CHAPTER 2
There has been a great deal of philological research on the Lotus Sūtra, much of it by Japanese scholars of Sanskrit. Based on this research, the general scholarly consensus is that the Lotus Sūtra took shape in four phases (described here using the chapter numbers in Kumārajīva's translation plus the Devadatta Chapter inserted as Chapter Twelve1).
In the first phase the verses in Chapter Two through Chapter Nine were composed. This would be the earliest version of the Lotus Sūtra. In the second phase, the prose portions were added to those same chapters. In the third phase, Chapter One was added, as well as Chapter Ten through Chapter Twenty-Two (with the exception of Chapter Twelve). In the fourth and final phase, the remaining portions of the Lotus Sūtra as we have it today were added: Chapter Twenty-Three through Chapter Twenty-Seven, as well as Chapter Twelve, the Devadatta Chapter, with Chapter Twenty-Eight added at some later date. Scholars speculate that the text evolved over a period of some three centuries, with the chapters of the first phase appearing between 100 and 50 B.C.E. and the text as we have it today completed as late as 220 C.E.2
The Lotus Sūtra is often regarded as the quintessential Mahāyāna sūtra, primarily for its proclamation of a single vehicle that will transport all sentient beings to buddhahood. This fame, however, derives almost entirely from East Asia. What was its fate in India, the land of its origin? The fact that it seems to have evolved over a period of some three centuries indicates that it was a significant work in India during the period of the composition of many of the Mahāyāna sūtras. A series of authors saw fit to expand its central chapters in a variety of ways and to append chapters at the end that seem to be freestanding works, chapters that bear little direct relation to the portion that ends with Chapter Twenty-Two. There are, however, other ways to gauge the importance of a Buddhist text.
Our knowledge of Indian Buddhism is more limited than our knowledge of Buddhism in China, Japan, or Tibet, for example. This is due in part to history, with Buddhism essentially disappearing from the Indian subcontinent by the fourteenth century after many centuries of decline, ending a monastic tradition that could preserve its own history. It is also due in part to climate; most Buddhist sūtras were written on palm leaves or tree bark that was brittle, susceptible to both fire and water. One measure of a text's importance, therefore, is the simple fact of its survival. Buddhist texts mention works that are no longer extant, and many famous texts have been lost in the original Sanskrit and preserved only in Chinese and Tibetan translations.
Numerous manuscripts and fragments of the Lotus Sūtra survive, with the oldest manuscript, perhaps dating from the seventh century, discovered in Gilgit in far northeast Pakistan in 1931. However, most of these manuscripts have been discovered beyond the borders of what is today the country of India: in Pakistan, Central Asia, and Nepal. Based on the survival of more than thirty Sanskrit manuscripts or manuscript fragments and the evidence of the expansion of the text over a period of at least two centuries, it is clear that the Lotus Sūtra was not an obscure work in India.3 Further evidence of this is found in modern Nepal. The one unbroken Sanskrit tradition of Indian Buddhism is that of the Newar community in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, a largely Hindu country. There, the Buddhist community reveres nine texts, called the navadharma, or nine dharmas, a grouping that seems to have originated in Nepal and was not inherited from India. They are all Mahāyāna sūtras. One sign of the persistence of the Lotus Sūtra over the history of Indian Buddhism is the presence of the Lotus Sūtra among the nine. As we will see in chapter 5, it was from the Newar community that Brian Hodgson of the British East India Company procured the copy of the sūtra that he sent to Eugène Burnouf in Paris. Indeed, the number of surviving manuscripts and manuscript fragments of the Lotus Sūtra suggests that the text was copied often, that the sūtra's rather relentless exhortation that it be copied was in fact heeded. Copying, like recitation, does not, however, necessarily entail study or even comprehension. The Lotus Sūtra's influence on Buddhist thought, at least in India, is thus more difficult to gauge.
