Across East Asia, the Lotus Sutra has served as a kind of spiritual wellspring from which artists, writers, and communities have continually drawn inspiration. Visual culture in particular has been shaped by its grand, visionary scenes: paintings and temple decorations often depict the Buddha preaching on Vulture Peak, the jeweled stūpa rising from the earth, and Śākyamuni revealed as an eternal, cosmic Buddha. Sculptural traditions surrounding bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin/Kannon) reflect the sutra’s emphasis on compassionate intervention and universal Buddhahood. Mandalas and other ritual images give form to its vast cosmic vision, presenting multiple Buddha-realms and, in some cases, the Ten Worlds as a single, interpenetrating field of awakening.

The written word has also become a primary vehicle for the sutra’s influence. Its rich parables and doctrinal themes have shaped poetry, religious fiction, and didactic tales in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese literature, where motifs of skillful means, hidden Buddha-nature, and miraculous salvation recur. Classical Japanese works, including narrative epics and anecdote collections, weave in Lotus themes of impermanence, universal salvation, and the saving power of faith, while Chinese poetry frequently turns to lotus imagery as a metaphor for purity and enlightenment. Around the text itself, a vast culture of commentary, hymns, and chants has developed, with the daimoku—“Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō”—standing as a concise crystallization of devotion to the sutra.

Cultural and devotional practices reveal how deeply the Lotus Sutra has entered the fabric of everyday religious life. The text extols the merit of copying, reciting, and preserving it, which encouraged the creation of lavishly decorated manuscripts, the widespread copying and distribution of the scripture, and even the burial of sutra scrolls in reliquaries or mounds for the benefit of future generations. Public readings, all-night recitations, and ritual assemblies modeled on the sutra’s cosmic preaching scene fostered a sense that ordinary laypeople participate directly in the Buddha’s great assembly. Temples and festivals dedicated to the Lotus and its bodhisattvas, as well as portable talismans bearing its title or phrases, testify to its role in shaping popular piety and communal identity.

The sutra’s vision of universal Buddhahood has also had far-reaching social and institutional consequences. Its insistence that all beings possess Buddha-nature, including women, the poor, and even apparent evildoers, has nourished ideals of spiritual equality and compassion, influencing ethical attitudes and lay movements. Major schools such as Tiantai/Tendai and Nichiren placed the Lotus Sutra at the center of their doctrinal and practical systems; in Nichiren traditions especially, chanting the daimoku became both a personal path to enlightenment and a basis for activism and social engagement. Rulers and states at times aligned themselves with the protection and propagation of the Lotus, seeing in it a source of legitimacy and a vision of a society ordered around the “True Dharma.” Through these many channels, the sutra has not remained a mere text, but has become a living presence in the art, literature, and culture of East Asia.