Embracing Personal Responsibility in The Parable of the Good Physician

For the seventh and final installment of this series on the parables of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha shares The Parable of the Good Physician, providing an illuminating yet seemingly antithetical example of his teachings on skillful means. This occurs at the end of chapter sixteen. At only six verses, this is the shortest parable in the whole sutra, but the later added prose section significantly expands upon the original verses.

The Lotus Sutra’s verse sections are the oldest sections of the text, and its prose sections are the newest. The entire scripture was compiled in four stages between 50 CE and 200 CE, and most English translations were based on Buddhist monk Kumarajiva’s 406 CE Chinese translation. Yet who compiled the Lotus Sutra? Are these the actual words of the historical Buddha? Why did the original compilers feel it necessary to add prose sections expanding upon the verse sections? And how did the Lotus Sutra become one unified sutra, beloved across East Asia and Mahayana Buddhism, and considered by many to be the penultimate words of the Shakyamuni Buddha? 

In The Lotus Sutra: A Biography (2016), Buddhist scholar Donald S. Lopez Jr. explains how “[its] authors are unknown, but they were likely highly educated Buddhist monks, fully at ease among the doctrines and tropes of Buddhism as it existed in India at the time,” with some scholars and religious practitioners maintaining that the text was compiled in the Mahasamghika school. While collated in India, the sutra seemingly has the most prominence in 6th-century China’s Madhyamaka philosophy-indebted Tiantai school (sometimes called “The Lotus School”) as well as in Nichiren Buddhism.

The Lotus Sutra’s broad appeal and collaborative creation over two hundred years speaks to the universality of the text’s central message: that everyone can and will become a buddha. In the Lotus Sutra, everyone is equal in the dharma and can manifest their inherent Buddhahood.

And yet, this parable shatters many dogmas found in Buddhism. In The Good Physician, the Buddha lies to his disciples to manipulate them, even more boldly than the father figure in The Parable of the Burning House or the father in The Parable of the Wealthy Man and His Poor Son.

As this series has encouraged, a key to unlocking the deeper meanings of these parables is to consider the context of the scene and to discern who is speaking and who is listening, seeing them each as dramatis personae, players in a great cosmic drama. These buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats, and other beings are archetypes and role models, mythopoetic figures who represent various strengths and weaknesses inside us all.

In this parable, the Buddha is speaking to the entire sangha. The epic scene is set where the entire sangha has risen into a boundless cosmic dimension, transcending the historical dimension of time and space. This cosmic dimension has no beginning or end. It is the continuous, process-flow nature of emptiness. This scene is called the Ceremony in the Air. This parable’s celestial setting might even suggest that this teaching is the most important of all of the parables.

Parable seven shares the story of a physician father who, seeing his children become sick after having mistakenly taken poison, makes medicine to cure them. The poison the children take are the three poisons of ignorance, greed, and hatred. Seeing his children suffer so much, the father collects herbs of good color, smell, and taste, and compounds them into a medicine by pounding and sieving the ingredients. Giving it to the children, the physician says, “This is the best medicine, perfect in color, smell, and flavor. Take it and you will be quickly relieved of your suffering and completely recover.” Some of his children immediately take the remedy and are cured. Others are so out of their minds and sick with delusion, they refuse to take the medicine and continue to suffer. The distraught physician thinks that if he pretends to travel to another country and sends home word that he has suddenly and unexpectedly died, that his recalcitrant children would be so overcome with grief it would snap them out of their delusion and they would invariably take the medicine and be cured. 

The good physician represents the Buddha, and the children represent all beings—sentient and insentient. The parable tells us that we are all sick with the three poisons of delusion, aversion, and greed, which we have ingested ourselves. While the Buddha lies, his scheme works.

The message of the parable is very simple and direct: You must take the medicine.

The Buddha uses this parable to tell us that no being or thing can save us from the suffering of our ignorance. No god, no buddha, no one else can save us. We can be saved only by our own efforts. We must do the work. This parable is a profound tale of personal accountability. We took the poison. Now we must take the medicine. There is no one else to blame and no one else to intervene on our behalf. If we want to stop suffering, we must take the medicine.

When we’re sick, we go to a physician who may give us a prescription. Some of us take the medicine and immediately feel better. Others don’t take the medicine and go on in delusion, chasing the next bright shiny object, the next high, the next dopamine hit, perhaps thinking, “I’m not that sick, this medicine is too strong,” tired and cranky from a hard day at work, reaching for a glass of wine or a hit on the pipe rather than sitting and breathing or chanting, falsely believing that “there’s always tomorrow…”

Why did the compilers of the Lotus Sutra think this trope of a physician leaving his beloved children and claiming to have died would work? We’ve all heard the expression “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Writer and researcher Gary Martin of Phrase Finder attributes this sentiment to Sextus Aurelius Propertius—a Roman poet from 15 BCE—who is said to have written in his elegies, “Always toward absent lovers love’s tide stronger flows.”

