• DOI:10.1007/S11712-007-9004-2
• Corpus ID: 170439615

Holding Up the Mirror to Buddha-nature: Discerning the Ghee in the Lotus Sūtra

@article{Wawrytko2007HoldingUT,
  title={Holding Up the Mirror to Buddha-nature: Discerning the Ghee in the Lotus Sūtra},
  author={Sandra Ann Wawrytko},
  journal={Dao},
  year={2007},
  volume={6},
  pages={63-81}
}

• S. Wawrytko
• Published 28 March 2007
• History
• Dao

Although the origins of the Lotus Sūtra (Saddharma-pun d arīka-sūtra) remain obscure, textual evidence allows us to trace the written text back to at least the end of the second century, when it was quoted by Nāgārjuna (Nhat Hanh 2003: 199). The sūtra’s message of universal Buddhahood struck a deep chord in East Asian Buddhists. At least six Chinese translations appeared between the third and seventh centuries, of which three are still extant (Hurvitz 1976: ix). Tiantai 天台 patriarch Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597) was an especially enthusiastic advocate of the Lotus Sūtra, revising the Five Flavors, first mentioned in the Nirvān a Sūtra, to culminate in the Lotus Sūtra as “the ghee teaching” (Swanson 1989: 248). What accounts for such enthusiasm? The Tiantai tradition considers the Lotus Sūtra to be the complete teaching of the Buddha and the highest expression of the three discernments—the provisional or conventional, the empty, and the middle. The sūtra also encompasses “the four categories of oneness,” reflecting the ekayāna or One Vehicle propagated by the Lotus Sūtra: