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The

journ l

of

the

Oriental SOciety of Australia.

The Conception of Buddhahood in Earlier and Later Buddhism

no. 1 2

1970

87 118

0030 5340


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Tlft e C ~ n e e p t i o n

of

u d i U ~ a h o o d n E U I

9

l ie.·

and L{deB Buddhism

I

A J. PRINCE

niversity

of

ydney

All great religions have a dual character.

On

the one hand,

s

repositories of timeless truth, they are impervious to change; but

on the other hand,

s

social institutions, as living traditions of

doctrine and practice, they are subject like all worldly things to

the temporal processes of growth and decay. As circumstances

change, religions are obliged to change with them: the teachings

must be continually explained to new audiences with new pre

judices and preconceptions, the persecution and patronage of

governments require counter-measures

or

fresh adaptations, and

the criticisms of philosophers, heretics and the adherents of other

religions have to be accommodated or refuted.

To all these pressures two kinds of response are possible. One

is

to resist change by holding all the more firmly to established

doctrine; and the other is to adapt to change by enlarging the

scope of the original teachings to include new areas of concern.

These two responses may give rise to quite distinct traditions and

organizations, or they may manifest themselves within the same

tradition. And of course even the individual may respond in one

or the other way at different times according to circumstances.

In Buddhism, as is well known, there are two major trends, one

towards a predominantly conservative approach, and the other

towards a freer development of doctrine. The former may be

called Earlier Buddhism (since the commonly used term

Hinayana is a pejorative

one),

while the latter, since it did not

emerge as a separate movement till four or five centuries after

the Buddha, might be referred to as

Later

Buddhism , although

it

is

usually known as the Mahayana , the

Great

Way

(or

Vehicle) . What I propose to examine in this paper is the

development, from the earlier school of thought to the later, of

one specific aspect of Buddhist doctrine: the concept of

buddhahood.

Anyone who turns from the earliest Buddhist canonical litera

ture to the sutras of the Mahayana cannot fail to be struck by the

different way in which the figure of the Buddha is presented in

each case.

On

the one hand we find a wise

but

apparently quite

human teacher moving, for the most part, in a plausibly historical

Indian setting, and teaching more or less ordinary people doc

trines which are

at

least superficially intelligible; while on the

other hand we are confronted with a resplendent figure who seems

no longer of this earth,

or

of any time or place, expounding

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n considering the problem in this paper, therefore, I shall

follow a different approach. To start with, I shall use as a basic

framework around which to organize my data, not the alien

concept of godhead but the purely Buddhist doctrine of the

Trikaya, the three bodies or (better) triple body , of the

Buddha, which came to be accepted by the Mahayana as the

definitive expression of its views on buddhahood. With this

doctrine in mind, I shall first of all study the portrait of the

Buddha which appears in the Pali suttas, the canonical discourses

of

the Theravada. I choose the Theravadin tradition as repre-

sentative of Early Buddhism partly because of its antiquity and

conscious conservatism, which place it at the greatest remove from

the Mahayana, and partly because its canon is complete and

readily accessible, both in Pali and in English translation.) Next,

I shall try to suggest how and why this early view of buddhahood

might have developed into something approximating the

Mahayana conception.

n

doing so, I shall confine my attention

strictly to Buddhist doctrine

as

expressed in the canonical litera-

ture, leaving aside speculations about possible outside influences.

The contributions of early schools other than the Theravada must

also be passed over in silence, owing to lack of space.

And

finally,

I shall consider, in terms of the Trikaya, the picture of the

Buddha that emerges from some of the most important Mahayana

sutras.

I I

From the suttas of the Pfili Canon it would not be difficult to

draw a portrait of the Buddha that would strike a secular his-

torian as

at

least plausible, if not necessarily accurate,3 One could

call

this historical figure (as those of his contemporaries who were

not his followers did) the recluse (S. sramana, P. samana

Gautama (P. Gotama) ,4 and his biography, according to the

3 The following abbreviations will be used:

P. Pil li

S. Sanskrit

AN A nguttara Nikaya

N

Digha Nikaya

MN

Majjhima Nikaya

SN Samyutta ikaya

Dhp Dhammapada

Sn Suttanipfita

Roman and

Arabic (or,

more

properly,

Indian)

numerals indicate

the volume

and

page number(s)

of

the Pil Ii text in the Pil Ii

Text

Society's editions. Translations are usually

my

own, although I have

sometimes

had

to rely on existing translations owing to the lack

of

a

Pil Ii

text.

4 Proper names and technical terms will be given in their Sanskrit

form, where

t ~ t

c1iffers

from

the Pil.li, except where the reference

is

to

specifically P§li literature (e.g.

sutta ).

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suttas, would run roughly as follows. Born into the nobles clan

of the Sakyas,

6

he left home when still a young man, despite his

parents' protests,

7

to become a wandering ascetic. After studying

under two teachers

8

and acquiring and losing five disciples of his

own,9 he found in the end the truth he was seeking.1

o

Then

having gathered a nucleus of followers, which

he

gradually

developed into a monastic order, he travelled from place to place

in North-eastern India preaching, answering questions and n ~

gaging in debates. Finally, at the age of eighty or SO,l1 having

established a body of well-trained disciples,12 he passed away in a

small township called Kusinagara (P. Kusinara),13 after which, in

the phrasing of the texts, devas and men see him no more .1

4

t should be noted that these events, and others pertaining to

the life of the Buddha, have always been taken for granted

as

historical facts by all schools of Buddhism. Nevertheless it must

be remembered that the Judaic belief in the religious significance

of history, conceived of as a process that is irreversible and

limited in duration,

is

not shared by Buddhism, which, like

Hinduism and J ainism, sees the flow of time as endless and

cyclical, and therefore does not regard the individual events which

make up the stream as being of any importance in themselves.

What really matters, on the contrary,

is

release from history into

a timeless and transcendental realm which can be experienced but

not defined.

We find therefore, in the Suttapitaka, that the Buddha

is

chiefly concerned with showing the way to this deliverance from

temporal phenomena, and he stresses that his own personality,

as

an individual of such and such a clan, is a matter of no impor

tance whatsoever. Thus, when, shortly after his Awakening, he

approaches the

five

ascetics who had formerly been his disciples,

and they greet him by name and as avuso

a

polite term

of

address used between equals), he rebukes them, saying: Monks,

do not address the Tathagata by name or as avuso. The

Tathilgata, monks, is one perfected (araham), truly and com

pletelyawakened (sammasambuddho) .lS Then there

is

the well-

known passage in which the Buddha, on being asked what sort of

5 Lineage

of

the Silkyas given at

DN

I 92-3. (Note

that

this and

following references are intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive.)

6 Sn

verses 423, 991;

MN

54, 133 etc.

7

MN

1163.

8

MN

I 163-6.

9

MN

247, 170.

1

MN

21-3, 167.

11

MN

182; DN

100.

12 DN 155.

13

DN 146-7, 156.

14

DN

146.

15

MN

I 171-2.

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being

he is, points out that he has transcended all the suggested

categories, such

as

god deva), goblin yaksha), human being and

so forth, and concludes that he is simply

buddha

awake ,16 Or

again

one might mention the incident in the

Suttanipata

7

in

which a brahmin asks the Buddha what his birth is-that is,

which

of the four social classes he was born

into-and

the

Buddha replies:

I am no brahmin,

nor

any ruler's son,

No merchant,

nor

anyone at all

am

I.

know the lineage

of

ordinary folk,

But am nothing: a sage roam the world

You do wrong to ask about my lineage.

t may be worth recalling here too that in the earliest Buddhist

sculpture, those who had attained Nirvana were depicted by

symbols only, and not represented in person. Various theories

have been suggested to explain this convention,18 but it seems at

least plausible to assume that the ineffable character of Nirvana

itself is somehow involved, and one might point to texts such as

the following:

Of the goal-winner there is no measuring:

Nothing one might say can be applied to him.19

His path

is

difficult to trace,

Like the track

of

birds through the

sky.20

Or

again, specifically of the Buddha this time: Freed from

denotation by material shape is the Tathagata: he is deep, im

measurable, unfathomable, as is the great ocean.

2

And in the

same vein

we

are told that a Tathagata even in this very life

is

not to be regarded as existing in truth .22

Such

passages show that the important thing about the Buddha,

or

the arhat in general, was his attainment of Nirvana, with which

he was in a sense identified. Beside this, the details of his personal

biography were so unimportant that they could be spoken of as

though they did not even exist. Furthermore, the Pali Canon

represents the Buddha

as

considering himself (like Confucius

and

Muhammad in their very different ways) to be only the latest

of a line of sages stretching back into the past, a transmitter and

not a creator .23 So we find the Buddha referring to the path to

Nirvana that he has travelled himself and now guides others along

as the ancient path, the ancient road, travelled along by Fully

Awakened Ones of former times .24 And with a similar regard

16 AN II

37-9.

17 Verses 455-6.

18

See Lamotte, op cit. pp. 446-7.

19 n verse 1076.

2 DhTJ no. 93.

21 MN 1487.

22 SN III 118.

23

Lun-vii 7.1.

24 SN 105-6.

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for ancient tradition, he describes the seers (P. isayo) and

brahmins of olden days

as

noble and virtuous-good Buddhists

in

effect-unlike

the decadent ones of his own day.2s

So throughout the last chapter of the Dhammapada the word

brahmin is used to describe the ideal monk,

or

even

as

a

synonym for arhat , while the word

rshi

(P.

isi)

seer ,

which

originally referred to the divinely inspired singers of the Vedic

hymns 26 is applied to the Buddha,27 and he is called the seventh

seer ,28 since he follows after six previous buddhas, who are listed

in the

Mahtipadana Sutta,

number 14 of the

Dlgha Nikdya.

The

texts often speak of buddhas and tathagatas in the plural 29

and the preceding six are occasionally mentioned individually

by

name 30

l;>Ut. this

p r ~ i c u l r

sutta

is

e s p e c i ~ l y interesting, 11.ot only

because It lIsts all

SIX

but also because, 111 the account It

gives

of the career of the buddha Vipasyin (P. Vipassin) some

91

aeons ago, one may see fully developed the idea that the last

life

of a bodhisattva follows, with minor variations, a standard

pattern.

The

events related here are all found later in the tradi

tional Theravftdin accounts of Sftkyamuni's life,

as

for example

in the Nidanaka,thti, and the incidents which accompany

Vipasyin's conception and birth are each described in the sutta

as being the rule

dhammata:

the nature of things).

In

short, while the Buddha is portrayed in the Pftli Canon

as

a historical individual, the details of whose life were naturally

of interest to his followers, he is also seen, firstly as the discoverer

and embodiment of a truth beside which all merely historical

matters pale into insignificance, and secondly as a type, as one

of

a series of enlightened teachers who realize and communicate

this

same truth. Of these three aspects of buddhahood, in which I

think a foreshadowing of the Trikaya doctrine can already

be

clearly seen, it

is

obviously the last two which are the important

ones, for the historical Buddha

is

revered by his followers, not

because he was the individual Siddhartha Gautama,

but

because

he was a

buddha.

To demonstrate this further, it will be necessary

to look more closely

at

this term.

The

word buddha represents the substantive use of the past

participle of the verbal root BUDH, meaning to know or to

awaken .

It

therefore means one who has come to know

or

one who

is

awake . And if one asks what

t

is

that he has known

or awakened to, the Pftli texts will answer simply: reality.

Yathli-

25 Sn verses 284-315.

26 Cf.

MN II

169, 200.

27 E.g.

Sn

verses 82, 176 208; MN II 143.

28

MN I 386; SN I 192;

Sn

verse 356.

29 E.g. hp nos. 181-5, 194, 276;

Sn

verses 351, 386;

Udana

49;

MN

1339.

30 E.g.

MN

I 333-7,

II

45-53; SN I 154, V 232-3;

Vinaya

II

110.

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bh tam passati

(or

janati),

he sees (or knows) according to

reality , he sees (or knows) things

as

they really are , is a

phrase which recurs frequently. This seeing, or this reality (for in

Buddhism the seeing

is

the reality), which

is

said to be pro

found ,

"hard

to see , outside the sphere of reason and

"to

be

understood by the wise'? is commonly indicated by two words,

nirvana

(P.

nibbfina)

and

dharma

(P.

dhamma). The

former is

used when the emphasis is on the achievement of true knowledge

as a goal, and the latter when this knowledge is thought of as a

truth to be communicated.

In

the former case, since the attainment of Nirvana is what

makes the Buddha

buddha,

and therefore constitutes his very

essence,

as

it were, the ineffable character of Nirvana may also be

legitimately attributed to the Buddha himself. In fact, as was

shown above, this

is

often done, and epithets such

as

im

measurable , unfathomable , one who is nothing 32 and so

forth are found applied to the Buddha. As for the term dharma,

an explicit identification

is

made here with the person of the

Buddha. Who sees Dharma sees me, who sees me sees Dharma,

the Buddha informed a monk who had been longing to see him

in

person,33 and

we

are told that the Buddha

is

truly honoured,

not by those who make pious offerings to his person, but by those

who

practise the Dharma.

34

Again, just

as

the Buddha, after his

Awakening, is said to have dedicated himself to the Dharma,

since there were no beings superior in knowledge to

himself 35

so

too, after the passing away of the Buddha, the Dharma becomes

the

guide and refuge of his disciples

6

in accordance with his own

instructions.

37

Furthermore, there are mentioned as appropriate

equivalents to

tathfigata

the terms

dhammakaya

(S.

dharmakaya),

one whose body

is

Dharma ,38 and

dhammabhuta

(S.

dharma-

bhuta),

one who has become Dharma ,39 or,

as

the Pali com

mentary explains it, one whose essence sabhava, S. svabhava)

is Dharma .

40

These last two epithets will be mentioned again below, when

the Mahayana conception of the dharmakaya is dealt with, but

31

MN 1167.

32 Cf.

Nirvana

as the isle which is nothing akincana: Sn verse

1094) with the Buddha as the one who is also nothing

akincana:

Sn

verses 176,455, 1063).

33 SN III

120.

34

DN

138.

35

SN

I 138-40.

36

MN III 9.

37

DN

100-1.

38

DN m

84.

39

DN

III

84;

MN

1111, III

195, 224.

40 D i a l o ~ l 1 e s of the uddha = DN),

translated

by

T. W. and C.

A F.

Rhys Davids (Luzac, 1965),

Part III

p. 81, n. 4.

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for the moment enough has perhaps been said to show that for the

Pali Canon the thing that matters most about the Buddha is not

his existence as a historical individual but rather his deliverance

rom individuality by his achievement of Nirvana, and the Truth

the Dharma, which he thus realized and subsequently taught. '

Apart

from these two aspects of buddhahood the historical

teacher and the attainer and embodiment' of true wisdom there

is also a third aspect which appears in the PaIi Canon, and which

assumes considerable importance in the light of subsequent de-

velopments in buddhology. I have already touched on this

When

I said that the Buddha was regarded more as a type than

as an

individual, but now I should like to look a little more closely

at

the nature of this type, which

is

depicted

as

that of a sage

with

supernormal powers and some rather remarkable physical attri

butes. Such a being is called a mahlipurusha (P. mahapurisa

which literally means a great man but might be better trans

lated

as

superman . His distinctive characteristics are his

physical ones, but first something should be said about

the

psychic powers which he shares with other types of sage and

ascetic.