Note the date Sextus lived, 15 BCE. The Lotus Sutra is believed to have originated in the Kashmir region—the first extant Sanskrit copy being found in the city of Kashgar, which is smack dab in the middle of the Silk Road, connecting the Mediterranean to the Far East. The idea of absence making the heart grow fonder apparently was an accepted philosophical idea across these regions during this time. It’s also a reminder how all our ideas are deeply interconnected across regions.

As the child of an absent, alcoholic father, I never appreciated this parable. Is an absentee father really a good role model? Isn’t not lying one of the five precepts? Is an “anything goes” approach really “skillful means”? This parable suggests that sometimes circumstances justify breaking the precepts. The Buddha lied, was he wrong to do so?

Nothing is permanent, not even the dharma

I have decided over my fifty years of practice that this parable is amongst the greatest of case studies (koans) found in Buddhism. I believe that this parable was deliberately chosen for its shocking effect. Like all good koans, it breaks your head into seven pieces, forcing one to break through one’s intellectual mental concepts, beliefs, and dogmas, opening to a spontaneous, direct experience of the moment. The parable forces us to see past the limitations of our logical thought and past our discursive truths into the depths of ourselves. From where we see everything is interconnected, conditioned, and dependently arising. Everything is situational, even the precepts. Nothing is permanent, not even the dharma.

The parable also encourages us not to be complacent or to take awakening for granted. The parable suggests it is our suffering that motivates us to seek awakening. If we didn’t suffer unsatisfactoriness, if someone else took care of all our problems, we might become complacent. Without suffering there could be no awakening; no mud, no lotus. Because we perceive an absence of buddhanature, we are filled with yearning for relief from the suffering and vagaries of the provisional world. We’re motivated to do the hard work to break through the delusions of ignorance by taking the medicine that cures us. In Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side: A Guide to the Lotus Sūtra, Lopez and Jacqueline Stone explain how the Buddha’s lie works to shake would-be practitioners from their complacency, writing:

“Sakyamuni explains, if sentient beings knew that the Buddha’s life span was immeasurable, they would not be inspired to practice the dharma, not understanding how rare it is to encounter the Buddha. The Buddha and his teachings would always be available, removing all urgency to take advantage of his presence in the world. Believing that the Buddha has passed forever into nirvaṇa, sentient beings are able to see the world as beset with distress, bereft of the Buddha.”

Chapter sixteen is the climax of the Lotus Sutra’s cosmic drama—the revealing that Buddhahood has no beginning and no ending; eternal, buddhanature is equally within every sentient and insentient thing. This is why this parable’s placement in chapter sixteen is so important, as the Buddha shares how buddhanature is always present:

“I abide forever without entering parinirvana.… The life span that I first attained through practicing the bodhisattva path has not yet expired. It is twice as great as the number previously mentioned. Although I do not actually enter parinirvana, I proclaim that I do. It is through this skillful means that the Tathagata leads and inspires sentient beings.”

All we must do is take the medicine to see this clearly. We must do the work. If we don’t take the medicine, we’re not going to be cured. It is up to us. What is this good medicine? It is our meditation practice, which opens us to experience our own buddhanature, the cosmic dimension of unborn-undying-boundless-emptiness, ever-present in us and around us. As with The Parable of the Wealthy Father and His Poor Son and The Parable of the Jewel in the Robe, this parable uses the awfulness of separation to drive home the point that we suffer when we are alienated from our true nature. These parables show us that this sense of separation is an illusion caused by the poisons we have consumed.

The Buddha taught meditation to heal our bodies and minds. When we take this good medicine, we open ourselves to the influence of the parables, myths, and symbols of the Lotus Sutra, allowing ourselves to be carried away by them to the cosmic realm. We find ourselves in a world of timeless being, a world of buddhas and bodhisattvas. We experience directly the great drama of cosmic enlightenment, which the Lotus Sutra shares through these parables, stories, and dramas. Nichiren Buddhism’s chanting meditation practice recreates the Lotus Sutra’s Ceremony in the Air like a piece of performance art. We listen to the sound of the ultimate dimension. And when we listen deeply, it will not be an ordinary sound that we hear, we will hear the voice of the Buddha, the voice of the eternal Tathagata. When we experience for ourselves the parables, myths, and symbols of the Lotus Sutra, we see that dharma is the medicine. Chapter sixteen offers these powerful words of encouragement:

“I am leaving this very good medicine right here. Take it and drink it. Do not worry, for it will cure you.”

