The "Lotus Sutra"

Term Paper # 102566

Religion and Theology > Buddhism

The "Lotus Sutra"

An analysis of the importance of the "Lotus Sutra" in Chinese Buddhism, particularly its relationship to emptiness.

1,602 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2008 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper explains and accounts the popularity of the "Lotus Sutra" in Chinese culture in its prescription of three paths of the hearer, the solitary Buddha. It specifically focuses on the relationship between the "Lotus Sutra" and emptiness in Chinese culture and Buddhism, in particular. The paper provides examples to explain the "Lotus Sutra"'s power in Chinese Buddhism.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
What Emptiness Is
Concluding Remarks

From the Paper:

"The Lotus Sutra's power in Chinese Buddhism and culture may lie in its entirely popular appeal, its message plain, not a scholarly text but a text for people, reassurance of what one's efforts can bring and clarification of Buddhism as an ethical system to improve everyone's lives and of which the divine, in one sense or another is aware. Amid so much to say denounce the self and the world, restrain and expect nothing more than order, this exuberant text tells people to straighten up, live their virtues as are meant to have creative ends. In a sense, the Lotus Sutra points to a kind of messianic Buddhism that happened to combine well with other philosophies and religion not the least of which were Daoism and Christianity."

Sample of Sources Used:

Chang, Carson. "Buddhism as Stimulus to neo-Confucianism." Oriens Extremus. 2. (1955): 157-166.
Ch'en, Kenneth. "The Lotus Sutra" in Buddhism in China - an Historical Survey. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964, pp. 378-382.
Keown, Damien. Buddhism - a Very Short Introduction. Oxford at the University Press, 1996.
Reeves, Gene. "Divinity in Process Thought and the Lotus Sutra." Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 28. (2001): 357-369.
Talupahana, David J. "The Moral Life" in A History of Buddhist Philosophy - Continuities and Discontinuities. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992, pp. 101-109.