What is the meaning of "a ray of light which illuminates thousands of buddha fields in the east" in the Mahayana Lotus Sutra? The Lotus Sutra implies light came from Gautama Buddha, which connected to &quot; illuminating thousands of buddha fields&quot;; can anyone enlighten me as to what that could mean?
The Buddha first poses 56 stanzas to Manjushri in the beginning of the Lotus Sutra, some of the last stanzas mention fields:

(49). O how powerful is the Leader of men! how extensive and bright is his knowledge! that a single beam darted by him over the world renders visible so many thousands of fields!
(53). That one ray extending from him all over the world makes visible many thousands of fields. It must be for some purpose that this great ray has been emitted.
(55). There must be a weighty reason why so many thousands of fields have been rendered visible, variegated, splendid, and shining with gems, while Buddhas of infinite sight are appearing.

Stanza 55 in Chinese renders:
示諸佛土，　　
眾寶嚴淨，　　
及見諸佛，
此非小緣
So 佛土 (Literally: Buddha-soil or Buddha-earth) is rendered literally English as &quot;field&quot; (the same characters are used in stanzas 49 and 53).
However, in Buddhist literature, these are the characters used for buddhakṣetra which is equivalent with Pure Land in East-Asian Buddhism. In the Mahayana sutras, there are many buddhakṣetras.Bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteśvara and Manjushri would obtain pure lands after they attained buddhahood.
In the Lotus Sutra, Buddha's close followers such as Śāriputra, Mahākāśyapa, Subhuti, Maudgalyāyana and Buddha's son Rāhula would also have pure lands.
The literal meaning of &quot;field&quot; is not lost in the Lotus Sutra though. Manjushri answers a bit below the stanzas:
The aforesaid Lord Kandrasûryapradîpa, the Tathâgata, &amp;c., when a young prince and not yet having left home (to embrace the ascetic life), had eight sons, viz. the young princes Sumati, Anantamati, Ratnamati, Viseshamati, Vimatisamudghâtin, Ghoshamati, and Dharmamati. These eight young princes, Agita, sons to the Lord Kandrasûryapradîpa, the Tathâgata, had an immense fortune. Each of them was in possession of four great continents, where they exercised the kingly sway. When they saw that the Lord had left his home to become an ascetic, and heard that he had attained supreme, perfect enlightenment, they forsook all of them the pleasures of royalty and followed the example of the Lord by resigning the world; all of them strove to reach superior enlightenment and became preachers of the law. While constantly leading a holy life, those young princes planted roots of goodness under many thousands of Buddhas.
So reading this as either:

allegorical, light shining on a field symbolizing the basic agricultural ingredients for seeds (of attainment) to grow
&quot;Pure Land interpretation&quot; of countless Buddha-realms, granted on attainment

is possible.