Reflections On The Three Fold Lotus Sutra ISSN:1076-9005Reflections on the ThreefoldLotus SutraBy Dr. John R.A. MayerProfessor of PhilosophyBrock UniversitySt. Catharines, OntarioCanadaJRAMayer@aol.comObtain a paginatedversion of this articleThe Threefold Lotus Suutra provides some very illuminating insightswith respect to many of the debates and oppositions which take place inlate twentieth-century Western philosophy. The present paper representsreflections on how this Mahaayaana text is applicable to issues in contemporaryphilosophy.One of the central debates in metaphysics andespecially in ethical theory is the question of foundation. The positionlabelled 'foundationalist' is the more traditional Western philosophicalstance. It is tantamount to belief in a permanent universal truth fromwhich norms can be deduced or inferred.Views or actions not based on this 'foundation' are held to be simplyerroneous and ones that could be corrected. Post-moderns argue againstfoundationalism, maintaining that belief in a universal truth or an absolutenorm inevitably leads the proponent to being committed sincerely, but arrogantly,to the notion that his own position is based on the 'foundation' whichmakes it necessarily true, and any other position is either merely triviallydifferent from his own, or else in error. Emmanuel Levinas has persuasivelyargued that belief in an absolute truth is a 'closed' view, in contrastto an 'open' one, leading to intolerance and a will to impose one's owncommitments on unwilling others. Thus foundationalism is deeply relatedto violent notions such as imperialism, aggression, ethnicism, and racism,the recurrent features of the history of those who are committed to thenotion of an absolute.Rather, Levinas advocates an 'open' universe in which radically diverseviews are embraced by different people. It is diversity which makes anethical claim on all of us. In Levinas' view, the proper ethical mode isto let the demands of the other take precedence even over our very deepestcommitments; the mere fact that there are such others is the basis of rationallyunharmonizable, incommensurable beliefs, claims, lifestyles, and values,each making a muteclaim on us to sacrifice, compromise, and hierarchicallysubject what is 'our own' to the demands made by 'the other.' This leadsto an 'ethics without rules,' since the very notion of 'rules' is to overruledifferences and not give sufficient recognition to the individuality andparticularity of every context of decision-making. Thus 'rules' are oppressive,and hence,unethical.The countercharge is that anti-foundationalism is tantamount to an 'anythinggoes' nihilism, a radical relativism, which demands tolerance even of oppression,exploitation, indifference, cruelty, wickedness, and abuse.Levinas' critics argue that a willing abdication from one's own commitmentscannot be generally accepted, nor should it be idealized. A radically anti-foundationalistview, while it discloses the dangers of foundationalism, must wallow inthe simply unacceptable relativist position that Hitler and Mother Theresaare, as it happens, different in their respective commitments, and thefact that we might sympathize more with one rather than the other is irrelevant.Indeed, if we buy into Levinas' ethics, we might end up claiming that weshould be obliging the Hitlers around us, exactly because we share thecommitments of the Mother Theresas.So foundationalists and anti-foundationalists both make persuasive argumentsfor our acceptance of their respective stances, each having something stronglypersuasive about its own position and revealing something repugnant abouttheother. Each position implies unacceptable consequences. This leaves thereader-spectator stymied and adrift as regards the outcome of the debate.To further complicate matters, the dispute of the foundationalists andanti-foundationalists is sequential to another deep division in moral andethical theory in the West. This is the controversy over utilitarian anddeontological approaches. The former, the utilitarian, asserts that humansare pleasure-seeking and pain-avoiding beings by nature, and that thereforewhat constitutes the ethically acceptable or preferred behavior is actingso as to produce the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. Human beingsare unethical when they follow the demands of their own personal pleasuresor pain-avoidances; they are ethical when they opt in accord with the greatesttotality of consequential pleasures and pains, regarding themselves asonly one of all those whom the actions may affect. Thus, to facilitatethinking in the context of ethical choice making, some utilitarian philosophershave attempted to devise calculi for arriving at the most moral of alternativesgiven particular options and situations.In contrast, Kant, the principal spokesman for the deontological position,has argued against all such consequentialist approaches, maintaining thatthe ethical is determined by the will of the agent, rather than the consequencesof the act, and that the good is the act performed from the motive of dutyrather than either desire or inclination.If one is left perplexed by these discussions and debates, the ThreefoldLotus Suutra is of immense value for overcoming the foregoing quandaries.The title of the introductory sutra, the Sutraof Innumerable Meanings, gives a strong clue as to the direction oftheresolution. The manifold diversity of the everyday world gives riseto countlessways of experiencing it and interpreting it, since experience makes accessibleonly a minute portion of the vast spatial and temporal diversity of thewhole. Were the experiential disclosure largely overlap in the case oftwo individual