The great powers of the mind, when developed through the

practice of concentration and meditation, has always been taken

for granted in Buddhist doctrine, and t is only natural that the

Buddha should have been assumed to have achieved complete

proficiency in this field, and thereby to have acquired a range

of

knowledge and a variety of psychic powers outside the scope of

other men. (Such proficiency is in fact given

as

the seventh

of

what are called the Ten Powers bala) of a Tathagata.) Thus,

on

the very night of his Awakening, with a mind made com

posed, purified, cleansed, spotless, undefiled, pliant, workable,

firm and imperturbable through profound concentration, the

Buddha

is

said to have acquired the power to recall all his past

lives through many hundreds of thousands of births, and to see

with direct vision, the death of other beings and their rebirth in

accordance with the moral quality of their past thoughts

and

deeds.

4

He is

also said to be able to see events happening

in

far-off places,42 and to have telepathic knowledge of the minds

of other beings.

43

The

PfHi

suttas contain a stock list of

iddhi

(S.

rddhi ,

or

psychic powers. which can be realized through the successful

practice of meditation.

44

Two of these might be seen

as

having

some bearing on later developments in buddhology. One is the

41 MN I 22-3.

42 E.g. MN I 170.

43 These last two are the fifth and sixth of the abovementioned Ten

Powers.

44

MN

I 34;

DN

I 78.

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power to multiply oneself, to be in different places at the same

time.

Being one, the texts say,

he

becomes many; having

become many, he becomes one again. 45 The other

is

the power

to

visit the deva-worlds or heavens in person,

as

the Buddha

46

and his monks

47

are sometimes represented as doing. A related

power, mentioned separately,48 is the ability to create a mind

made (manomaya) duplicate of one's own body. Psychic powers

of

this type are used freely by the Buddha in the Mah3.yfma

sutras,

but

while they are not so much in evidence in the Pali

texts, it is worth remembering that even there their existence is

always taken for granted.

The other and more distinctive attribute of the superman is

the special set of thirty-two physical characteristics with which he

is endowed. These characteristics, it is held, are to be seen only

in one who is about to become either a universal monarch

(cakravartin)

,

if he should follow a worldly path, or a supreme

buddha (samyaksambuddha)

,

if

he

should renounce the life of a

householder.

49

Some of these characteristics are comparatively

ordinary-long fingers (no. 4) or even teeth (no. 24) for

example-but others are more curious, such as the number of his

teeth (forty: no.

23),

the length of his arms, which hang down

as far as his knees (no. 19), and the marks of wheels with a

thousand spokes on the sales of his feet (no.

2).

The last two

items in the list may be seen on most traditional images of the

Buddha: the

urna

(P.

unna) or

curl of soft white hair between

the eyebrows, and the

ushnisha

(P.

unh isa:

literally

turban )

or

protuberance on top of his head.

The origin and precise significance of these characteristics is

obscure, but they are mentioned frequently in the suttas,50 and a

whole sutta of the

Dlgha Niktiya

(no.

30)

is

devoted to the

subject.

t is

clear

at

any rate that they are meant to indicate a

perfection of physical form which is a necessary accompaniment

of moral, spiritual and intellectual perfection, for future greatness

is predicted of a child who possesses them 51 and they always

arouse a mixture of awe and curiosity in those who behold

them.

5

t

is important to note that the possession of these attri

butes does not invalidate the Buddha's humanity in any way. On

the contrary, it indicates that in him humanity has become

45 DN I 78.

46 E.g. MN I 326 ff ; Udana 22-3.

47 E.g.

DN I

215-20.

48

DN I

77.

49 DN 142. Some of them may, however, also appear

on

men

of

lesser stature: Sn verses 1019. 1021-2.

50 E.g., listed

at

MN

II

136-7;

DN II

17-19,

III

143-5; mentioned

at

MN

11147, 165, 210;

Sn verses

549,

WOO

51 DN II

16.

52

AN II

37-8;

MN II

142-3;

Sn

pp. 106-8.

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perfected. There can be no question, then, of deification here

and yet, in this conception of the Buddha s mahdpurusha

;

superman, one may see already the basis for the later notion of

the sambhogakdya.

When a great religious teacher is present in the flesh, the power

of his personality his charisma , to use a currently fashionable

term carries its own authority, and is in itself sufficient evidence

for those who are willing to accept it, of his superior

k n o w l e g ~

and the validity of his doctrines.

