Transformation or Rediscovery? Soteriological and Cosmological Themes in the Lotus Sutra and the Philokalic Tradition

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to begin a conversation between the speculative vision of the Lotus Sutra and the life of devotion it inspires, on the one hand, and the theological and spiritual tradition of the Philokalia, on the other. The purpose of this dialogue is to highlight the points of contact between the notion of Buddhahood and devotional practice intimated in the Lotus Sutra and the soteriological thrust of certain currents of early Christian thought, such as the Origenist spiritual tradition of the fourth century. The first part of the paper outlines the cosmological and anthropological views of the school of Evagrios Pontikos (345–390), underscoring the centrality of the dialectic between unity and multiplicity, as well as the propaedeutic value of the mission of Christ against a stark contrast between undifferentiated noetic oneness and the plurality of material difference; this approach is then contrasted with the Chalcedonian understanding of the hypostatic union, where the uniqueness of the incarnation is the pivot of a redemptive pedagogy that ratifies and confirms the material order in all its specificity and contingency. The second part of the paper offers an overview of certain themes of the Lotus Sutra, such as the soteriological value of the Buddha nature, its different manifestations within the world of conventional reality, and its implications for devotional practice, as well as the "sacramental" understanding of the natural order. The paper argues that the vision of the Lotus Sutra appears to be in greater agreement with the soteriology and Christology developed by Evagrios than with the later developments, which followed the council of Chalcedon and emphasized the uniqueness and radical "otherness" of the incarnation of Christ.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a response to the teaching of the Lotus Sutra from a Christian perspective—or more specifically, from the perspective of a Christian theologian who is grounded in the Roman Catholic tradition, but has been shaped—both academically and on a more personal, spiritual level—by the great legacy of the Christian East and, in particular, the Greek Fathers. In this paper, I will focus on the theme of the Buddha nature in the Lotus Sutra and explore how Buddhahood's cosmological understanding as the groundless ground of reality echoes early Christian reflection on the cosmic role of the Logos as the pivot of the divine plan for the universe. To develop this conversation, I will first introduce readers to the fourth-century Evagrian tradition that sought to articulate a comprehensive Christian vision integrating the Scriptural tradition with the legacy of the Hellenist thinker Origen of Alexandria (180–256).¹ The essay will explore how the different traditions envisage the spiritual trajectory of the individual both in terms of rediscovery of one's original reality and in terms of ontological transformation, mapping the distinct, yet in many ways functionally analogous roles of the Buddha as manifestation of the nirvanic quality of the universe and of Christ as paradigm of individual deification. My goal is to show that the high Buddhological discourse undergirding the Lotus Sutra frames spiritual practice as a fundamental rediscovery of one's identity with the pure nature of reality, while in the early Christian tradition there is a tension between a rediscovery of one's own condition as creatures in the image of God and a call to transformation inviting practitioners to follow the example of Christ. Reading these early Christian texts in light of the Lotus Sutra evidences the reciprocal echoes of the two traditions but will also highlight the divergent specific anthropological and soteriological claims of the two traditions, reflecting their distinctive claims about the nature of ultimate reality.²

In order to understand the significance of the Evagrian tradition in the shaping of the Christian spiritual vision, we need to remember that the fourth and fifth centuries of the common era stand out as the crucible of Christianity's theological development—a time when prolonged controversies about the nature of the incarnation or the import of the Gospels' intimations about divine plurality culminated in the great Christological dogmas of Nicaea and Chalcedon, as well as the Trinitarian formulas of the first council of Constantinople. Theological development, however, did not cease with the dogmatic definition of the hypostatic union in 451—rather, it continued to explore the speculative and soteriological implications of this teaching for a number of centuries to come, leading, for instance, to the conciliar condemnation of Monothelitism in the late seventh century and the affirmation of the legitimacy of icon veneration in the eighth and again the ninth.³ What characterized these controversies was not merely a careful attention to the metaphysical ramifications of the original Christological or Trinitarian claims, but also a desire to chart the import that this conceptualization of the Christian claim was bound to have on Christian soteriology and the tradition's own understanding of the ultimate purpose of spiritual practice. As such, while the decrees of the ecumenical councils hardly touched on matters of asceticism and spirituality, the same period was also characterized by sustained controversies on Christianity's actual goal. In what way were different currents of Christological thought reflected in these distinct traditions of spiritual theology?

