A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s6.t4.7

v2.c19.s6.t4.7

The most important Mahāyāna-Sūtra, and certainly the one which stands foremost as a work of literature, is the Saddharma-Puṇḍarīka, "the Lotus of the Good Religion."³ He who wishes to become acquainted with Mahāyāna Buddhism, with all its characteristic peculiarities, with all its advantages and defects, should read this Sūtra. There is not much of the *man* Śākyamuni left in this work.⁴ The Budhha now is actually nothing less than a god above all gods, an infinitely exalted being, who has lived since countless aeons in the past, and will live for ever. "I am the father of the world," he says of himself (XV, Gāthā 21), "the self-existent (Svayambhū), the physician and protector of all creatures, and it is only because I know how perverse and deluded the fools are, that I, who have never ceased to exist, pretend to have passed away." Thus it is only out of pity for the beings, out of consideration for the weakness of the human understanding, that he pretends to have entered Nirvāṇa. He is like that physician with many sons who were once attacked by a severe illness during their father's absence. The physician returns and prepares medicines for them. Only a few of his sons however, take them, the others reject them. In order to persuade these also to take the medicines, he goes to distant parts, and gives out that he is dead. The children, who now feel deserted, take the prescribed medicines, and recover their health. Buddha has recourse to a similar artifice when he apparently enters Nirvāṇa, but yet returns again and again in order to preach.¹ It is his preaching which forms the link between him and the human beings. The Buddha of the "Lotus" does not, however, preach like the Buddha of the Pāli Suttas, who wanders from place to place as a mendicant monk, in order to proclaim his doctrine; on the contrary, he sits on the Gṛdhrakūṭa hill in a large assembly of monks and nuns, and in the midst of a still larger host of thousands of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, gods and demi-gods; and when he is about to "pour down the great rain of the religion, to sound the great drum of the religion, to raise the great banner of the religion, to light the great torch of the religion, to blow the great shell trumpet of the religion, to beat the great kettledrum of the religion," a ray of light bursts forth from the hair between his eye-brows; this ray of light illuminates eighteen thousand "Buddha-lands" with all the Buddhas and all the beings in them, and permits the Bodhisattva Maitreya to see wonderful visions; for the Buddha of the "Lotus" is also a powerful magician, who loves to work upon the senses of his audience by means of splendid phantasmagorias.