One measure would be the frequency of its citation. Here, modern scholars often look to two Indian texts, composed several centuries apart, in an effort to determine a sūtra's influence. The first is the Compendium of Sūtras (Sūtrasamuccaya) traditionally attributed to the great master Nāgārjuna, although his authorship is questionable. His dates are uncertain (according to the Tibetan tradition, he lived for six hundred years), but scholars generally place him in the second century C.E. The work is a compendium of passages from sixty-eight texts, primarily Mahāyāna sūtras, organized under thirteen topics, most of which deal with the great rarity, and hence value, of a particular person or event. These include the rarity of encountering a buddha, the rarity of human birth, the rarity of great compassion toward sentient beings, the rarity of beings who have faith in the parinirvāṇa of the Buddha, and so on. There is also a section explaining that the bodhisattva should not practice the profound without skillful means. Four passages from the Lotus Sūtra appear in the text. In the chapter on the rarity of a buddha's appearance there is a passage from Chapter Sixteen of the sūtra on the lifespan of the Tathāgata (234). There are two passages quoted in the chapter on the rarity of beings who have faith in the parinirvāṇa of the Buddha; the first is from the parable of the blind man in Chapter Five of the sūtra,4 and the second is from Chapter Sixteen on the lifespan of the Tathāgata (233). Finally, a passage from Chapter Two of the Lotus (31) is cited in the chapter on the rarity of beings who have faith in the single vehicle.
Twenty-eight sūtras are cited only once; the Bodhisattva Basket (Bodhisattvapiṭaka), which is no longer extant, is cited eight times. Among famous sūtras, the Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa) is cited seven times, the Descent into Laṅkā is cited four times, the Diamond Sūtra (Vajracchedikā) is cited twice, and the unspecified Prajñāpāramitā is cited nine times. It is difficult to know what significance to draw from this. The number of citations is governed to a great extent by the topic that is being supported by the citation, although many of the thirteen topics are mentioned in the Lotus Sūtra. In the event that the Compendium of Sūtras was compiled by Nāgārjuna, it may have been written at a time before the sūtra had reached its final form.
The sūtra would have long reached its final form before it was cited in the other famous compendium, the Compendium of Training (Śikṣāsamuccaya) by the eighth-century scholar Śāntideva, author of the renowned Entering into the Bodhisattva Deeds (Bodhicaryāvatāra). It is built around twenty-seven stanzas on central elements of a bodhisattva's training, including the aspiration to enlightenment (bodhicitta), the six perfections (pāramitā), the worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas, the benefits of renunciation, and so on. For each of these verses, Śāntideva provides his own prose commentary supported by citations from primarily Mahāyāna sūtras. He cites a total of ninety-seven texts, a number of which are no longer extant. Śāntideva cites three passages from the Lotus Sūtra, compared, for example, with two from the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā and two from the Laṅkāvatārasūtra. Among the most cited sūtras are the Akṣayamatinirdeśa (eighteen citations), the Ugraparipṛcchā (twenty citations), the Dharmasaṃgīti (eighteen citations), and the Ratnamegha (twenty-four citations).
The first of three passages from the Lotus Sūtra cited by Śāntideva is found in the third chapter of his text, which is concerned with avoiding ill-willed people. It is the lengthy passage from Chapter Fourteen (“Ease in Practice”) in which the Buddha declares that the preacher of the Lotus Sūtra should not mix with such people as kings, ministers, followers of other religions, drunks, wrestlers, clowns, jugglers, and outcastes (203–204). The second passage occurs in the fourth chapter, where Śāntideva is explaining that it is inappropriate to feel contempt for any living being, even those who have not set out on the path to enlightenment. It is therefore all the more inappropriate to show contempt to those on the path. He then illustrates all of the small things that are signs that one is on the path to buddhahood with the lengthy passage from Chapter Two where it says that children who make stūpas out of piles of dirt will become buddhas (39–40). The third passage is found in the nineteenth and final chapter of Śāntideva's text, about how the bodhisattva increases his merit by constantly seeking the welfare of others. The passage is from Chapter Fourteen, where the Buddha explains how a bodhisattva should teach the dharma (drawn from the verses at 205–207).5
A third compendium of sūtras, and perhaps the last composed in India, is the Great Compendium of Sūtras (Mahāsūtrasamuccaya) by the eleventh-century Bengali master Atiśa. It cites the Lotus Sūtra once; it is the first of the passages cited by Śāntideva in the Compendium of Training but is longer than the passage cited there.