To answer this question, a useful resource is the collection of spiritual writings known as the Philokalia, which was first published in Venice in 1782. At a time when Greece was still under Turkish occupation, the monks Nikodimos the Hagiorite and Makarios of Corinth gathered a variety of manuscripts from the monasteries of Athos and published an anthology of spiritual writings covering the period from the fourth century to the demise of the Byzantine empire in the fifteenth.⁴ This collection often contains excerpts of longer works that would be published in full elsewhere, and while the compilers' scholarly methods may not have met our stringent contemporary standards, this work inaugurated the rediscovery by a broader public—first in the Orthodox East, and then, once translation in European languages appeared, also in the West—of a tradition of spiritual practice that had characterized centuries of monastic practice. The chronological character of this publication allows the reader to trace the emergence of trends over long periods of time; later authors build on earlier authors, some writers foreground certain themes that later fade into the background, while elements from previous eras are sometimes retrieved in a new configuration. Indeed, the fourth-century Evagrian tradition that is covered in the first volume was the subject of repeated condemnations in the sixth; and yet, its status as the one of the most significant currents of spiritual theology in the early Christian period meant that it could not be excluded from the Philokalia, as Evagrios' understanding of spiritual discernment proved hugely influential despite the later anathemas.⁵

Evagrios' theology emerged as the Christian monastic tradition was taking shape for the first time. After the cessation of the persecutions in the early fourth century, Christians in search of a radical way to live the faith would leave the cities and practice asceticism in small communities in the desert. In the absence of formal monastic rules and in a situation where liturgical practices were still in flux and differed widely from one location to another, the focus of ascetic life was meditative prayer and a form of lectio divina that sought to uncover the spiritual meaning of the text. Evagrios' notion of prayer and contemplation inform a broader theology of the mystical life that is of course grounded in the Christian Scriptures, but is heavily colored—his critics would say distorted—by Origen's anthropology and, more broadly, his cosmological vision—a speculative system whose idiosyncratic understanding of history inevitably shapes his understanding of Christology and the nature and purpose of the incarnation.⁶

As many historians of Christian thought have pointed out, it is often difficult to distinguish Origen's own contribution from that of his disciples—many of Origen's works are lost, and as such, while some of the positions attributed to him may have been discussed in texts we no longer possess, they may also have been developed by later authors such as Evagrios himself or his own followers. At the same time, a careful reading of Origen's main work—his systematic treatise De Principiis—contains a variety of claims that are difficult to reconcile with what we now consider the theological mainstream of the Christian tradition. While De Lubac and other mid-twentieth-century historians sought to re-establish Origen's position in the Christian canon, the Orthodox theologian John Meyendorff stresses that "the conception Origen had of man, his doctrine of the incarnation, and his eschatology must be understood in the framework of a spiritualist and essentially Platonic monism."⁷ When emperor Justinian attacked Origenism in his correspondence with Patriarch Menas of Constantinople, he started off with a criticism of Origen's Trinitarian subordinationism, but when the council of 553 condemned Origenism, Origen's Trinitarian theology was not even mentioned, while the anathemas focused on his doctrines of creation, fall, and redemption.⁸ These are the positions that inform Evagrian spirituality and that I believe can provide an intriguing benchmark for our reading of the Lotus Sutra.

What did Origen believe about the origin of the world? Anathemas 2, 3, 4, and 5 state that Origen—much as Aristotle had done—affirmed the eternity of the world and that it was not possible to claim that God had begun to exercise his goodness at a certain moment in time—rather, he created an eternal succession of world enjoying a fundamental intellectual (noetic) unity.⁹ In this cosmological vision, God creates only intellectual beings that are ontologically undifferentiated from God's primordial unity (henad); as these beings turn away from God, however, they choose distinction over unity and precipitate into the world of plurality and matter. This, rather than the Edenic narrative, is Origen's understanding of the fall; and in this perspective, it is quite clear that the created order that we inhabit, in all its plethora of distinct aspects, was not part of God's original plan. Origen views human beings, angels, demons, and even planets and stars as rational beings that have fallen away from God—some more and some less—and affirms that the density and weight of their corporeal vesture attest their distance from their intellectual source. Clearly, this approach entails a belief in the pre-existence of the souls—the object of the first anathema—but it also undergirds a cyclical understanding of time according to which all worlds eventually return to an undifferentiated world of "intellects" (noes).¹⁰ This eschatological vision of universal redemption—also known as apokatastasis—where even the devil and his angels would return to the original intellectual unit, qualified Origen's ostensible belief in ethical self-determination (autexousiotēs) by postulating a future where the outcome of all moral choices is de facto erased by the embrace of the henad. At the same time, the eleventh anathema indicates that for Origen, all material bodies are destined to disappear, ensuring that at the end of time "there shall be no longer any matter, but only pure spirits."¹¹

