via the act of chanting. While this practice remains central to Nichiren Buddhism, some contemporary Nichirenists question the idea that the daimoku is sufficient for liberation in and of itself.

In modern times, the Lotus Sutra has played a role in a variety of Buddhist reform and activist movements in Japan, China, and Taiwan. This is due to the fact that the Lotus is often understood as giving primary importance to the very world in which humans dwell, an interpretation that runs from Zhiyi through Nichiren down to modern lay-Buddhist movements. Nichiren, in particular, interpreted the message of the Lotus Sutra in a political and eschatological fashion, teaching in works like Rissho ankoku ron (Treatise on Spreading Peace throughout the Country by Establishing the True Dharma, 1260) that widespread devotion to the Lotus in an age of decline could transform this world into an ideal “buddha land” and that, contrariwise, a refusal to embrace the text would bring disaster upon the realm.

This perceived message of the Lotus, combined with the inherent vagueness of the sutra itself, has allowed for manifold political interpretations. In prewar Japan, the Lotus inspired figures as diverse as Seno’o Giro (1881–1961), founder of the Socialist Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism; the left-leaning poet, agronomist, and activist Miyazawa Kenji (1896–1933); Ishiwara Kanji (1889–1949), the Imperial Army general famous for his role in fomenting the 1931 Manchurian Incident, in which Japanese militarists dynamited a section of railroad in southern Manchuria and blamed the Chinese as a pretext for engaging China in all-out war; and Inoue Nissho (1886–1967), founder of the Ketsumeidan, or Blood Pledge Corps, a terrorist group that would embark on a wave of assassinations of prominent political figures and business leaders in the 1930s. In the radically changed circumstances of the postwar period, several new religious movements associated with Nichiren Buddhism began to flourish. Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, now known as Soka Gakkai or Soka Gakkai International, is a popular lay Buddhist movement that first emerged in the 1930s and, after surviving persecution during World War II, gained a massive following in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s, eventually spreading its activities to the United States. Its teachings are rooted in Nichirenist conceptions of the interconnectedness of personal and social transformation. Though it is somewhat less popular than Soka Gakkai, Rissho Koseikai, also founded in the 1930s, is rooted in similar Nichirenist assumptions as well as in the conviction of the continuing relevance of the Lotus Sutra.

In the West, the Lotus Sutra has had less direct impact, though Western-language translations have appeared since the mid-nineteenth century. The first was Eugène Burnouf’s French version, Le lotus de la bonne loi (1852). This was followed several decades later by Hendrik Kern’s Saddharmapundarika; or, The Lotus of the True Law (1884), the first translation into English. The number of English and Western-language translations of the Lotus Sutra has exploded through the end of the twentieth century, as Western scholars and lay Buddhists have begun to take a greater interest in this seminal East Asian sacred text.