The Four Siddhanta

The Four Siddhanta
The Four Methods of Teaching the Dharma

The Worldly Method - This entails adapting the teaching to the wishes and desires of the audience. This way the Buddha can reach the broadest possible audience, and teach the Dharma in a way that the most people will listen and understand. It allows for incorporating of local beliefs (Vedic Gods, Shinto Kami, etc.) and applying them to Buddhist beliefs, bending the rules to adapt to local customs, offering the enticement of material benefits in this world or heaven in the next, and offering a wide variety of teachings and practices so that the different tastes of living beings can be catered to. This is a bit like the sales pitch that gets the customers to come into the tent. It is usually the first step in getting one to have faith.
The Personal or Individual Method - This entails understanding and people’s potential for good spiritual roots (spiritual capacities) and encouraging and developing them. These good spiritual capacities include faith, diligence, presence of mind, mental concentration and spiritual insight - the Paramitas. Each of us has unique strengths - the personal method of teaching involves being able to recognize these in each individual and knowing how to make them blossom to their fullest potential.
The Therapeutic Method - This entails understanding people’s spiritual flaws and helping them overcome them. Spiritual flaws include greed, hatred, ignorance, conceit, doubt & the five false views (disbelief in cause & effect, clinging to views, belief in the ego, belief in extremes, and belief that somehow rituals or asceticism will lead to salvation or enlightenment) - the klesas or emotional distress. This can be very difficult without being done in conjunction with the worldly and personal methods. People are naturally unreceptive to correction if they are without faith and the other good spiritual qualities.
The Method of the Highest Significance - Having attracted the audience (Worldly Method), developed the good spiritual capacities of each individual (Personal Method), and healed their spiritual flaws (Therapeutic Method), the Buddha is ready to reveal the ultimate purpose, which is the work of enlightenment. It is the path of the Bodhisattvas, and one great reason for the appearance of the Buddha in this world. This is what is revealed in the Lotus Sutra. It transcends the first three provisional methods of instruction, but includes them as well. It is the will and intent of the Buddha.

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