instances, the subjective inclinations and proclivitiesof the two individuals sharing similar experiences will result in interpretingthem in quite different ways. The Suutra of the Lotus Flower of theWonderful Law lets us understand this plurality and diversity throughthe parable of the herbs. It tells of the generous rain supplying the needsof diverse plants, be they grasses, herbs, flowers, shrubs, or mighty trees.The same rain nourishes them all, yet each grows according to its own particularnature. What is here presented is how diversity is produced from some underlyingsingular universal - the rain.This seems to support the foundationalist position that behind the diversityof the many specific plants there is the unity of their source in the commonnutrient, the rainwater. Thus the generosity of the sky in supplying wateris the foundation of the richly diverse flora.But to avoid the charge made against the usual foundationalists, theLotus Suutra also reveals that although there is a fundamental singulartruth, a foundation to the universe, this truth is accessible only to Buddha.Although all of us are lured and coaxed along the path to achievingBuddhahood, and, indeed, promised that it is within our essential possibilities,at the same time it is recognized that great discipline and compassionis required of us to go beyond our limited present stage of development.While the 'foundation' is hinted at as the Void, and is characterized bythe Ten Suchnesses, these are not readily assimilable concepts, and indeed,are not concepts at all; they imply the practice of compassion and thepractice of self-sacrifice.It would be folly for those listening to theBuddha to think that they have a theoretical or conceptual grasp of the'foundation' of all. To the contrary, what we can grasp is one or severalof innumerable meanings. However, they are all meanings of the ultimatereality, of Buddha nature.However, any attempt to explicate this state is to present but one ofits innumerable meanings. What we can grasp intellectually are meanings,not the ultimate reality. Only Buddha can grasp the ultimately real, sinceenlightenment is not the consequence but the pre-condition of such a power.The Buddha advises the bodhisattvas that everyLaw emerges, changes, settles, and vanishes every moment, instantly (Preaching,p.12). It is obvious that such impermanence renders the Law beyond whateverit is that we call knowing; for our kind of knowledge requires that theknown be bounded and stable enough to be what it is, to endure. Our kindof knowing is to know the known by its limitations, by its determinationswhich specify it to be this way rather than that. But whatever is accessibleto this kind of knowledge is not the ultimately real. That whose meaningsthe innumerable meanings qualify cannot be presented; whatever is capableof being presented, however true it may be, is just another meaning. Thatfrom which all the meanings derive is not itself another meaning; it isof an entirely different constitution which is often presented in the textonly to be negated. As a propaedeutic we might be told of the Void, theFormless, the Absolute Nothingness, or the Ten Merits, but all these arebut aids or step-ladders for turning the wheel - useful devices, perhaps,but not anything to be clung to, investigated, or analyzed, and especiallynot anything to be used as weapons against others who talk about God, theTruth, or Suchness. All claims are to be transcended - the Void voided,the Truth abandoned as it becomes a Lie (Nietzsche) - but the practiceofcompassion remains paramount. To be compassionate requires no doctrine.Compassion is not something one knows; it is something one does and somethingone receives. The path to enlightenment is compassion; and compassion ratherthan hostility and partiality is what is called for by the path to enlightenment.The parable of the herbs is very clear in showing generosity or compassionfor the thirst of the plants as the underlying reality of the diverse flourishing.When in the Lotus Suutra we learn that Buddha nature is recognizedin all, be they disciples such as Shariputra, great bodhisattvas, relativesof Buddha Sakyamuni, such as Rahula, or indeed, villains such as Devadatta,we can see the universality of compassion and generosity. These have toovercome hostility, revenge, and even judgement and justice. For all theserequire limits, contrasts, opposition, and either/or thinking. And whilewe are not fully enlightened we are indeed in the clutches of contrast,thinking, judgement, preference, and hierarchy. Enlightenment constitutesbeing beyond all this. To be beyond means always practicing compassion,being mindful of the fact that less than full enlightenment is tantamountto suffering, and finding the impermanent unsatisfactory.Be it in the parable of the magic city or ofthe burning house, the suggestion is clear that skillful means are to beused for getting the willing cooperation of those whose despondency, disinterest,bad habits, or ignorance prevent them from doing what is ultimately fortheir own benefit. These parables fly in the face of some conventionalmodern claims, such as the claim that the ends do not justify the means,and that knowing the good for the other when the other does not share thatknowledge is paternalism, and that using deliberate deception in orderto get the other to do what we think is best for him is manipulation. Thusthe parables themselves are not instances of some absolute truth, but rather,persuasive devices, themselves to be abandoned once they have enabled usto behave compassionately. They too, are merely skillful means to an end.That this is a general practical approach is recognized in Mahaayaanatraditions, in