妙法蓮華經玄義 7.259

7.259

Next, as for illustrating the original source by metaphor: it is like the lotus blossoms of a single pool when they first ripen; having ripened, their seeds drop into the mud and water, and only then do they grow again, and so on until maturity. Thus, in succession they repeatedly grow and ripen; as the months and years accumulate, they eventually spread across the entire great pool, and the field of flowers covers it everywhere. The Buddha is also like this: from the very beginning he completed cultivating causes and realizing the fruit; for the sake of sentient beings, he again set up provisional means, displaying the initial generation of the mind within birth-and-death and again displaying the ultimate [fruit]. Again and again [displaying] birth and cessation countless hundreds of thousands of times, he cast responsive manifestations from his original ground, condescending to become like the ordinary and mundane, and repeatedly cultivating the five practices. The black lotus's growing stems and leaves anew is a metaphor for cultivating the noble practice anew; the four subtleties of the lotus seed gradually increasing are a metaphor for cultivating heavenly practice anew; the lotus leaf's initial sprouting is a metaphor for cultivating pure practice anew; the lotus seed falling into the mud is a metaphor for associating with all evils to cultivate the practice of illness anew; the lotus sprout's initial budding is a metaphor for associating with minor goods to cultivate the infant practice anew. In this way, his benefits to beings throughout the three times are incalculable, filling the dharma realm; all of them are the benefits of divided bodies, manifesting traces, opening the traces, abolishing the traces, and so forth. If not for the lotus, how could one metaphorically illustrate all the aforementioned dharmas? Since both dharma and metaphor are expounded, it is called the Lotus of the Wonderful Dharma.