At

this stage, therefore, there is

no need to analyze the precise nature of the Master's exceptional

character, for all who have eyes can see it for themselves, and ny

problems which might arise can be easily resolved by the Master

himself. Once the Master has gone, however, and the initial

impact of his personality has become diluted by time and the

enlargement of his community of followers, people seek to

define

his nature more clearly. What sort of being was he exactly? it

is asked, and different

or

even conflicting doctrines arise s

different answers to this question are given and find acceptance

among one group of followers

or

another. In Christianity the

result of such speCUlations was a series of Church councils which

gradually worked out precise and authoritative definitions of the

nature of the Christ. Buddhism, however, unlike Christianity, has

never possessed a hierarchy of authority, and each school of

thoug;ht was theoretically free to develop its own conception of

buddhahood, although in practice the earliest doctrinal formula-

tions, which were accepted by all, ensured continuity of tradition

and confined speCUlation within certain limits.

As has already been shown, it was essentially his realization

of

Nirvana which turned Siddhartha Gautama into Sakyamuni

Buddha, but the question which subsequently arose and ultimately

split the Buddhist movement in two was this: f buddhahood

consists in the attainment of Nirvana, how does the Buddha differ

from those of his followers who had also attained Nirvana? In

other words: What is a buddha, and how does he differ from n

arhat?53

To

this question the Pali suttas suggest a number of possible

answers.

For

a start, the Buddha

is

the first to discover the path

to Nirvana, and so sets the example for his followers: A

tathagata . . . makes manifest an unmanifest path, he recognizes

an unrecognized path . . . his disciples, coming afterwards, live

following the path .54 Furthermore, s a corollary to this, the

5

rhat (P.

arahat ,

literally worthy one , as a technical term indi-

cates someone who has attained Nirvana. As such it

is

also applied

to the Buddha himself.

54 SN III 66.

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Buddha alone achieved deliverance solely by his own efforts,

without the aid of a teacher:

Victorious over all, omniscient am I

In all respects devoid of spot or blemish;

All things, all craving left behind, freed am I

By my own

insight-who

then is my teacher?

There is no one to instruct me,

For one like me does not exist:

In

this world with all its devas

No

equal to me can be found.

Another characteristic which distinguishes the Buddha from

the other arhats is the range of knowledge which he possesses.

Thus Sariputra (P. Sariputta), supposedly the wisest of his dis

ciples,

is

made to confess on one occasion that he has no direct

or complete knowledge of the Buddha's mind.

6

And then there

is the well-known incident of the handful of leaves which the

Buddha picked up, likening them to the number of things he

knew and taught, while the things he knew but did not teach, he

said, were as numerous by comparison as all the other leaves in

the grove.

57

So of the Ten Powers of a TatMgata (referred to

earlier), the first nine indicate the Buddha's exceptional range of

knowledge and his proficiency in meditation, while the last simply

defines his attainment of Nirvana in terms of the elimination of

the basic mental obstacles thereto.

58

Finally, one might mention the fact that the Buddha

is

shown

above all as a teacher- teacher of devas and men , as the

ancient formula has i t -and this highlights not only his skill in

instruction, but also his compassion in even undertaking what he

knew well would be a thankless and frustrating task.

So

he

is

said to have hesitated to teach

at

all, but then he surveyed the

world with the eye of an Awakened One, out of compassion for

living thing-s , 9 and this led him to set the wheel of Dham1a

rolling .60 Thus a stock passage has him claiming that it might be

truly said of him that a being not subject to delusion has arisen

in the world, for the welfare and happiness of the multitude, out

of compassion for the world, for the welfare, benefit and

happiness of devas and men .61

Summing up, then, one may say that the Pali suttas regard the

Buddha

as

being distinguished from the other arhats by virtue of

1 his primacy as the first discoverer and teacher of long

forgotten truths;

(2)

his heroic achievement in attaining his goal

55 MN I 171.

56

DN

III 100.

