Questions and Answers on the Object of Devotion Chapter6-1
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Question: Which is better, to take the Lotus Sutra as one’s object of devotion or to take the Thus Come One Mahāvairochana as one’s object of devotion?
Answer: If we go by the opinion of the Great Teachers Kōbō, Jikaku, and Chishō, the Thus Come One Mahāvairochana is superior and the Lotus Sutra is inferior.
Question: What exactly is their opinion?
Answer: The Great Teacher Kōbō in his Precious Key to the Secret Treasury and Treatise on the Ten Stages of the Mind says that the Lotus Sutra ranks eighth, the Flower Garland Sutra ranks ninth, and the Mahāvairochana Sutra ranks tenth or highest; thus one starts with the shallower teachings and moves on to those that are deepest. The Great Teacher Jikaku in his commentaries on the Diamond Crown and Susiddhikara sutras, and the Great Teacher Chishō in his Essentials of the Mahāvairochana Sutra, place the Mahāvairochana Sutra first and the Lotus Sutra second.
Question: What is your opinion?
Answer: The concerted judgment of the Thus Come One Shakyamuni, the Buddha Many Treasures, and the Buddhas of the ten directions is that, among all the sutras preached in the past, present, and future, the Lotus Sutra is foremost.7
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Notes
7. Chapter ten of the Lotus Sutra reads, “Among the sutras I have preached, now preach, and will preach, this Lotus Sutra is the most difficult to believe and the most difficult to understand.” “Concerted judgment” refers to the testimony given in the Lotus Sutra, chapter eleven, by Many Treasures Buddha who states that what Shakyamuni had expounded in the sutra is the truth, and to that of the Buddhas of the ten directions who, in chapter twenty-one, extended their long broad tongues up to the Brahma heaven in testament.