The Japanese scholar Mochizuki Kaie has made an exhaustive study of passages from the Lotus Sūtra in Indian texts and found it cited, in addition to the three compendia discussed above, in twenty-one texts.6 The most citations (twenty-three) occur in the Dazhidu lun (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra), traditionally ascribed to Nāgārjuna; scholars reject this attribution (the text is preserved only in Chinese), with some speculating that it was composed in Central Asia. Quotations from the Lotus Sūtra in works of more clearly Indian origin are far more sparse, and it is unclear when such citations occur whether the author had a copy of the sūtra before him, whether he was citing it from another Indian treatise, or whether the passage was known by heart. The great majority of Indian works that cite the Lotus Sūtra do so in support of or in opposition to a single point: the sūtra's declaration of a single vehicle. This doctrine would be a point of controversy between the two major Mahāyāna schools, the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra (with the former upholding this doctrine and the latter rejecting it), as will be discussed below.
An additional measure of the doctrinal influence of a sūtra is the number of commentaries that were written on it. There is only one on the Lotus Sūtra, attributed to the great Yogācāra master Vasubandhu (himself said to be a convert from the śrāvaka vehicle to the Mahāyāna). Although the text was probably composed in India, its attribution to Vasubandhu has been questioned, since no Sanskrit manuscripts or Tibetan translations are known.7 There are far more commentaries on the various perfection of wisdom sūtras, with eight on the Heart Sūtra alone. One might argue that the lack of scholastic attention to the Lotus Sūtra in India is due to its dearth of explicit philosophical content; the famous term emptiness (śūnyatā) rarely occurs, for example. The sūtra is also of little importance in Tibet, cited primarily in debates (discussed below) on whether there is one final vehicle or three final vehicles. A commentary on the Lotus Sūtra is preserved in the Tibetan Buddhist canon, ascribed to Pṛthivībandhu. This commentary, however, is a translation not from Sanskrit but from Chinese. Pṛthivībandhu (Sa'i rtsa lag in Tibetan) is Kuiji (632–682), the famous disciple of Xuanzang; the Tibetan translation renders only part of Kuiji's commentary, ending with Chapter Eleven. Indeed, the Lotus Sūtra's lack of doctrine would not explain why it is among the most commented upon sūtras in East Asian Buddhism.
There is a popular misconception, perpetuated by textbooks on Buddhism, that with the rise of what has come to be called the Mahāyāna, the earlier form of Buddhism, the “Hīnayāna,” withered and died in India, to survive only in the form of the Theravāda in Sri Lanka and later in Southeast Asia. This misconception derives from the inference that because the Mahāyāna became the dominant form of Buddhism in China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet, it must also have been so in India. This is false. The Mahāyāna was not in the beginning, or perhaps ever, a single movement in India. What is called the Mahāyāna began with the composition of disparate texts, each claiming to be the word of the Buddha, each claiming to represent the Buddha's supreme teaching. The Lotus Sūtra is only the most famous of many such books.
Still, it was clearly the dream of the authors of the Lotus Sūtra that the teachings of the single vehicle to buddhahood would, like the beautiful cart pulled by the great white ox, be chosen by all. But it is also clear from the sūtra that this did not occur over the period of the sūtra's composition; otherwise there would not be so many cautions about the difficulty of preaching the sūtra after the Buddha's demise and so many warnings about (and threats against) those who will denigrate the sūtra. Nor did this dream ever come true in India; those schools that rejected the Mahāyāna sūtras as the word of the Buddha are often referred to by scholars as the “mainstream schools” of Buddhism, a term that suggests that the Mahāyāna was an offshoot that remained always on the margins. These schools, that is, those that do not accept the Mahāyāna sūtras as the word of the Buddha, persisted throughout the history of Buddhism in India, and they continued to denounce the Mahāyāna sūtras and their teachings.
Such denunciations were considered serious enough that Mahāyāna authors felt compelled to address them. Indeed, a standard component of Mahāyāna treatises from the time of Nāgārjuna to the time of the last centuries of Buddhism in India is a defense of the Mahāyāna sūtras as the word of the Buddha (buddhavacana). In some versions of the bodhisattva's vows, it is a transgression not to affirm their authenticity; the mention of such a transgression among the vows is a clear indication that in India there were many who committed it.
