A Comment on the Start of the Lotus Sutra

[...]

At that time the Buddha emitted a ray of light from the tuft of white hair between his eyebrows ... lighting up eighteen thousand worlds in the eastern direction. There was no place that the light did not penetrate, reaching downward as far as the Avichi hell and upward to the Akanishtha heaven.

At what time? This light shines wherever there is awareness and truthful presence.

[...] At that time Bodhisattva Maitreya wished to settle his doubts concerning the matter. ... So he questioned Manjushri, saying, "What is the cause of these auspicious portents, these signs of transcendental powers, this emitting of a great beam of brightness that illumines the eighteen thousand lands in the eastern direction so we can see all the adornments of the Buddha worlds there?"

Maitreya sees this great light as a sign and looks for a meaning. But what he looks for is already before his very eyes! Every being in every world is gathered together in a single illumination. What more meaning could there possibly be?

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Watson, Burton (translator). The Lotus Sutra. Columbia University Press. New York, 1993.