This cosmological vision has distinctive soteriological and Christological implications, which diverge quite significantly from the Chalcedonian, "main-stream" theological tradition that gains the upper hand after the mid-fifth century and which are developed more explicitly in Evagrios' own writings—especially his treatise De Oratione that is included in the Philokalia and his magnum opus Kephalaia Gnostika.¹² Evagrios views Christ as an intellect that remains unmoved in the contemplation of the divine and therefore remains in the condition the world was in before its fall into corporeality and pluralism. Rather than talking about the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, Evagrios affirms the descent of the nous-Christ into the world of multiplicity so as to bring all creatures from the various degrees of their fallen existence to the initial unity with the henad.¹³ As a result, one may call Christ "the Word" because Christ is united to the Word that pre-existed all worlds, and the Word can also be called Christ; indeed, there are possible Apollinarian echoes in the claim that the Logos is called Christ because of the nous that is joined to the henad, and the nous is called God because of the Logos. In the Kephalaia Gnostika, there are not only universalist intimations, but also the claim that at the end of time all minds will be restored to their pre-existent equality, coming to enjoy a relationship of unity with God identical to that enjoyed by the Logos from the beginning of time. Indeed, as there will be no difference between Christ and all other reasonable beings, all intellects will receive Christ's creative powers; in the words of Evagrios, "when the nous will receive the essential science (gnōsis ousiodēs), it will also be called God, because it will also be able to establish different worlds."¹⁴ It should be clear then why Christians who accepted the Christological claims of Chalcedon were uncomfortable with the Origenist vision—the monks who followed Evagrios' path were known as isochrists (equal to Christ) or protoctists (created at the beginning) and were summarily dismissed as heretics.

How did Evagrios envisage the spiritual path? In the writings of the Philokalia, he explores eight passions—gluttony, sexual licentiousness, greed, acedia, anger, vainglory, pride, sloth—and charts how any of these inclinations can gradually take full possession of a soul. A life grounded in contemplation (theōria) and the practice of the virtues (praxis) leads to dispassion (apatheia), which is the supreme goal of spiritual practice.¹⁵ For Evagrios, the achievement of apatheia ensures that individuals can engage in unceasing prayer without any disruption—in De Oratione 84, he claims that such prayer "is the activity which best suits the dignity of the nous, and in other words it is the best and most adequate use of it." In this Origenist paradigm, the condition of apatheia also enables one to engage in "natural contemplation" (physikē theōria)—a dispassionate beholding of the created order in all its multiplicity and difference free from all attachments and drenched by the light of the Logos with who all noes enjoy eschatological communion. In the Kephalaia Gnostika, it is quite clear that the culmination of practice is fully "immaterial" (aulos) knowledge, since at the end of history all eschatological difference is erased, but at the same time—an important point for the purposes of our comparison—the contemplation of the blessed Trinity—which Evagrios identifies with "kingdom of God" does not require moving beyond the intellect, since the Origenist system presupposes a natural ontological kinship between God and the nous. The life of Christ is nothing but a play of mirrors gesturing toward the communion of all intellects with the primordial henad, and the kingdom of Christ comes to an end.¹⁶

The Chalcedonian soteriological vision that emerged out of the writings of Cyril of Alexandria and was later refined by authors such as Leontius of Byzantium, Maximos the Confessor, and John Damascene differed quite significantly from the Evagrian understanding outlined so far.¹⁷ Rather than focusing on a cosmic fall of the noes into corporeality and multiplicity, Cyril turns to the Biblical narrative that envisages the human person as a psychophysical unity comprising a soul and a body from the first moment of its existence. According to Cyril, God's original plan foresaw the humanity's participation (metochē) in the divine life, but because of Adam's disobedience, corruption (phthora) entered human nature.¹⁸ Western Christians tend to be familiar with the Augustinian construal of original sin as a condition that is inherited from one's parents and that entails personal culpability for the sin of the first parents, but Cyril's distinctive reading ensures that Adam and Eve's descendants would inherit the consequences of their sin, rather their guilt in God's eyes, and therefore be subject to illness and death. Cyril's anthropology stresses that all members of humanity are responsible for their own actions, though our fallen nature burdens and weakens our will. It is quite clear that this approach cannot support the Anselmian reading of the atonement that marked Western Christianity in its Catholic as well as its Protestant forms, and that focused on the cross of Christ as the crucial event in history that expiated the guilt of our first parents and rectified our relationship with God. Rather, according to Cyril, the redemption of human nature takes place as the hypostasis of the eternal Logos takes over our fallen human nature and through the resurrection defeats death and enables humanity to again participate in God's eternal life. This soteriological narrative does not entail a rediscovery of an original intellectual purity that is obfuscated by our passionate attachments, but unfolds as the mystery of the hypostatic union brings about an irreversible transformation of humanity's ontological structure and all members of humanity partake in Christ's gift of salvation.¹⁹

