The ‘Lotus Sutra’: A Biography

Each revered text has its own life story—a narrative of development and application, continuity and change, spanning generations and geographies: that is the premise of the long-running Lives of Great Religious Books series. In this installment, Lopez (The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography) brings a historical-critical lens to the life and times of the Lotus Sutra — one of the most popular and influential texts of Mahayana Buddhism. With scholarly acumen, contextual nuance, and adaptive storytelling, he deftly traces the historical trajectory of the Lotus Sutra by examining various people, places, and political contexts that influenced the transmission of the text. Doing so, he illustrates the diffuse impact it had and makes clear the ways it has been constructed, construed, and reconstituted in locales as diverse as India, Japan, New Zealand, and the U.S. Through it all, Lopez highlights the fact that there are multiple Buddhas to contend with and an assortment of Buddhisms, as it were, to learn about. A great pedagogical tool, Lopez’s book is also an enjoyable read for anyone interested in Buddhism and Eastern religion, or the global reach of a single sacred text. (Sept.)