So how does one take the good medicine? What comes first, wisdom or ethical living? How can we live ethically without wisdom and compassion? In Mahayana, the practice comes first, and ethical living follows as actual proof of the practice. In the early Buddhist teachings, they start by practicing the five precepts, which form the basis for their meditation practice.

Nichiren taught that in the Latter Age of the Dharma, the age two thousand years after the Buddha lived, people would be so sick with ignorance, greed, and hatred that even hearing the Buddha’s words was no longer enough to awaken. Nichiren believed that following the precepts no longer led directly to awakening. In fact, it was his central critique on the Precept Schools, believing that rigid adherence to the precepts led only to further suffering.

Ethical living is the actual proof of the practice, not the cause.

Nichiren believed that when one has wisdom and compassion, they will always see and be able to take the correct action. But if ethical living no longer led directly to wisdom, then what does? Nichiren, similar to Dogen and Shinran, believed that in the Latter Age of the Dharma, we would need to substitute faith for wisdom. Yet faith is not a blind belief. Faith is deep trust and confidence. Deep trust and confidence that because the Buddha attained awakening, we can too if we take the good medicine he left behind for us. We start with trust and confidence in the practice of meditation—chanting daimoku, nembutsu, or Zen. Meditation develops wisdom. Wisdom leads to ethical living. Ethical living leads to compassion. Through our meditation practice, we develop the wisdom and compassion to see things clearly and take the correct action. Ethical living is the actual proof of the practice, not the cause.

Nichiren took these words from the parable, “The father sees how his children are suffering, so as prescribed by various formulas, he searches for all the necessary medicinal herbs, which are perfect in color, smell, and flavor. He grinds, sifts, and mixes them together,” as inspiration that all the Buddha’s teachings, practices, merits, and virtues are the ingredients ground, sifted, and mixed into the good medicine of the five characters of Myo, Ho, Ren, Ge, Kyo. In his most important writing, considered to encapsulate his entire ministry, “A Treatise Revealing the Spiritual Contemplation and Most Venerable One (Kanjin Honzon Sho) Writings of Nichiren Shonin, Doctrine 2,” Nichiren wrote:

“Shakyamuni Buddha’s merit of practicing the bodhisattva way leading to Buddhahood, as well as that of preaching and saving all living being since His attainment of Buddhahood are altogether contained in the five characters of Myo, Ho, Ren, Ge, Kyo (Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Dharma) and that consequently, when we uphold the five words, the merits which He accumulated before and after His attainment of Buddhahood are naturally transferred to us.

Not only the sravaka (“hearer,” or, more generally, “disciple”) but also [the] Shakyamuni Buddha is within us. For, we encounter such a statement like this in the second chapter of the Lotus Sutra, “It was My (Shakyamuni’s) original vow to let all beings become like myself. My vow has been fulfilled. I have helped them all enter the way of the Buddha.” Does this not mean, that Shakyamuni Buddha, who has attained Perfect Enlightenment, is our flesh and blood, and all the merits He has accumulated before and after attaining Buddhahood are our bones … that Shakyamuni Buddha, the Buddha Many Treasures, and all the Buddhas in manifestation are in our mind?

Lord Shakyamuni Buddha, with His great compassion, wraps this jewel with the five characters of Myo, Ho, Ren, Ge, Kyo and hangs it around the neck of the ignorant in the Latter Age of Degeneration.”

Nichiren Buddhism’s chanting meditation practice of reciting the title of the Lotus Sutra [daimoku], Namu myoho renge kyo, is good medicine. Nichiren taught that chapter sixteen’s revelation of the unborn-undying nature of the Buddha’s constant presence in this world transcends all time and space, writing, “… for those who embrace the Lotus Sutra, at each day, each hour, each moment, the Buddha’s voice reaches them, conveying to them the message, ‘I do not die.’” Every time we chant the daimoku, the boundless eternal realm of enlightenment is experienced directly in this very present moment. We manifest our Buddhahood in this very body. And the whole world around us becomes the Buddha Land.

In Peaceful Action, Open Heart: Lessons from the Lotus Sutra, Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

“The (physician) gives us the spiritual medicine we need for the healing and transformation of our bodies and minds… Now it is up to us to take the medicine and practice diligently so that we too can get in touch with the ultimate dimension and recognize our true nature of no birth and no death… What is essential is to enter the path of practice in order to realize this truth and [to] help others realize it too.”

In Closing

I would like to close this series with a word of encouragement to please be kind and gentle with yourself on this journey. Please take good care of yourself. The journey is long and hard, as we read in The Parable of the Magic City. There will be ups and downs and forward and backward movement along the journey. When things get hard, dark, and lonely, please know that sometimes just getting onto the cushion for a few minutes is more than good enough.

