Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
Princeton University Press, 2016, Princeton
An Appreciation
James Ishmael Ford
One of my early encounters with the range of Buddhism, or maybe it is best said as Buddhisms, was being invited by a nice elderly Japanese woman that I met while working at Holmes Book Company in Oakland, to attend a “Buddhist meeting.”
I’d just started sitting (meditating in the Zen style) with a Zen group and so that seemed a great idea. The meeting was a mixed group of Japanese immigrants, mostly women, their American born husbands, for the most part military vets, and a general mix of others. The other distinctive feature was the in a crowd of maybe twenty there were a half dozen African Americans, one of whom seemed to be the leader.
After a little introduction we began. Casting my memory back over many years, as I best recall it there was a calligraphic scroll in an ornate box we all looked toward. People held rosaries in their hands, hands palm to palm, there was something of a chanting preface in Japanese by the leader, and then we launched into a long chant: Namu myoho renge kyo.
It was completely different than Zen meditation. And exhilarating. After the chanting we ate snacks and talked. Well, they talked. I quickly learned that I should concentrate on the color of the car I wanted when I chanted. A specific make was a good idea, as well. I just as quickly learned that Zen was not good Buddhism. The whole thing took up maybe two hours. Once I left, I never returned. Not my cup of tea.
Over the years I’ve watched the rise of Soka Gakai International, its move from a cultish organization built on an amazingly hard sell evangelistic program to simply being an “only true way” group not a lot different in that emphasis than with my Baptist upbringing. Today they’re sometimes even willing to work on interfaith projects. I’ve also been haunted by the fact they remain the only largely convert Buddhist group in the United States that has a significant membership drawn from people other than that for the most part highly educated, mostly white, and generally middle-class cohort that makes up America’s Zen. And well, that description is true of most all other convert Buddhist groups here in North America.
SGI is a member of the family of Buddhist groups based in devotion to the Lotus Sutra. A sutra, which means “thread” is a Buddhist sacred text. There are a great many of them. The Lotus, or more completely the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra, the Sutra on the White Lotus of the Sublime Dharma, is part of the Mahayana family of sutras.
That mantra “Namu myoho renge kyo” is simply an invocation of the sutra itself. I’ve read, or more accurately read at the sutra. But, truthfully, it didn’t do much for me. The text famously, to quote the scholar George Tanabe, is an announcement of “a discourse which is never delivered; it is a lengthy preface without a book.” The sutra is lots of explanations about how wonderful the sutra is, repeatedly calls us to attend to it, proclaim it, copy it, disperse it, and along the way throws in various asides including some memorable parables; but ultimately it never arrives at the actual sutra it calls us to. A passing strange book.
And it has a major history in East Asian Buddhism. Eihei Dogen, the great founder of Japanese Soto Zen and one of the most profound Mahayana thinkers, alludes to the sutra a number of times. It is even recalled in the meal chant used at all formal Zen meals. Others from numerous Mahayana Buddhist schools at the very least tip the hat in its direction, and it is central to several.
The Lotus Sutra enjoys the distinction of being the first Buddhist text to be rendered into English. Or, rather a chapter from the sutra does. And along with a Unitarian connection. Which, of course, tickles me. That chapter was translated from the first European language version by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, prominent Unitarian and published in the Transcendentalist journal, the Dial in 1844.
But, again, I couldn’t really see what was what with the text. And, now I have a guide.
Donald Lopez, who teaches Buddhism at the University of Michigan, and is considered one of the premier Buddhist scholars working today has given us the guidebook. The Lotus Sutra: a Biography is a wonderful read.
Of the blurbs on the cover the one that immediately captured me was from Stephen Batchelor. Depending on your perspective, either the famous or infamous “Buddhist atheist,” tells us, “This engaging yet sobering study tells the picaresque tale of a most curious text that continues to fire the devotional imaginations of Buddhist worldwide.” That it does. And the tale is worthy. We see it’s development, and how it has influenced Chinese Buddhism and, indeed how it has influenced the evolution of the Mahayana. It is very important.
But, Mr Batchelor continues, “Recounted with scholarly rigor and postmodern irony, this biography reveals how the story of a book can be just as intriguing, quirky, and unpredictable as that of any living, breathing person.” It is thorough. Mr Lopez even unpacks Ms Peabody’s rendition of that chapter and contextualizes it. He accepts the wanderings and byways, and seems even to revel in them. Without, I quickly need to add, losing sight of the main thread of that sutra, opening it and allowing a full if critical appreciation.
A wonderful read. Entertaining even as it is informative. As Mr Batchelor says, as lively as the biography of a person, and I would add, a particularly quirky person with amazing gifts and deep shadows.
With The Lotus Sutra: A Biography, not only are we introduced to the book, its sources, and how its engagement evolves over time, Professor Lopez provides the larger context that makes the whole thing, certainly for me, accessible, informative, and as a modernist, or liberal, or naturalistic Buddhist, pick your term deeply useful.
Thanks to Professor Lopez and his book I finally feel I have a sense of the sutra within the Lotus Sutra.
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Buddhism beyond the simple introductions.
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