Mahāyāna authors also had to face more specific charges. Thus, in a work called the Blaze of Reasoning (Tarkajvālā), by the Mahāyāna author Bhāviveka (ca. 500–570), we find a list of perversions of the dharma, perversions that, according to the śrāvakas, serve as proof that the Mahāyāna is not the word of the Buddha. In this list are several that are prominent in the Lotus Sūtra. First, by teaching that the Tathāgata is permanent, the Mahāyāna contradicts the dictum that all conditioned phenomena are impermanent. Second, because the Mahāyāna teaches that the Buddha did not pass into nirvāṇa, it suggests that nirvāṇa is not the final state of peace. Third, the Mahāyāna contains prophecies that the great śrāvakas (the Hīnayāna disciples) will become buddhas. Fourth, the Mahāyāna belittles the arhats. Fifth, the Mahāyāna perverts the entire teaching by claiming that Śākyamuni was an emanation. Therefore, the śrāvakas conclude, “the Buddha did not set forth the Mahāyāna; it was created by beings who were certainly demonic in order to deceive the obtuse and those with evil minds.”8 These are almost the exact words that the Lotus Sūtra predicts will be used by its opponents: “All of these monks here teach heretical doctrines because they are greedy for profit! They have fabricated this sūtra to deceive the people of the world, and they explain this sūtra out of desire for fame!” (198).
One of the many elements that suggest that the Lotus Sūtra is one of the early Mahāyāna sūtras is its concern, almost to the point of obsession, with its reception. The authors of the sūtra are clearly concerned about their audience and seek to counter all criticism, criticism that was likely expressed over the decades of the sūtra's composition. Despite its confident proclamations of a single vehicle, the salvation of all sentient beings, and the limitless lifespan of the Buddha, its dominant mood is less one of triumph than one of anxiety. In Chapter One, Maitreya, supposedly the most advanced of bodhisattvas, worries that the Buddha has performed a miracle that he has never seen before. In Chapter Two, Śāriptura and the other arhats worry that, although they have reached the end of the path, the Buddha is praising something called “skillful means.” In that same chapter, the Buddha recounts that immediately after his enlightenment, he worried that no one would be able to understand the teaching of one vehicle. He thus decided to immediately pass into nirvāṇa but then decided that if he taught three vehicles, beings would be able to understand. In Chapter Three, the father in the parable of the burning house is beside himself with fear that his children will die in the fire and, finding no other means to save them, devises the stratagem of the three carts. In the parable of the prodigal son in Chapter Four, the son lives in constant fear of being arrested and punished. In the parable of the conjured city in Chapter Seven, the travelers become exhausted and frightened and want to turn back. In the parable of the jewel in the cloak, the man suffers all manner of hardship, not knowing that there was a jewel hidden in his garment all along. In Chapter Fifteen, Maitreya worries that it would have been impossible in the forty years since his enlightenment for the Buddha to have taught the billions of bodhisattvas who have emerged from the earth. In the parable of the physician father in Chapter Sixteen, the father worries that his sons will not take his antidote for the poison they have ingested.
Behind all of these worries in the plots of the various parables and the scenes of the sūtra, there is a single historical worry that the Lotus Sūtra must address: If the Mahāyāna is the superior teaching, why had it not been evident earlier? The constant declarations that the Lotus Sūtra had been taught in the distant past by previous buddhas are meant to address this question. The Lotus Sūtra is not new; it is ancient, so ancient that its ancient expositions could only be recalled by bodhisattvas such as Mañjuśrī and by the Buddha himself.