I would also like to remind us to avoid spiritual bypassing. The good medicine in this parable isn’t a panacea for all the suffering we experience in life. If you’re physically sick, please see a real doctor. If you’re experiencing mental suffering, please see a therapist. Good doctors, therapists, and religious teachers are three important parts of one’s support network. If you’re feeling lonely and isolated, take a class at the local recreation center or community college. If you’re feeling purposeless, take up a fun healthy hobby. And for Buddha’s sake, please limit time on social media. Social platforms are not, and can never be, a substitute for real-world community. 

Finally, let’s revisit the messages of each of the seven parables and how they tie together. You’ll notice they all share a common theme: do the work. (The Buddha said “follow” the eightfold path, not “observe” it.) Each of the eight guidelines is action-oriented, not a passive state. And “endeavor” or “effort” is one of the six paramitas. As the final words of the Buddha said to Ananda before he passed into parinirvana:

“Behold, O monks, this is my last advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation.”

The Parable of the Burning House: Walk through the door.
The Parable of the Wealthy Man and His Poor Son: Stop running away.
The Parable of the Medicinal Herbs: Grow into the best version of yourself.
The Parable of the Magic City: The journey is long and hard—take care and be kind to yourself and others.
The Parable of the Jewel in the Robe: The jewel is within us.
The Parable of the Pearl in the Topknot: We are all equal.
The Parable of the Good Physician: Take the medicine and do not worry.

May you all be happy, well, safe, peaceful, and at ease. And may the parables of the Lotus Sutra bring you joy and many moments of calm reflection and awareness.

Namu myoho renge kyo

♦

Translation from: The Threefold Lotus Sutra, A Modern Translation for Contemporary Readers. Translated by Michio Shinozaki, Brook A. Ziporyn and David C. Earhart. Published by Kosei Publishing, 2019.

Verse section:

A physician with skillful means
Who is actually alive and announces his death
Only in order to cure his deranged children
Cannot be accused of falsehood.
Like a father to all in this world,
I cure their sufferings and diseases.

Prose section:

“Suppose there is a good physician, wise and understanding, and expert in compounding medicines and curing diseases. This man has many children, perhaps ten, twenty, or even a hundred. His work takes him away to a distant land. After he has left, his children drink some kind of poisonous medicine. The effects of the poison make them delirious with pain, and they roll on the ground in agony. “Then the father comes home from his journey. Having drunk the poison, some of the children have lost their senses, and some have not. On catching sight of their father in the distance, they are all overjoyed. They kneel respectfully to greet him and say, ‘We are glad that you have returned safely. Fools that we are, we mistakenly drank poison. Please cure us and save our lives!’

“The father sees how his children are suffering, so as prescribed by various formulas, he searches for all the necessary medicinal herbs, which are perfect in color, smell, and flavor. He grinds, sifts, and mixes them together. Giving this medicine to his children, he tells them to take it, saying, ‘This is the best medicine, perfect in color, smell, and flavor. Take it and you will be quickly relieved of your suffering and completely recover.’

“Those children who still have their senses see that this good medicine is fine in color and smell. So they take it immediately and are completely cured of their illness. The others, who have lost their senses, are also delighted to see their father return and ask him to cure them. But they are unwilling to take the medicine he offers them. Why is this? The poison’s effects have reached deeper inside them and made them lose their senses. Therefore, although the medicine is fine in color and smell, they do not think it is good.

“The father thinks to himself, ‘These children are to be pitied. The poison has completely distorted their thinking. Although they were happy to see me and asked me to cure them, they are refusing to take this good medicine. Now I must devise some skillful means to make them take this medicine.’ So he tells them, ‘You can see that I am now old and frail, and my death is drawing near. I am leaving this very good medicine right here. Take it and drink it. Do not worry, for it will cure you.’

“Having given these instructions, he once again leaves for another land. From there, he sends a messenger back to inform them, ‘Your father is dead.’ When the children hear of their father’s death, their hearts are filled with grief and anguish. They think to themselves, ‘If only our father were still here, he would show us kindness and compassion. He would care for us and cure us. But now that he has abandoned us and died in some far-off land, we are orphans, with no one to rely on.’ Continuous grieving finally brings them to their senses, and they realize how good the medicine is in color, smell, and flavor. They take it and are completely cured of the poison’s effects. As soon as the father hears that all his children have recovered, he returns home and lets all of them see him.

“Good children, in your estimation, can anyone say that this good physician is guilty of lying?”

“No, World-Honored One.”

The Buddha said, “So is it also with me. In the infinite, boundless hundreds of thousands of millions of myriads of kalpas since I became Buddha, I have used the power of skillful means for the sake of living beings and said that I am about to enter extinguishment, and yet no one can legitimately say that I am guilty of telling falsehoods.”