Chapter 2: Expedient Means

Arising from his deep meditation, the Buddha addresses Shariputra and declares that the wisdom of the Buddhas is infinitely profound, its gateway difficult to understand and difficult to enter. No voice-hearer or pratyekabuddha can fathom it. The Buddha explains that he has attended innumerable Buddhas, exhaustively carried out their teachings, and attained the unprecedented Dharma, but that it is so subtle and difficult to comprehend that only a Buddha together with a Buddha can fully grasp "the true aspect of all phenomena" -- the ten suchnesses of form, nature, embodiment, power, activity, causes, conditions, effects, retributions, and their ultimate consistency from beginning to end.

Shariputra three times beseeches the Buddha to preach this Dharma. Five thousand monks, nuns, and lay followers, filled with arrogance and believing they have already attained what they have not, rise from their seats and withdraw. The Buddha allows them to leave, saying that the assembly is now "free of twigs and leaves" and only the solid heartwood remains. He then reveals the revolutionary core of the sutra: the Buddhas appear in this world for one great reason alone -- to enable all beings to open, show, awaken to, and enter the Buddha's wisdom.

The Buddha declares that there is in reality only One Vehicle -- the Buddha Vehicle -- and that the previously taught paths of the voice-hearer, the pratyekabuddha, and the bodhisattva were skillful means to lead beings of differing capacities toward this single goal. All beings, without exception, will ultimately attain supreme Buddhahood. This proclamation of the One Vehicle stands as the doctrinal foundation of the entire Lotus Sutra and has profoundly shaped all subsequent Mahayana Buddhist thought.