And there is another worry: If the Mahāyāna is the Buddha's true teaching, why has it not been embraced by all? It is to answer this qualm that several of the parables are directed. Some of them place the fault with the disciples themselves. Thus, in the parable of the prodigal son, a wayward son is prevented from enjoying his birthright by his own insecurity, content to shovel manure in his father's stable when great riches await him with his father's blessing. The son is like the Hīnayāna disciple, so spiritually parsimonious and insecure that he is satisfied with the meager attainment of nirvāṇa, intimidated by the expanse of the Mahāyāna path to buddhahood. In the parable of the hidden jewel, a man falls asleep drunk in the house of a friend who, unbeknownst to him, sews a jewel into the hem of his garment. The man awakes and goes on his way, only to suffer great poverty and hardship. He encounters his friend, who reveals the jewel, that he was endowed with great wealth all the while. In the same way, the disciples of the Buddha have constant access to the path to supreme enlightenment but are unaware of it; they are bodhisattvas unaware of their true identity. Again, the Buddha compares his teaching with the rainfall that descends without discrimination on the earth. That this rain causes some seeds to grow into flowers and some to grow into great trees implies no differentiation in the rain but, rather, is due to the capacities of the seeds that it nurtures. Thus, the teaching of the Buddha is ever of a single flavor but benefits beings in a variety of ways according to their capacity. The Buddha knows the abilities and dispositions of his disciples and causes them to hear his dharma in a way most suitable to them. The implication is that the Hīnayāna disciples have not aspired to the Mahāyāna because they lack the capacity to do so; the fault is theirs.
This lesser capacity of the Hīnayāna is suggested in yet another parable (one that is not found in the most famous Chinese version): that of the blind man who denies the existence of the sun and the moon. A wise physician cures him of his blindness, and the man sees his error but becomes convinced that he has now seen all there is to see, denying the superior vision of those endowed with the power of clairvoyance. He is finally convinced to undertake the meditative practice that will result in the attainment of such supernormal powers and eventually comes to see that his new sight was indeed limited in its sphere. The Buddha compares the blind man with ignorant sentient beings who are restored to sight by the great physician, the Buddha himself. Having effected the extinction of all suffering by traversing the Hīnayāna path, they complacently believe that their vision is complete. It is only then that the Buddha challenges them to attain an even deeper insight by following the Mahāyāna path.
These parables all imply the provisional existence of the Hīnayāna nirvāṇa for those disciples who temporarily lack the capacity to follow the Mahāyāna path to buddhahood. However, the Lotus Sūtra employs a more radical strategy of authorization, suggesting in its more famous parables that the Hīnayāna nirvāṇa is but a fiction. The oft-cited parable of the burning house and the parable of the conjured city reveal that the nirvāṇa they had attained was but an illusion. Thus, the claim to legitimacy of the earlier tradition is usurped by the Mahāyāna by explaining that the Buddha did not, in fact, mean what he said, that there is no such thing as the path of the arhat, no such thing as nirvāṇa. There is only the Mahāyāna, which the Buddha intentionally misrepresents out of his compassionate understanding that there are many among his disciples who are incapable of assimilating so far-reaching a vision.
And thus, in addition to the many moments of worry in the narrative, the sūtra also seems obsessed with lies, particularly with being accused of lying. Did the father lie when he said that there were three carts when there was only one? Did the Buddha lie when he said that there are three vehicles when there is only one? Did the physician lie when he sent back a messenger to tell his sons that he had died? Did the Buddha lie when he said that he would pass into parinirvāṇa?
The consistent appeal to deception in the parables is a strategy of validation. In the parable of the blind man, in the parable of the prodigal son, in the parable of the burning house, in the parable of the physician, and in the parable of the conjured city, there is one character who deceives another, yet in each case the deceit results ultimately in the benefit of the deceived. When the Buddha asks whether he (or the character he represents in the parable) had lied, the answer is always no.
In the parables, one character deceives another. The deceived character is eventually saved by the deceit and brought to understand the truth. The Buddha then identifies the correspondences between the characters in the parable and their representatives in the audience of the Lotus in such a way as to simultaneously countenance and denigrate the previous tradition: as beneficial to those unable to see the truth and as a deception the Buddha was forced to commit. The followers of the early tradition are both belittled for their inability to see the Buddha for who he actually is and triumphantly welcomed to that new vision. As the authors of the Mahāyāna sūtras composed new works, the old could not simply be made to disappear, like the conjured city; it had to be integrated into the narrative of the tradition, but as story, recognized as story, a tale told to teach children.