This Christological vision clearly underscores the uniqueness of Christ's subjectivity as the second person of the Trinity that alone in all creation bears the fullness of divinity and humanity, whereas members of the human race are imprinted with the divine image (eikōn), and while they are called to imitate Christ, they can never share in the totality of the divine nature. Irenaeus and Athanasios—unlike Cyril, who tends to equate the terms—distinguish between a divine image and a divine likeness (homoiōsis) and argue that the latter is the goal of spiritual practice—a way of life that transcends the limits of creation but retains a firm ontological distinction between humanity and divinity.²⁰ While Evagrios yearned for the dissolution of all boundaries, the Chalcedonian understanding of the hypostatic union guarantees the preservation of all individual subjectivities; while the Kephalaia Gnostika affirmed the ontological continuity between God and the noes, Cyril insists that the individual's salvation is an ascent "towards the supernatural" (eis ta hyper physin), and this dynamic can only take place through the intervention of divine grace (dia tēn charin).²¹ Finally, unlike Evagrios' final erasure of hierarchy, this approach affirms the inherent worth and the finality of each of our ethical choices, all of which contribute to shaping our eschatological condition.

The soteriological uniqueness of Christ's life, death, and resurrection is thus the precondition of an individual "deification" (theōsis), though one that is very different postulated by Evagrios' isochristic narrative of exitus-reditus. Here, the end of history is a return to the beginning, but the creation of a new communal reality. In the writings of the Philokalia from the centuries that follow Chalcedon, it is quite clear that the goal of practice is no longer pure theōria, but a theōria that is pursued jointly with praxis, as the condition of apatheia comes to embrace an imitation of Christ's agapic love for all members of humanity. This approach is then developed further by the hesychast tradition of the Palamite period, where deification is still understood Christologically, but is conceptualized as a sharing in the divine energies that surround the divine essence.²² While we cannot achieve "oneness" with Christ, in virtue of the Holy Spirit our life can become a kind of "collaboration" (synergeia) with God's plan for the world, thereby continuing the mystery of the incarnation until the end of time. While monastic life will always continue to entail a measure of seclusion from the world, and therefore limit the scope of one's practice of the virtues, the later Byzantine tradition—inspired by Maximos' theological reflections on the divine liturgy—will come to identify the celebration of the Eucharist as the primary instantiation of deifying praxis.²³

If we now turn to the cosmological vision of the Lotus Sutra, a striking characteristic of its soteriological claims is that they are not embedded in a linear historical narrative that begins with a creation—be it a purely intellectual one, as in Origen, or a more Scripturally grounded one comprising the spiritual and the corporeal, as in Cyril and the later Chalcedonian tradition—and proceeds towards a clear eschatological target—an erasure of all difference, as in Evagrios, or a transfiguration of subjectivity, as in Maximos and the Palamite tradition. Rather, what we find a is a vision of a beginningless universe comprising a variety of worlds, all of whom are within the reach of the Buddha's—the Tathāgata's—salvific activity.²⁴ Whenever the Lotus Sutra expatiates on the Tathāgata's life span and supernatural powers, references to the life of the historical Buddha become the springboard for a sweeping description of his supernatural powers, which in customary Mahāyāna fashion are deployed to ensure the enlightenment of all sentient beings. If the early Christian tradition envisaged the eternal Logos as the hypostatization of God's plan for the universe and viewed the incarnate Christ as the earthly manifestation of the Logos—in other words, as the hermeneutic key of history and the natural order—in the Lotus Sutra, the Tathāgata is the ground of the nirvanic quality of the cosmos, which is revealed in history by the Buddha Śakyamuni.²⁵ His compassionate outreach knows no beginning and no end: in chapter 16 of Kumārajīva's version, we are told that since his original enlightenment countless aeons ago, the Tathāgata has been "preaching the Law, teaching and converting," while "elsewhere" he has "led and benefited living beings in hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of nayutas and asamkyhas of lands."²⁶ This notion of the immeasurability of the Buddha's life and the Buddha's activity, which is also present in the Avatam˙saka Sutra and the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutra, grounded a kind of "high" Buddhological reflection where the Buddha's very nature is effectively identified with the totality of the cosmos and the sentient beings living in its countless worlds.²⁷

