The Lotus Sutra

A long Mahāyāna sutra, composed in stages, which in its standard Chinese form, based on Kumārajīva's translation of 406, has 28 chapters mixing prose, verse and parables. Its central claim, made in Chapter 2 on skilful means (upāya), is that the earlier paths of the disciples, the solitary buddhas and the bodhisattvas were provisional teachings: there is really only One Vehicle, which leads everyone to buddhahood. Parables illustrate the point: a father lures his children out of a burning house with promises of carts, a lost son works as a labourer before learning he is the heir, a traveller sleeps unaware of a jewel sewn into his robe. Later chapters show a great stupa rising from the earth, a dragon king's daughter attaining buddhahood and, in Chapter 16, the Buddha revealing that he became enlightened incalculable ages ago and only appears to die. Chapter 25 praises the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. The sutra became the basis of the Tiantai, Tendai and Nichiren traditions.

It is one of the most widely read texts in East Asian Buddhism, and its idea of skilful means raises live questions about teaching truth through simplified or provisional stories.