Mr. Altig’s Overview of the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sutra

Introduction: Who Will Save Our World?

In times of turmoil, it’s a deeply human response to feel overwhelmed by the world’s problems. We look at widespread conflict, suffering, and uncertainty and hope for a hero—a brilliant leader, a revolutionary movement, or even a divine savior—to arrive and set things right. We wait for someone else to fix it.

A dramatic, 2,000-year-old Buddhist scripture, the Lotus Sūtra, contains a story that turns this idea on its head. In a scene of cosmic scale, countless magnificent beings emerge from a fissure in the earth, ready for a mission. But the story’s true meaning isn’t about mythical figures from the past; it’s a radical call to action for every person living today.

1. The Savior Is Rejected: This World Must Save Itself

The story unfolds in Chapter 15 of the Lotus Sūtra. The Buddha is preaching to a vast assembly, which includes countless bodhisattvas—highly advanced beings who are undoubtedly capable—who have traveled from other worlds to hear him. Moved by compassion for our suffering world (called the sahā world, a “world of endurance of suffering”), they step forward and make a solemn vow. They offer to remain in our realm after the Buddha’s passing to protect and spread his teaching in the difficult ages to come.

In a shocking turn, the Buddha politely but firmly refuses their offer. Their help, he states, is not required. His reasoning is precise and powerful: the sahā world already possesses its own great bodhisattvas who will carry out this mission.

This refusal establishes a powerful principle of immanent soteriology—the idea that salvation must arise from within a world’s own reality. The suffering of the sahā world is so deeply rooted that it cannot be resolved by well-meaning external agents. This is a rejection of salvation as an “imported grace,” a declaration that the power to transform suffering is inherent to the very place where that suffering exists.

2. The Time Paradox: Shattering the Image of the Buddha

Immediately after the Buddha’s refusal, the earth trembles and splits open. From this fissure, a host of beings wells forth, their scale defying comprehension. The scripture describes their number as equal to the sands of sixty thousand Ganges Rivers. Their appearance is magnificent; they possess golden-hued bodies, are adorned with the “thirty-two marks of a great person,” and radiate a limitless, brilliant light, indicating a supreme state of spiritual development.

This awe-inspiring multitude is led by four great bodhisattvas, chief among them being Superior Practices (Viśiṣṭacāritra / Jōgyō). Then the Buddha delivers a statement that creates the story’s central mystery. He declares that these countless, advanced beings are his own disciples, whom he has been teaching “since the remotest past.”

This creates an impossible paradox that shocks everyone present. How could the Buddha, who attained enlightenment in India only forty-odd years ago, have trained such an ancient and vast assembly?

This logical conundrum is a deliberate narrative device. It is an insolvable problem designed to compel the audience to abandon their limited, historical view of the Buddha. This impossibility is the necessary setup for the sutra’s ultimate revelation in the next chapter: that the Buddha’s life in India was merely a performance, and he has, in fact, been enlightened for countless eons. The Bodhisattvas of the Earth are the living, incontrovertible proof that requires the revelation of an eternal teacher.

3. The Prophecy Fulfilled: A Monk’s Radical Realization

Fast forward to 13th-century Japan—an era of famine, plague, and political turmoil. Many believed they were living in the prophesied “Latter Day of the Law” (mappō), a degenerate age when Buddhist teachings would lose their power to save people.

A monk named Nichiren, through his deep study of the Lotus Sūtra, came to a radical conclusion. He taught that exclusive devotion to the Lotus Sūtra was the only path to salvation and that other popular teachings constituted “slander of the Dharma.” He chose a confrontational method of preaching, shakubuku, explicitly rebuking the views of other schools and the government that supported them. This inevitably brought him into direct conflict with the authorities, and he faced intense persecution, including slander, exile, and a near-execution at Tatsunokuchi.

Yet, Nichiren saw these hardships not as failures, but as proof that he was living out the prophecies about the sutra’s true practitioner. He was “reading the Lotus Sutra with one’s very body.” The Tatsunokuchi Persecution, in particular, became a critical turning point. Viewing his survival as a symbolic death and rebirth—”casting off the transient and revealing the true”—his conviction was fully forged. He realized his mission and identity: he was the reincarnation of Bodhisattva Superior Practices, the leader of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, destined to appear in the Latter Day of the Law to establish the true teaching.

4. The Final Twist: The Mission Belongs to Everyone

Nichiren’s most empowering and lasting teaching was to extend this identity to all people. He reasoned that if he was the leader of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, then all his followers who chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and shared his mission were the members of that leader’s retinue. They, too, were the Bodhisattvas of the Earth.

Nichiren grounded this idea directly in his own writings, transforming a mythological event into a personal reality for ordinary individuals.

“There should be no discrimination among those who propagate the five characters of Myoho-renge-kyo in the Latter Day of the Law, be they men or women. Were they not Bodhisattvas of the Earth, they could not chant the daimoku. At first only Nichiren chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, but then two, three, and a hundred followed, chanting and teaching others. Propagation will unfold this way in the future as well. Does this not signify ’emerging from the earth’?”

According to this teaching, “emerging from the earth” is not a one-time mythical event, but a continuous, dynamic process. It is re-enacted every time one person teaches another. The “earth” is the ground of our own struggles—the “earth of defilements,” of our ignorance and earthly desires (kleśas). The practice of chanting and taking action for others is what allows our inherent, enlightened nature—our inner Bodhisattva—to break through the surface of delusion and “well forth.”

Conclusion: Your Turn to Emerge

This journey traces a single, powerful idea from a surprising refusal in an ancient text, through a dramatic paradox, to a medieval monk’s realization, and finally to a universal call to action for today.

The story of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth delivers a timeless and radical message. The power to create a better world, to challenge injustice, and to alleviate suffering is not waiting in a distant heaven or in a future savior. It lies dormant within ordinary people, right here in this world of endurance. It is a potential waiting to be unearthed.

What would you do differently if you truly believed you were one of the people this world has been waiting for?