Perhaps the text is fraught with anxiety because its message—of a single vehicle and an eternal Buddha—is so radical. Indeed, the sūtra is filled with predictions of rejection, promises to help those who persevere, and horrific threats against those who reject the Lotus Sūtra. These predictions of rejection are likely descriptions of the rejection suffered by the authors and devotees of the original text, whatever that text might have been. Such rejection, especially of the sūtra's declaration of a single vehicle, would continue throughout the history of Buddhism in India.
I noted above the widespread misconception that, beginning some four centuries after the Buddha's death, the Mahāyāna came to be the dominant form of Buddhism in India, overshadowing the earlier tradition. There is a second misconception about the Mahāyāna. It is that the Lotus Sūtra's most famous declaration—that there is but one vehicle and that all sentient beings will one day achieve buddhahood—carried the day and became standard Mahāyāna doctrine. This misconception derives from the great influence of the Lotus Sūtra, and of its one vehicle doctrine, in East Asia and Tibet. Again, this is false.
There were two major Mahāyāna philosophical schools in India, the Madhyamaka, associated with Nāgārjuna and his followers, and the Yogācāra, associated with Asaṅga and his followers. The Madhyamaka did indeed hold that there was ultimately but one vehicle and that even arhats would eventually set out on the bodhisattva path and would achieve buddhahood.9 The Yogācāra, however, upheld the earlier category of the three vehicles—the śrāvaka vehicle, the pratyekabuddha vehicle, and the bodhisattva vehicle—the same vehicles that the Buddha famously declares as mere expedients in the parable of the burning house. The Yogācāra also maintained the category of the arhat and the arhat's nirvāṇa, the final state of cessation of mind and body and the end of all suffering and rebirth, that is, the nirvāṇa that the Buddha declares as a mere expedient in the parable of the conjured city. The Yogācāra, a Mahāyāna school, thus rejects two of the most famous tenets of the most famous of the Mahāyāna sūtras. How is this possible?
As a Mahāyāna school, the Yogācāra held that the Mahāyāna sūtras were the word of the Buddha. Thus, to reject the teaching of one vehicle, they could not claim, as did the mainstream schools, that the Buddha never said that there was one vehicle. For the Yogācāra, the Buddha did teach this. In order to reject the teaching of one vehicle, they needed a different argument. In one of the great doctrinal ironies in the history of Buddhist thought, they explained that the Buddha said it but that he didn't really mean it. Upāya, it seems, is a double-edged sword.
As we have seen, the Lotus Sūtra dealt with the presence of the earlier Buddhist tradition by subsuming it. The three vehicles, the arhat, and the arhat's nirvāṇa were all provisional teachings for those not yet ready for the Lotus and its revelation that there is but one vehicle whereby all beings will become buddhas. As the sūtra reveals, the nirvāṇa attained by the great arhats of the past is but an illusion, like the city conjured by the wise guide. The Yogācāra, however, took a different view of the arhats. Rather than attempting to appropriate them into the Mahāyāna path, they allowed the arhats to remain forever in the extinction of their nirvāṇa, never to emerge. That is, employing a different strategy for denigrating the earlier tradition than that found in the Lotus Sūtra, Yogācāra savants such as Asaṅga conceded the extinction of the arhat upon death. Rather than pursuing the strategy of incorporation that we see in the Lotus, in which the arhats are kidnapped, as it were, and loaded onto the Great Vehicle, the Yogācāra allowed the arhats their petty goal and abandoned them to the solitude that they seek, and which the Mahāyāna scorns, a nirvāṇa that is a solitary and passive state of eternal peace. However, in order to maintain these positions, it was necessary for the Yogācāra to explain, and explain away, the Lotus Sūtra's declaration of a single vehicle. This would require some hermeneutical machinations.
The Yogācāra commentators argued that when the Buddha spoke of “one vehicle,” he did not intend it to be taken literally. He was using it instead as a metaphor. In the tradition of Buddhist scriptural interpretation, sūtras, and specific statements within sūtras, are divided into two classes: the definitive (nītārtha) and provisional (neyārtha). Although there is extensive discussion by Buddhist exegetes of the meaning of these two terms and what they encompass, at the most basic level they refer to statements that can be taken literally and statements that require interpretation in order for their intended meaning to be evident. Even texts as famous as the Dhammapada have such provisional statements; when it says in the fifth verse of the twenty-first chapter that the Brahman kills his father, his mother, and the two warrior kings, it means that the arhat destroys craving, conceit, and the views of eternalism and annihilation. The categories of the definitive and the provisional receive extensive use in Mahāyāna scholasticism, where they are used to explain the earlier teachings; for devotees of the Lotus, when the Buddha said that there were three vehicles, he did not really mean it: it was a provisional teaching.
