The burning house.
A father comes home to find his house alight and his children too absorbed in their toys to leave. Shouting fails. He calls out that there are three splendid carts waiting outside — goat, deer, ox — and they come running. Outside, he gives them all one cart, better than any he described. The Lotus Sutra tells this to explain why the Buddha taught three vehicles and then said there was only ever one, and asks the reader directly whether the father lied.
The burning house is the Lotus Sutra's defence of skillful means, and it is presented as an argument rather than an illustration: the sutra stops and asks Shariputra directly whether the father was guilty of falsehood, and the answer given is no, because the children got out alive and received something better than promised. The three carts are the three vehicles — hearer, solitary buddha, bodhisattva — and the one great cart is the single vehicle the sutra claims was always the real offer. Critics have noted ever since how much this framework can be made to excuse; the sutra's own criterion is that the deception must end in the hearer's liberation.
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