If the Origenist and the Chalcedonian traditions view ontological difference as the defining characteristic of the natural order, while disagreeing on its eschatological suppression or preservation, the Lotus Sutra—like other Mahāyāna texts—articulates its understanding of Buddhahood by emphasizing the "immeasurability" of the Buddha's attributes against the background of a similarly "immeasurability" universe. In the Prajñāpāramitā Sutra, a bodhisattva's achievement of enlightenment "is 'immeasurable' because in it all measurements must cease," and "it is 'incalculable' because it exhausts all efforts to count it." As a result, the claim that the Thatāgata's life span and attributes are immeasurable implies that they, like all dharmas, are ultimately empty; indeed, one can talk of the Buddha's teaching as "the great vehicle" because "one cannot see its coming and going, and its abiding does not exist;" its emptiness is what ensures that within it, "there is room for immeasurable and incalculable beings." In chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra, "immeasurability" is used to underscore the radical quality of the Buddha's awakening as well as its transcendent otherness—for instance, we are told that if an immeasurable number of worlds were ground into dust, and each grain of dust was swept away to the east and then set down again, the number of grains that could possibly be counted would still be immeasurably lower than the number of aeons (kalpas) that have passed since the Buddha achieved nirvana. At the same time, it is still also the case that the historical Buddha came into this world and chose to leave it after eighty years—an utterly insignificant period of time is measured against the Tathāgata's endless life span.²⁸ While Christian theology wrestled with the dialectic of Christ's divinity and humanity, speculation on the Buddha nature in this particular text—though this is also the case of the broader Mahāyāna tradition—hinges on this tension between its "immeasurable" cosmic character and its limited manifestation in time. In addition, the Christian concept of divine agency ensures that there is always a distinction between divine subjectivity and the temporal trajectory of the cosmos: while in the Evagrian perspective, this distinction tends to be blurred, and the original noetic henad is de facto conflated with the source of all beings, in the Chalcedonian approach, the eternal Logos transcends the cosmos whose eschatological plan he embodies, even as his divine life can only be accessed by grace. In the Lotus Sutra, instead, the all-encompassing Buddha nature explodes the dichotomy between creator and creation, in a cosmological vision where the Buddha's own subjectivity is ultimately a pointer toward the impersonal vastness of nirvāna and where the beginning or the end of the universe is a question of no import.

An important teaching of Mahāyāna tradition is the teaching of skillful means (upayakauśalya), which ensures that the totality of the natural order—or the totality of conventional reality, to use the parlance of Madhyamaka thought—is the theater of the Buddha's compassionate activity.²⁹ In this perspective, the life of the historical Buddha is one extended skillful means deployed by the Tathāgata to bring sentient beings to awakening; the parables that punctuate the Lotus Sutra, not unlike many of the parables scattered throughout the our gospels, are parenetic narratives that do not claim a historical basis, but are meant to edify the listeners and turn them toward the practice of the path.³⁰ If the post-Chalcedonian exegetical tradition eagerly set out to uncover the Christological aspect of many Scriptural passages, whose secret import would underscore the soteriological import of Christ's work, a story like that of the physician's sons who only take their medicine after their father feigns his death is meant to uncover the soteriological significance of Gautama Buddha's departure from this world—one that is not a true departure, as the reality of Buddhahood encompasses the whole of the universe, but that was necessary for his disciples as they might otherwise never have grasped the utmost importance of practice.

The Buddha's ability to consciously indwell both ultimate and conventional reality, and actually use conventional reality for the purpose of all sentient beings, is due to the fact that after one of the characteristics of enlightenment is the simultaneous grasp of "the three worlds" (past, present, and future) and their intricate relationships, while also transcending the subject/object distinction. As the Evagrian ascetic could contemplate the created order from God's own perspective after achieving apatheia, the achievement of nirvāna guarantees an analogous "pure vision" of samsaric reality; and if the incarnational turn of Chalcedon views the spiritual life as including theōria and praxis, the Buddha's own enlightenment is an insight that blossoms into compassionate activity for all.³¹

Despite its lengthy expatiations on the Buddha's activities, the Lotus Sutra stops short of offering an explicit philosophical articulation of its understanding of Buddhahood, preferring to take a more imaginative perspective where the poetic and mythological have the upper hand over philosophical speculation. This is quite different from other Buddhist schools of thought, such as the Tibetan tradition, where different monastic schools engage in sustained discussion about this very theme—some claiming that Buddhahood is "self-empty" (rang stong), others asserting that it is "other empty" (gzhan stong). The rang stong theory reflects the mainstream Madhyamaka position held by the Gelugpa school, which emphasizes that Buddhahood lacks all form of inherent existence, whereas the gzhan stong position—taught by the Jonang pa schools, but today enjoying only marginal support—affirms that Buddhahood is empty of all relative phenomena, but in itself is not empty.³² The understanding of Buddhahood as invested with ontological plenitude is dismissed by its opponents as contradicting the fundamental teaching of the ultimate emptiness of reality, but can be seen as a development of the tendency—typical in devotional literature—to produce endless lists of the Buddha's extraordinary qualities. A work like the Lotus Sutra—where allegorical narratives and mythological imagination clearly have the upper hand over speculative reasoning—may not only seem to lean toward an ontologically stronger reading of Buddhahood, but it also contains passages that clearly emphasize its emptiness. At the beginning of chapter 5, we are told that the Buddha's own doctrines are like the different kinds of "grasses and trees, shrubs and forests, and medicinal herbs" that a physician uses to treat different ailments, but ultimately the dharma is always the same. The text, however, continues saying that while the various plants—all forms of skillful means!—do not themselves know "whether their nature is superior, intermediate or inferior," the Tathāgata "knows that this is the dharma of one form, one flavor, namely, the form of emancipation, the form of separation, the form of extinction, the form of ultimate nirvana, of constant tranquility and extinction, which in the end finds its destination in emptiness."³³ In the dialogue with the Medicine King in chapter 10, after being told of the countless benefits and blessings that come to those who cherish and recite the Lotus Sutra, we are reminded that the dwelling of the Tathāgata is his compassion toward all sentient beings, "his cloak" is his patience and equanimity, and "his throne" is the emptiness of all the dharmas. The bodhisattva who wishes to achieve enlightenment can only do so if he or she "dwells unwaveringly among these"—in other words, only if he or she imitates the Buddha's virtues and shares this understanding of his teaching.³⁴

