ABSTRACT

Taken as a unified text The Lotus Sutra seems on the face of it to offer a mysterious new doctrine heralded by fantastic celestial events. Indeed the elaborate description of the scenario, with a magisterial Buddha deep in meditation on the Vulture Peak, surrounded by a fantastic throng of arhats and bodhisattvas, not to mention the dragon-kings and others not often seen nowadays, makes tedious reading for some fast-moving moderns. The mythology will be taken up again below, but for the present immediate attention may be paid to the second chapter of the sutra where its main teaching is first directly stated. Other chapters of the sutra contain elaborations of the same teaching, partly in the form of allegories which will also be considered later including such famous tales as the burning house and the magic city.