The Wonderful Dharma Lotus Sūtra (Sanskrit: Saddharma-puṇḍarīka Sūtra) presents the One Buddha Vehicle as Śākyamuni Buddha’s ultimate teaching and a unifying path that embraces and reconciles the variety of Buddhist doctrines as well as the provisional teachings of the Three Vehicles. Provisional and ultimate are shown to be nondual, and their nonduality epitomizes “the essence of things as they really are.” The sūtra also emphasizes that the potential for awakening is ever-present in sentient beings and declares that all of them will one day realize Buddhahood. Famous for its parables, the Lotus Sūtra demonstrates the countless skillful means (upāya) that Buddhas use to lead living beings to liberation.
This new rendering of one of the seminal texts of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition has been years in the making. The Buddhist Text Translation Society, together with the International Institute for the Translation of Buddhist Texts at Dharma Realm Buddhist University, brought together a large multidisciplinary team to consider the deeper meaning of every chapter, paragraph, line, and word in this scripture. The result is a meticulously produced and carefully crafted translation that meets the highest standards of the Chinese translations bureaus of old. The detailed traditional outline that is embedded in the translation—made available for the first time in any rendering of the text—is a valuable hermeneutical aid that reveals the deeper architecture of this massive scripture. Master Hsuan Hua’s extensive commentary to the scripture opens many news vistas on the text and helps make its many parables come alive for a Western audience.
—Robert E. Buswell, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
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