This dialectic between emptiness and skillful means could then be said to echo the Origenist and Chalcedonian tension between unity and multiplicity, but where these different strands of the Christian tradition do affirm difference as an ontological reality inscribed in the very structure of the universe—a difference that has to be overcome or healed—the Lotus Sutra deploys the speculative distinction between ultimate and conventional reality that is familiar to all scholars of Madhyamaka thought. In chapter 2, before the Tathāgata gives a long speech in verse on the infinite variety of his teachings, he "emerges from his samadhi" and tells Shariputra that while the Buddha "has realized the dharma that is profound and has never been known before," he also preaches it "in accordance with what is appropriate," indicating that the same dharma can be expounded in innumerable different ways in accordance with the spiritual and intellectual level of the listeners. Instead of emphasizing the emptiness of the dharmas, however, this passage makes repeated reference to their "thusness" (tathatā), which can be understood by the Buddha alone. Indeed, among the exclusive powers of the Tathāgata, the text lists the ability to grasp "the thusness of the dharmas' attributes, the thusness of their nature, the thusness of their substance, the substance of their powers, the thusness of their powers, the thusness of their functions, the thusness of their causes, the thusness of their conditions, the thusness of their conditions, the thusness of their effects, the thusness of their retributions, and the absolute identity of their beginning and end." The whole discourse on skillful means underscores the oneness between ultimate and conventional reality, though it appears to intimate the ontological plenitude of the former as so as to stress the extraordinary wealth of insight that nirvanic reality actually contains.³⁵

While the Origenist paradigm viewed the primordial henad that encompassed all rational beings as the ontological ground of creation, but did not understand the ensuing descent into plurality as a form of delusion, the Lotus Sutra does affirm the utter identity of samsaric and nirvanic reality, in line with the Mahāyāna understanding of the four noble truths. While sentient beings that are yet to achieve awakening view the phenomenal world as a locus of suffering and anxiety, the bodhisattvas who are in nirvāna know that the phenomenal world is itself the Pure Land of the Buddha: in a matter-of-fact way, the Tathāgata reassures us that, "when children of the Buddha have taken this path, in a future life, they will become buddhas."³⁶

If we juxtapose what the Lotus Sutra appears to say about the tension between emptiness and Buddha nature with the Prajñāpāramitā's strong affirmation of the emptiness of all phenomena, we see that the Lotus Sutra is more emphatic in its description of the beauty and magnificence of conventional reality—indeed, the sutra indulges in all sorts of narrative and imaginal digressions that for centuries have turned into sources of artistic inspiration throughout Asia.³⁷ Admittedly, this kind of tension between a spiritualizing flight from the phenomena and a more pragmatic emphasis on engaging these same phenomena in the gradual pursuit of awakening is also present in other schools of Buddhism: Tsong kha pa's Lam Rim Chen Mo—The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment—sets out to outline the practice of the paramitas in the world of causes and effects, thereby showing quite clearly that the Madhyamaka school—even in its radical Prasangika version—is not a form of nihilism, but acknowledges the dharmic role of conventional phenomena.³⁸ The story of the sumptuously decorated stupa that emerges out of the ground in chapter 11 of the Lotus Sutra appears to be an apt narrative metaphor for the function and purpose of conventional reality. In this story, we are told that the stupa comes to hang in the air in front of Śākyamuni Buddha, while thousands of deities come to give offerings to this extraordinary artifact. Śākyamuni tells all attendees that in the distant past, a Buddha known as "Many Treasures" promised that anyone preaching the Lotus Sutra would have this stupa arise in front of the preacher and even that everyone would also be able to see the "Many Treasures" Buddha housed within the stupa. This is exactly what happens in this story—after lengthy preliminaries that underscore the inenarrable qualities of this vision, Śākyamuni reveals the "Many Treasures" Buddha in meditation posture sitting within the stupa. This story clearly outlines the inherent connection that exists between Buddhahood as such, the Lotus Sutra, and the world of phenomena: the historical Buddha Śākyamuni is the one who uncovers the nirvanic quality of phenomenal reality and reveals its intrinsic thusness or identity with the Buddha nature. If the stupa contains the "Many Treasures" Buddha, it is because the Lotus Sutra itself is a vehicle of the Buddha's compassionate activity, thereby establishing an ultimate equivalence between the historical manifestations of the Buddha, the textual records of their teachings, and the cosmic expanse of phenomena.³⁹