which it is claimed that the Buddha Sakyamuni taught differentthings at different times to different people, in each case saying whatwould be most beneficial for the advancement and enhancement of the audience."Iknew that the natures and desires of all living beings were notequal. ThereforeI preached the Law variously. It was with tactful power that I preachedthe Law variously. In forty years and more, the truth has not been revealedyet" (Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, Preaching, p.14). Thus, the teachingsof the Threefold Lotus Suutra are not the same as many of the othertexts of the Pali Canon or the Tripitaka, but they are held to be the mostadvanced by its devotees, because they are presented to a wonderful assemblageof the highest and greatest beings. In contrast to Tendai and Nichirentraditions, the Zen Buddhists focus on an unverbalized direct transmissionof experience and wisdom, thus sidestepping the primacy of any of the formulatedteachings; but, because human beings are still human, the function of theSuutras is replaced by koans in the Zen communities.It should be clear that there is a parallel between how the innumerablemeanings are aspects of the self-same reality and how the individual differentiatedbeings all share in the Buddha nature. This leads to the next difficulty.Is the Buddha nature of each individual merely a potential, a seed, tobe realized in some future time? Certainly that seems to be the intentof the promise to the individuals to whom Buddhahood is promised in theSuutra. Alternatively, perhaps each one is already and eternallyan aspect of the Buddha nature, in which case realization is a change ofattitude rather than a future project. Once again the answer to the problemlies buried not in who can make the best case for one or the other sideof the dilemma; rather, the problem is in our way of looking at the matter,thus giving rise to a case of either/or. The solution lies in seeing thatalthough rationally the alternatives are disjoint, and make absolute alternativeclaims, the reality is that both of these ways of seeing can be upheld,and neither is the whole truth. We are indeed all substantially at onewith the Buddha; we have no individual selves. Really all of the multiplicityis a part of one and the same whole. Hence when we are compassionate, wefulfill our own nature and need. And yet to rest in the truth of the onenessof all Buddha nature would leave us inactive and untrue to our own nature.There is a task, a project, a goal that directs us. And that is the practiceof the Law. By being on the bodhisattva path, offering the merits of ourvirtues to accrue to the benefit of all sentient beings, we practice theLaw of what we are, and therewith become ourselves. Note the insistenceof the either/or character of our question about whether we are eitheralready Buddha natures or whether we are to achieve that at some blessedmoment when the bodhisattvas' task is done and all sentiency stands readyto be enlightened. Both claims are partially and simultaneously true; bothare limited claims, and hence necessarily less than the whole truth. Thereare moments in our temporal horizon when we take one or the other as importantand appropriate - but both are but skillful means for keeping the joy ofour reality vivid.This is but another Buddhist example of tactfulness and skillful means.Whenwords help, words are offered. But these words are not the final goal;they are merely a means to get us unstuck if we are stuck in our path towardBuddhahood. The text teaches that when it is necessary, the Buddha will"deceive us into the truth," as Kierkegaard put it. In the parable of themagic city, the tired pilgrims are lured toward their goal and dissuadedfrom giving up by the mysterious illusion of the proximity of a yet-distantgoal. Similarly, if we are to move beyond our habitual and limiting thoughts,perhaps potent new thoughts will effect our moving from our original stance.If a set of truth-claims helps us to move beyond our previous beliefs,the set has done its job. It does not, however, constitute a permanentlysatisfying and intelligible final answer. Once we are free from whateverdelusion to which we were habituated, the tool of our liberation shouldbe discarded rather than clung to. It was after all nothing more than anow-spent tool. And so it is that tactfulness requires that what is spokenbe effective rather than literally true.Wisdom is exactly the power for skillful tacticalaction, that which expresses effectively the compassion respecting thewill of the many finite individuals and involving the transformation ofeach into self-awareness as Buddha nature - self-awareness of the formlessself. We run around in puzzled conceptual circles asking questions (Whydoes one have to realize that which is already realized? If all are alreadyBuddha nature, does it matter whether we are diligent or not?) that arelabyrinths of discursive reason. The Buddha mind is free of discursivereason and hasnon-mediated, direct oneness with truth. And yet discursivereason, too, is but an aspect of the Buddha nature.Just as Hegel in the West has helped us see beyond the limiting Lawsof Thought that Aristotle formulated as the conditions of rationalthinking (the Law of Identity, that A = A; the Law of Non-Contradiction,that nothing is both A and not-A; and the Law of Excluded Middle, thateverything is either A or not-A), so the Buddhist heritage is similarlya liberating one. Hegel shows that when one thinks about a seedling, abud, the flower and its fruit, there is a sense in which each is distinctand other than theother. But at the very same time they are all aspectsof the one plant. The shoot anticipates the