The Lotus Sutraand specific schools
While reverence for the Lotus Sutrain East Asia has
transcended all sectarian divisions, it has also come to
be associated with two specific traditions: the Tiantai
school, which spread in China, Korea, and Japan; and
also the NICHIREN SCHOOL, which emerged in
thirteenth-century Japan. The Lotus-related practices
of these schools were influenced by, and in turn helped
to shape, broader traditions of Lotusdevotion.
The Tiantai/Tendai tradition. Zhiyi, the Tiantai
founder, produced extensive and influential commen-
taries on the Lotus: the Fahua xuanyi(profound mean-
ing of the Lotus), elucidating what he saw as the sutra’s
underlying principles, and the Fahua wenju(words and
phrases of the Lotus), a line-by-line exegesis. The Lo-
tusalso provided him with a textual foundation for his
conceptual innovations. A passage in Kumarajva’s
translation of chapter two sets forth the “ten such-
likes” (shirushi;Japanese, junyoze) as the “true aspect
of the dharmas” (zhufa shixiang;Japanese, shohojisso)
that only buddhas can understand. By punctuating the
passage in three different ways, Zhiyi derived the three-
fold truth of emptiness, conventional existence, and
the middle, which informs the structure of his inte-
grated system of doctrine and meditation. The same
passage also provided him with a textual basis for “the
single thought-moment being three thousand realms”
(yinian sanqian, ichinen sanzen), his architectonic vi-
sion of the entire universe as an interpenetrating whole
in which mind and concrete actualities are nondual
and all dharmas are mutually inclusive. This is the
“realm of the inconceivable,” the first of ten modes of
meditation set forth in his treatise on meditation,
MOHE ZHIGUAN(Great Calming and Contemplation).Though Zhiyi valued the Lotusas the “subtle” teach-
ing that alone reveals the perfect interfusion of the
three truths, he held that other sutras also contain
“subtle” elements; their particular admixtures of par-
tial or provisional teachings were necessary responses
to differences in human capacity and did not, in his
view, reflect a rigid hierarchy of sutras. However, the
Tiantai systematizer and sixth patriarch ZHANRAN
(711–782), who lived in a time of increased sectarian
consciousness and rivalry with other schools, orga-
nized the sutras into a hierarchy of “five periods and
eight teachings,” with the Lotus Sutraat the apex.
Zhanran’s classification was instrumental in establish-
ing the sutra’s reputation as supreme among the Bud-
dha’s teachings.New approaches to the Lotus Sutradeveloped in
Japanese Tendai, differentiating it from the Tiantai of
the Asian mainland. Most notable was the flowering of
a distinctive Tendai system of tantric Buddhism, or
Taimitsu. Taimitsu theoreticians such as ENNIN
(794–864), Enchin (814–891), and Annen (841–?)
reinterpreted the Lotus Sutraas a tantric scripture andLOTUSSUTRA(SADDHARMAPUNDARIKA-SUTRA)An illuminated Lotus Sutra.(Japanese, Heian period, 794–1185.) © Christie’s Images/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.