The Yogācāra commentators argue in turn that the declaration that there is but one vehicle is not definitive but provisional, requiring interpretation; it is not to be taken to mean that there are not, in fact, three vehicles. When the Buddha said that the buddha vehicle was the one vehicle, he was exaggerating. What he meant was that it was the supreme vehicle.
But this was just one of the things that the Buddha meant. For a statement to be judged as provisional, there must not only be some unspoken referent in the Buddha's mind; there must also be a purpose in his making a statement that he knows to be inaccurate.
According to the Yogācāra soteriology, each sentient being is endowed with a spiritual predisposition called a lineage (gotra). Almost like a gene, it destines each sentient being to follow either the Hīnayāna or the Mahāyāna path and eventually become either an arhat or a buddha. There is some debate as to whether some beings, called icchantikas or “desirous ones,” lack any such gene and are doomed to wander forever in saṃsāra. The two lineages, of the Hīnayāna and the Mahāyāna, each have two varieties: definite and indefinite. Those endowed with the former are certain to follow either the Hīnayāna or the Mahāyāna path, with no possibility of ever changing vehicles during their lifetimes on the path. Others, called beings of indefinite lineage, have a propensity for either the Hīnayāna or the Mahāyāna but may follow either of the paths, depending on their capacity and on the circumstances, auspicious or inauspicious, that they encounter. Thus, all persons whose bodhisattva lineage is definite become buddhas. Some whose bodhisattva lineage is indefinite remain in the Mahāyāna and become buddhas. There are also persons of an indefinite śrāvaka lineage who abandon the practice of the Hīnayāna upon encountering a bodhisattva, who in turn inspires them to change to the Mahāyāna, where they eventually become buddhas. For the Yogācāra exegetes, it is these last two, and these two alone—the person of indefinite bodhisattva lineage and the person of indefinite śrāvaka lineage—whom the Buddha had in mind when he proclaims in the Lotus Sūtra, and elsewhere, that there is but one vehicle. In other words, the Buddha proclaims the one vehicle solely so that those of the indefinite lineage will be motivated to follow the path of a Mahāyāna bodhisattva and not seek the lesser goal of the Hīnayāna nirvāṇa.
The famous Indian treatise the Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras (Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra) makes this clear: “In order to lead some, in order to hold others, the perfect buddhas teach one vehicle to the uncertain.”10 Those to be led are śrāvakas of indefinite lineage, that is, those who have entered the Hīnayāna path but are not predestined to complete it. They are told by the Buddha that there is but one vehicle, which begins with the practices of śrāvakas and then proceeds to the practices of bodhisattvas, as Śāriputra does in the Lotus. The others, those to be held, are bodhisattvas of indefinite lineage who are in danger of forsaking the Mahāyāna because they have become discouraged about saṃsāra when they see how sentient beings harm one another without reason. To keep them from falling to the Hīnayāna, they are told by the Buddha that there is but one vehicle, the Mahāyāna, that there is no other alternative.11
Thus, for the Yogācāra, the Buddha's proclamation of a single vehicle is itself an expedient device, not to be taken literally. To this, an additional irony must be added. The Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras, the locus classicus for this interpretation, is traditionally attributed to the bodhisattva Maitreya, the buddha of the future and Śākyamuni's often incredulous interlocutor in the Lotus. By attributing the Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras to Maitreya, we have, in effect, the next buddha glossing the words of his predecessor. In the Lotus Sūtra, Śākyamuni makes provisional what had appeared to be definitive, only to have Maitreya here change it back. In the process, what Śākyamuni declared to be definitive must become provisional. Maitreya, who so often seems so confused in the Lotus Sūtra, here rejects its most famous teaching. Things would become even more complicated in China.