While the details of this scene obviously differ to a significant degree from anything we find in the Gospel narratives, the later Philokalic tradition—especially in the writings of Maximos the Confessor—often lingers on the transfiguration scene from the Synoptic gospels, where Jesus's divinity is suddenly and momentarily revealed to the eyes of the three apostles who have followed him to the top of Mount Tabor. In his so-called Ambigua, Maximos offers various allegorical reading of this scene, and while many of these interpretations uncover a web of correspondences between this passage and other excerpts from the Christian Scriptures, the underlying claim is that the transfigured Christ reveals the fundamental coherence between the laws of the cosmos and the laws of Scripture—in other words, the incarnate Christ, the natural world, and the Old and New Testament are all manifestations of the eternal Logos.⁴⁰ Thus, one may suggest that the Buddhological understanding of the cosmos in the Lotus Sutra and its Christological analogue in Maximos' scriptural reflections share a fundamental belief in the soteriological value of the world of phenomena, which in both cases is revealed to be a vehicle of God's—or the Buddha's—compassionate activity. To use a later theological term, the whole universe is invested with a sacramental dimension; yet, the Lotus Sutra's assertion of the emptiness of all phenomena effectively qualifies this vision compared with the Chalcedonian assertion of the eschatological endurance of the created order. What a Christian reader will find in the Lotus Sutra, despite its exuberant verbal flourishes, is a kind of attenuated or weakened sacramentality, whereas a Buddhist reader may find Maximos' trust in the redemption of the natural order overly optimistic or speculatively untenable.

This conversation between some currents within early Christian spirituality and the broader tradition of the Lotus Sutra help us gain a greater awareness of the points of contact, as well as the differences between the ways the two systems of thought address questions of ultimate concern, such as the nature and purpose of spiritual practice, the significance of individual subjectivity, and finally the cosmological role of divine agency—or the Buddha's. In the earlier part of the essay, we saw how the Origenist tradition of spiritual practice effectively centered on the retrieval of one's own noetic identity, thereby focusing on a kind of intellectual purification stripping away layers of attachment, while the Chalcedonian tradition affirmed the reality of one's ontological transformation after the model of Christ, where the individual was effectively transformed by the acquisition of the divine nature or the divine energy. While there was significant overlap between the earlier Evagrian vision and the later spiritual theology developed by Maximos the Confessor and Palamas, one feature setting apart early Christianity from the Buddhist tradition is the fact that early Christian theology and spirituality developed within an institutional framework where specific doctrinal judgments were passed at particular moments in time and where these judgments clearly drew a line between positions expressing the mind of the church, and others that for a variety of reasons were not considered acceptable. It is thus important to remember that after the promulgation of the sixth-century anti-Origenist anathemas, the cosmology, anthropology, and soteriology that could be traced back to the Kephalaia Gnostika or many pages of De Principiis were effectively considered heretical. The consequence of this doctrinal decision was that the Christian tradition came to see as normative an understanding of spiritual practice that entailed a trajectory of ontological transformation over time, in line with the Scriptural understanding of salvation history as something that unfolds over millennia starting with the fall, culminating in the incarnation, and ending with the eschatological inauguration of the kingdom of God. The tradition of the Lotus Sutra does not emerge from a context characterized by stages of doctrinal development that are regarded as normative—as such, the text can draw from elements coming from different traditions without ever having to question their orthodoxy. The Madhyamaka distinction between conventional and ultimate reality that permeates this text no less than many other Mahāyāna treatises ensures that a particular understanding of dharma can be elevated to the status of ultimate truth, while alternative approaches, or positions that are deemed less persuasive, are retained while demoted to the status of conventional truth. The related practice of skillful means ensures that nondominant dharmic positions can survive or even thrive alongside the dominant teaching while being regarded as suited to people of a lower spiritual level. Within the Lotus Sutra, however, this distinction enables the tension between gradual achievement of the dharma and rediscovery of one's Buddha nature to coexist in a fruitful tension: the ethical injunctions that the Tathāgata leaves behind to his disciples seem to suggest that nirvāna is the culmination of a process of spiritual awakening that requires significant work on the self over a period of time—and indeed, gesture toward the importance of individual agency despite the concomitant assertion of the ultimacy of emptiness—while the sweeping descriptions of the Tathāgata's extraordinary powers and his retinue of glorious bodhisattvas appear congruent with high Buddhological readings of tathāgatagarbha as the all-encompassing ground of the whole universe and thus the very essence of all sentient beings. It is thus possible to claim that Buddhahood is not only the end point of a protracted journey that requires extraordinary commitment, but also the realization of one's pre-existent fundamental purity—a realization that is open to all sentient beings. Stories such as that in chapter 12 telling us the story of the daughter of the dragon king Sagara, who at the age of eight was able to master all the teachings,⁴¹ signify the universal accessibility of enlightenment—a claim echoed also by the sudden emergence of a multitude of bodhisattvas springing from the earth in chapter 15, whom the Thatagāta has brought to awakening over endless aeons—and not just forty years—of preaching. While the text stops short of saying that all sentient beings will eventually achieve awakening, this appears to be the thrust of the Thatagāta'sclaims about his powers.⁴²