57 SN V 437.

58

See, e.g. MN

I

69-71.

59

MN 1169.

60

MN

I 171.

61 MN I 21, 83.

97


13/33

unaided;

(3)

his range of knowledge and, to a lesser extent, his

skill in supernormal powers; and

(4)

his compassion and

competence in teaching.

V

Now in the Mahayfma, buddhahood is esteemed above arhat

ship as a goal at which every individual should aim precisely for

these qualities: for the compassion of the buddhas in teaching the

Dharma, for the patient energy they display in their long careers

as bodhisattvas, and for the completeness of their knowledge. And

although there still remains a considerable difference between the

Theravadin and Mahayanist conceptions of buddhahood, the dis

tinction which came even in the Pali Canon to be drawn between

buddhas and arhats served as a starting point for further develop

ments which were to culminate in the Mahayanist doctrine of the

Trikaya.

I f

the picture of the Buddha that appears in the Pali

Canon is compared with the Trikaya doctrine, I think it will be

seen that the essentials of what came to be called the Nirmanakaya

and the Dharmakftya were already present in the earlier tradition;

and indeed the historical individual, and the timeless truth which

he had realized, were established facts which did not admit of

any substantial development. The events of the Buddha's life,

while they could be reinterpreted

or

embellished, could

not

be

rejected, and since Nirvana was universally held to be inexpres

sible, it did not offer much scope to further analysis. Most

speCUlation therefore centred on the concept of the Buddha as

superman.

To

understand the developments that took place here, one

must first of all grasp the central importance of causality in

Buddhist doctrine. The causal cycle of interdependent origination

pmutya-samutpada)

is

identified with the Dharma itself 62 and

a famous summary of the Buddha's teaching, sometimes called

the Buddhist Creed , runs as follows:

Of

all events

dharma) from

cause

(hetu)

arisen,

The

Tathagata

has

told

the cause;

For them

there

is cessation too -

Thus

does

the Great

Ascetic teach.63

As applied to human life, the Buddhist view of causality implies

that our acts, in so far as they are motivated by desire, will

inevitably produce corresponding results, either in this life or in

a subsequent one; and further, that the nature of our present

62 MN I 190-1.

63 The verse, together with

the

circumstances under which it was

uttered, is given in the Vinaya I 23) and the Mahavastu. Cf. A

Foucher, La Vie du

Bouddha

(Payot, 1949),

pp. 224-7

for

a

comparative translation. The Great Ascetic

(sramana)

is of course

the

Buddha.

98


14/33

existence is detennined by our actions in previous lives, which

are said to have been literally innumerable.

6

t

follows logically from this doctrine that for the remarkable

achievements of the Buddha's last life, a foundation must have

been laid in previous lives. Hence the popular

Htaka

stories came

to be compiled, stories which purport to tell of the Buddha's

noble exploits in some earlier existence, whether as a human

being or as an animal. Jatakas may be found, on rare occasions,65

in the Pali suttas themselves. Edifying tales about the

Bodhisattva

66

proved so popular, however, and such an ideal

medium for religious propaganda, that their number grew con

siderably, and the Theravadin collection numbers nearly 550

stories.

But the growth of the Jatakas must have raised further

problems, for taken all together they present a picture of heroic

virtue which it is difficult to square with the attested facts of the

Bodhisattva's last existence. How was it possible for him, with

such a fund of good kanna, such a long history of spiritual

endeavour behind him, to fall again into the vulgar pleasures of

the household life, to become the pupil of two teachers who were

not competent to lead him to the Goal that

he

was seeking, and

finally to undergo years of ultimately futile asceticism, before he

at last attained Nirvana?

