A Buddhist Kaleidoscope: Essays on the Lotus Sutra

Rating:
Summary: Unfolding the Lotus
Review: The Lotus Sutra is much admired among Buddhists but its value isn't immediately apparent to Westerners who expect all scripture to be of the style and intent of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The Lotus Sutra is in fact a series of stories and parables which also include examples of lives of several extraordinary enlightenment beings, bodhisattvas. The saving truth of the Sutra is that every sentient being will become a buddha; that The Buddha is eternal, and with various and appropriate means is actively involved in curing the sufferings of our world; and that the way to buddhahood is by walking the bodhisattva path of compassionate action for others.

The greatness of KALEIDOSCOPE is that it doesn't just stare at the Lotus Sutra, or venerate it, or treat it as a talisman. The contributors have looked at it from a variety of angles: Buddhist and non-Buddhist, literary and hermeneutical, historical and mythological, Asian, European American, academic, feminist, etc. And what they produced was a unique compendium of insight and knowledge about a book as vital to world religion as the Torah, the Bible, the Qu'ran, and the Upanishads.