It is quite clear then that the Buddha of the Lotus Sutra comes closer to the Christ of the Evagrian tradition—a manifestation of the primordial henad who is helping all rational beings return to their noetic state—than the Christ of the Chalcedonian definition. Analogously to the isochristism condemned at the time of Justinian, all sentient beings are called to achieve nirvāna; there will ultimately be no difference between the Buddha and his followers, in the same way as the logikoi acquires the same powers of the Logos. The kind of eschatological diversity that is made possible by the Chalcedonian model would not be possible in this context—while the pursuit of wisdom and compassion is part and parcel of the pursuit of awakening, the experience of nirvāna erases all hierarchies of merit. Indeed, strictly speaking, it is not even possible to talk of an eschatological horizon in the Lotus Sutra, as there is no difference between the samsaric and the nirvanic quality of phenomenal reality that sentient beings experience throughout time. As such, while at the conventional level it is possible to talk of distinct subjectivities, claiming to preserve these distinct identities for all eternity—which is the very claim put forth by a Chalcedonian soteriology—would be dismissed as a symptom of enduring delusion and attachment. One might conclude then that a traditional Chalcedonian Christian would find the soteriology of the Lotus Sutra quite lacking, while a devotee of the Sutra might dismiss a Chalcedonian eschatology as reflecting a lower level of spiritual achievement.

A further point of contrast between the two traditions is the way they conceptualize the practitioner's relationship with the Christian God in the Evagrian and Chalcedonian schools of thought and with the Tathāgata in the Lotus Sutra. While it might appear tempting to map the Christian distinction between the created and the uncreated order—or perhaps the Platonic vision of the world of shadows and the world of ideas—on to the distinction between conventional and ultimate reality, such strategy would be misguided, as both the Christian and the Platonic visions understand the cosmos as having two clearly distinct ontological spheres whose divide individuals may transcend, but not suppress. The Madhyamaka distinction between conventional and ultimate reality, however, is analogous to the Mahāyāna distinction between samsara and nirvāna: we are talking about the same reality that is perceived differently from an unenlightened and an enlightened perspective. This indicates that the relationship of faith and devotion that practitioner or a bodhisattva nurtures toward the Buddha—even if this unfolds in a Pure Land—is still part of a conventional reality and would ultimately cease once the practitioner or bodhisattva transcends the world of duality or subject/object distinction. It would seem then that this kind of ultimate nondualism is again closer to the Evagrian notion of the primordial henad than to a Chalcedonian notion of communion of saints. The praxis that seals one's relationship with God in Maximos or Palamas is thus significantly different from the compassion practiced by the Tathāgata, since the former is eschatologically enduring and presupposes an agapic relationship with the Trinitarian God. Indeed, we should remember that in the Evagrian tradition, the fragmentation of the primordial henad is actually believed to have happened at some moment in time—and equally, according to the mainstream understanding of creation and fall developed by Cyril of Alexandria, the creation and the final transfiguration of the natural order are also events that take place on a real chronological trajectory. As mentioned above, however, the Lotus Sutra lacks this kind of eschatological tension because there is no moment in time when the flux of phenomenal reality has come into being—indeed, the very belief in distinct phenomenal realities is a characteristic of an unenlightened mind.

This paper hopes to open up a conversation between the spirituality of the early Christian East—which is part of the patrimony of the universal church—and the followers of the Lotus Sutra. Interreligious dialogue often takes place at the doctrinal level or at the level of praxis, leaving aside issues of spirituality that inform and permeate the lives of countless practitioners. This very cursory joint look at the two traditions shows intriguing points of contact between the cosmology, anthropology, and spiritual practice of the Lotus Sutra and the Origenist tradition, while also uncovering clear tensions between the sutra's claims and those of the mainstream Chalcedonian tradition that eventually superseded Origenism. At the same time, the Origenist notion of temporality—its exitus-reditus narrative—remains distinct from the sutra's cosmological vision that ultimately views all dual thinking as illusion. Hopefully, this comparison will make adherents of each tradition more fully appreciative of the specificities of their own beliefs. To echo the last line of the Lotus Sutra—now that we have listened to the words of the Buddha and the Philokalia, we can all bow in obeisance and depart.