Part Seven · The Lotus · The Offering of Body and Dharma, Pushed to the Limit
At the end of Part Six we said: the highest giving is the gift of the Dharma. But what would the gift of the Dharma, and the gift of the body, look like pushed to the limit? There is one sūtra that pushed both of them all the way to the end—the Lotus Sūtra.
Three chapters, three scenes.
Chapter one speaks of the offering of Dharma. The Lotus Sūtra says something deep: the Dharma will not pass itself on—someone has to carry it, recite it, hand it down. The person willing to receive and uphold this sūtra, to read and recite it, to teach it to others—the "dharma-teacher"—becomes, in his own person, the Buddha's embodiment in the world. So "making offering to the Dharma" is not venerating the Dharma as if it were an object. It is this: you take this sūtra onto your shoulders, and you yourself become that offering.
Chapter two tells of a bodhisattva who bowed to everyone he met—Sadāparibhūta, "Never Disrespectful." He bowed to whomever he came upon, no matter who they were, no matter how they cursed him or struck him, and he said the same words: "I deeply respect you and dare not slight you; for you shall surely become a Buddha." What he bowed to was not the person as they appeared before him; it was the Buddha in them, not yet awake. That bow, too, is a kind of giving—giving a person the affirmation: "You have been a Buddha all along."
Chapter three is the heaviest, and must be read with the most care. In the Lotus Sūtra, a bodhisattva, to make offering to the Buddha, burned his own body. Reading this, the heart always startles: is this asking people to burn their bodies?—It is not. This chapter follows the patriarchs of the generations and looks at that fire until it is plain: what, in the end, it was burning.
Three scenes, and the offering of body and Dharma is pushed to the limit. Yet push it to the limit, and you will find: at the far end, it is still the losing of "I," still that same loosened heart. We begin with this: why do we say the Dharma needs someone to carry it?