The Tree of Enlightenment

Mahayana tradition. It has great influence in the Mahayana
Buddhist world, not only in India but also in China and Japan,
where it is the favorite text of the T’ien-t’ai and Nichiren schools.
Moreover, insofar as it expounds the way of great compassion,
the Lotus Sutra represents the essence of the Mahayana tradition’s
fundamental orientation, which is great compassion.
Let us examine a number of themes in the Lotus Sutra that
I feel are particularly important for an understanding of the
Mahayana tradition. Let us look first at what the sutra has to
say about the Buddha. In Chapter 14, I mentioned a number
of suggestions found in the eravada canon that point to the
supramundane and transcendental nature of the Buddha. is
theme is elaborated on in formative, transitional texts like the
Mahavastu and Lalitavistara. In the Lotus Sutra, the supramundane,
eternal, and ever-active nature of the Buddha is explained
very clearly and in considerable detail. e message is that the
form of the Buddha Shakyamuni perceived by people in the
sixth century b.c.e. was simply an apparition of the transcendental
Buddha projected for the purpose of enlightening sentient
beings. Although the world perceived the birth of Siddhartha
among the Shakya clan, the event of his great renunciation,
the years of his struggle for enlightenment, his attainment of
enlightenment under the bodhi tree, his forty-five years of teaching,
and his passing away into extinction at the age of eighty, all
this was in fact merely a show for the purpose of enlightening
sentient beings.
e case for this idea is advanced in the Lotus Sutra with
the help of the parable of the physician that appears in chapter
sixteen of the text. In this parable, a well-qualified and famous
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