Buddhism and the Prodigal Son

We may gain fresh amazement if we compare the story Jesus told with a somewhat similar story in the literature of Mahayana Buddhism. In a famous “Lotus Sutra” the story is told. A young man leaves his father’s house and is gone for many years, “twenty or thirty or forty or fifty.” His father searches for him and moves to another country, where he becomes immensely wealthy. The son, on the other hand, continues his wanderings as a despised beggar. One day the son happens to come to the town where his father lives. He does not recognize his father, but stares with curiosity at the princely magnificence of this elderly man. Fanned by attendants, the father sits on a throne under a jeweled awning, his footstool decorated in gold and silver. He is concluding business deals in gold bullion, corn, and grain with a surrounding crowd of merchants and bankers. The beggar is thoroughly alarmed. “People like me don’t belong here,” he thinks. “Let me get out of here before I am seized to do forced labor.”

But the father has recognized his son at first sight and sends his servants after him. They bring him back, kicking and screaming in terror. Sure that he will be put to death, he faints dead away. The father sprinkles cold water on him, and tells the servants to let him go. He does not identify himself to his son, or his son to his servants. Instead, he sends servants to find him again in the slum section of the city, and to bring him back with an offer of employment. The servants disguise themselves as street people, smearing dirt on themselves and wearing rags, so as to gain the trust of this beggar. Their mission suc- ceeds, and the poor man is set to work at the lowliest of tasks. (The estate is not equipped with septic tanks.) The father watches his son through a window as he is shoveling manure, or, rather, basketing it. He, too, smears on dirt and puts on rags so as to go and talk to his son and encourage him on the job. The son works faithfully on the grounds, but continues to live in a shack nearby. Many years later, the father expresses great appreciation for the son’s faithful work; he declares that he will treat him as a son and make him his heir. The son is indifferent to all the wealth that is now declared to be his; he continues to live in his shack and work on the estate.

After some twenty years, “the householder perceives that his son is able to save, mature and mentally developed; that in the con- sciousness of his nobility he feels abashed, ashamed, disgusted, when thinking of his former poverty.” Aware of his approaching death, the householder calls his relatives, officials, and neighbors, and declares before them all, “This man is my natural son, the heir of all that I possess.”

The moral at the end of the story is that “as we have always observed the moral precepts under the rule of the Knower of the world, we now receive the fruit of that morality which we have for- merly practised.” 

Summarized by Edmond Clowney. Taken from Chapter 4 of the Saddharma-Pundarika, ed. F. Max Mueller, in Sacred Books of the East, vol. 21 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1909), 98-117.

"Grace", AMAZING GRACE, is the difference between Jesus' account of the Prodigal Son and the Lotus Sutra.

Read Luke 15:11-32 , The Parable of the Lost Sons , then this excellent sermon by Edmond Clowney Sharing The Fathers Welcome