blossom, the flower is butthe transformation of the blossom, and the fruit is the ripened flowerand the promise of the seed and the sprout. In some intuitive way we canhere understand that the question should not concern whether they are thesame or different, but rather that the very difference is involved in thesameness; each momentary unit portends the next moment and is but the fulfillmentof the previousone. The bud is and is not the flower, just as we are andare not Buddha nature. The flower is not some final goal that the bud seeks;it is but a next stage on an eternally continuous process. Similarly, Buddhahoodis not some eventual final achievement but the continuous and temporalpraxis of compassion. This surely is the intent when in the Sutra the audienceare all considered bodhisattvas, when many would have deemed themselvesmere shravakas or pratyekabuddhas.Process implies time, time implies change, and change implies goal orpurpose;but the ultimately worthwhile goal or purpose is self-justifying, autotelic.Living compassionately is the Buddha nature, and the compassionate beinghas his immediate objectives and activities. These activities both servethe needs of suffering sentiency and the needs of the bodhisattva. Perhapsordinary people all need the transformative insight that Jean-Paul Sartreplays on in his one-act play, Huis-clos (No Exit). The setting ofthe play seems like an elegant hotel lobby, but we learn from the threecharacters found there that they believe this to be the reception areato hell. However, each is convinced that he has been sent there by somemistake, and that he will eventually be redirected when the formalitiesof admission will commence.Gradually we the audience come to see that indeed the characters arein bad faith and self-deceived if they think of themselves as paragonsof virtue.However, it takes more time for the audience to realize that these personsarenot in some receiving antechamber; they are actually in hell, and eachcauses it to be hell for himself and the two others by a lack of sensitivityand lack of generosity. Similarly, Buddha nature is not achieved in someindefinite future state; it is practiced in each instance of compassionandgenerosity. The bodhisattvas have Buddha nature. The only error we makeis that we think there needs to be some extinction or disappearance whenall other sentient beings achieve enlightenment. But that comes from ourmistaken resentment of the transient and impermanent character of being;because we long for eternity and permanence, staticity, and, in a sense,death.This is what makes the impermanent unsatisfactory, and hence dukkha.The Buddha teaches us to overcome suffering by growing beyond the fourunsatisfying ways of reacting to the complex manifold: clinging to thetransitory good; resenting the transitory unpleasant; desiring the potentialgood; and fearing the potential bad. Since 'all' consists of the actualgood and bad and the potential good and bad, we suffer when we respondwith clinging, resentment, desire, and fear. Were we to respond with joyand gratitude for the actual good, compassion and resoluteness with respectto the actual bad, and simply abandon desire as well as fear, thus anticipatingwith hope,confidence, and serenity whatever emerges as the new, we wouldhave attained enlightenment, and we would see the full realization of ourBuddha nature. In the meanwhile, every moment so lived needs no redemption,and every moment lived with those unhealthful habits or tanhas isbut a transient moment, vanishing into the past, losing its significance,or, possibly, becoming an occasion for insight and self-transformation,in which case its negativity has served a positive purpose. Thus all momentsare redeemable.This is the sense in which a tragedy, once it is integratedand accepted, turns into a strength of character, and thus ceases to betragic.In conclusion, we see that the Threefold LotusSuutra is an excellent text from which to learn that our disputes anddebates, which set us against each other, and which call for argumentsand judgements, presuppose a kind of either/or logic which holds the truthto be similar to a meaning, opinion, or view. In terms of the first halfof the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law we are exposedto the Law of Appearance, from which we learn that we are not yet enlightenedbut have within us each the potential to achieve Buddhahood. The secondhalf, the Law of Origin, clearly asserts our fundamental unity with Buddha.These two positions are not made to vie with one another for supremacyorcorrectness. They are equally promulgated by the Buddha, and each isindependentlyintelligible. That which escapes our capacity to harmonizeis left indeedas beyond our present ken, but nonetheless accessible to faith-discernment.Thus the thrust of the sutra is that the truth is quitedifferent from meanings,opinions, and views, and is capable of sustaining logically incommensurableand unharmonizable meanings, opinions, and views.Speech and assertion shouldsupply the pragmatic means for turning the wheel, rather than assistingin the assertion of dogmatic verities. Commitment to one persuasive perspectivesets us against one another and blocks usfrom following the true Law, compassion.Compassion, when practiced, isour Buddha nature, manifesting itself inbodhisattvic wisdom, serenity, power, and fulfillment.This is what the Suutra persuades us to be loyal to. So ultimatelyphilosophy is not the art of rational argumentation; philosophy is thepursuit of wisdom, while argumentation is a character defect, not the substanceofphilosophy ! Returnto beginning of articleCopyright 1998 |
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