Is Any Religion True and Reliable? Who Really Wrote the Sutras

Nobody heard the Buddha say any of it. Not the Lotus Sutra, not the Heart Sutra, not even the Pali suttas. So is any religion true and reliable? Every Buddhist scripture was composed and written down by people we'll never know, often centuries after the Buddha died. This dharma talk looks honestly at who wrote the sutras, from four centuries of oral recitation to the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, a Lotus Sutra companion most likely written in China, and asks what remains for us once we admit it. The answer isn't a loss. The Dharma reaches us as an expanding signal, not a fading one, carried forward by practitioners who found something real and passed it on. And because anyone can claim to add a layer, the tradition gives us a test. The Wise Guy stands in the gate and charges a toll. The Wise Guide stands beside the gate and points. Drawing on Tominaga Nakamoto, the parable of the good physician in Lotus Sutra chapter 16, Nichiren's answer to the Latter Day of the Law, and the Kalama Sutta, this talk closes with five questions for testing any teaching, including this one. Read the full essay: https://www.twobuddhas.org/post/is-an...