One possible answer, which was eventually adopted by the

Mahayana, was that all this was done for show, to set an edifying

example. In this spirit, the Buddha says for instance, in one sutta,

that he still meditates, not because he needs to do so,

but

partly

for relaxation, and partly out of compassion for the later folk ,67

or in other words, to set a good example for those who

do

need

to meditate. So when the Buddha, in his First Sermon, advocated

avoiding the extremes of indulgence in sensual pleasures on the

one hand and severe asceticism on the other, he could claim to

speak from personal experience; and similarly, by first embracing

and then renouncing the life of a householder, he personally

demonstrated its insufficiency and became the great exemplar for

all those who would later seek deliverance within his monastic

order. One might, then, regard the Buddha's whole life

as

an

upaya

a skilful means or device intended to guide the ignorant,

stimulate the slothful and encourage the faint-hearted. This would

imply that the true successor to the hero of the Jataka tales, the

64 See the 15th chapter of SN, passim.

65 E.g. DN I 134-43,

II

230-51; SN

1154.

66 One who

is

to become a buddha. The term (P.

bodhisattva is

used

in the Ptlli suttas by the Buddha of himself prior to his Awakening.

67

MN

I 23. Pacchimam janatam presumably refers to those who are

to be born, or to join the Buddhist community, thereafter, but

pacchima is

also taken to mean lowest, inferior .


15/33

real product of those aeons of striving for the good, was not to

be sought in the details of the Buddha's biography,

but

rather in

his qualities as a superman.

This is coming very close to the

MaMyana

conception

of

buddhahood, but there

is

one other factor which still needs to be

taken into account, and that is cosmology. According to the Pall

Canon, the universe consists of 100,000

or

more world-systems

68

which evolve, are destroyed and evolve agai

n

69

throughout

beginningless time.

7o

Each world-system is divided horizontally,

so to speak, into three spheres

or

realms: 1) the realm of desire

kamadhfitu), which includes human beings, animals and ghosts,

the hells and the lower deva-worlds; 2) the realm of pure form

rCtpadhfitu)

rarefied deva-worlds in which sensual desires are

absent; and

3)

the formless realm

arCtpyadhfitu,

P.

arCtpad-

hfitu), in which the devas have no visible shape at

all 7

1

Rebirth

in the last two realms is held to depend on the attainment of

certain states of meditative absorption. This picture holds good

throughout all schools of Buddhism, except that its spatial extent

came to be increased to a virtual infinity, comparable with its

duration in time.

So

Buddhaghosa, the great Theravadin com

mentator of the fifth century A.D., speaks of the range of a

buddha's authority as extending over a myriad hundred thousand

world-systems,n and in the Mahayana sutras world-systems as

numerous as the sands of the Ganges is an often-repeated cliche.

As was stated above, Sakyamuni was considered from the

very beginning to be only one of a series of buddhas, and he

himself is represented in the Pali Canon as speaking of those who

have been buddhas in the past and those who will be buddhas in

the future.

7

What then more reasonable to suppose than that in

a universe infinite in space as well as in time, there must even

now be buddhas living and teaching in worlds beyond our ken?

Since the Dharma, as the true nature of things, is always there to

be discovered,74 the law of averages alone would suggest that

there must be more than one being in the cosmos at any given

time who has come to know it. Furthermore, belief in compas

sion as the essential motivation of buddhas, together with the

conviction that they possessed formidable skill in psychic powers,

68

MN III

102.

69 DN 84-5.

70 Cf. n. 64 above.

71

These realms mentioned at DN 215-6, 275; MN 1 410, 63;

n verse 754;

ltivuttaka

45

72 VisuddhimaRfW

p.

414.

73 DN III 99-100.

74 Cf. AN I 286: Whether tatMgatas appear or not, it is a fixed

principle, a certain and established truth, that all conditions are

impermanent, . . . all conditions are

ill, . . .

all dharmas are devoid

of

self .

100


16/33


17/33

to the

~ U i

Canon,76 that Nonreturners

find release.) Here the

buddha is visible, s the radiant body of a mahiipurusha to

those beings who are sufficiently pure in mind to be able to reach

this deva-world through dhyana (meditative absorption). This

is

the buddha's sambhogakaya his enjoyment or communal

body, but, since

t

can be seen only by a comparative few, he

is

moved by compassion to create, by means of his psychic powers,

illusory bodhisattvas who appear in the Realm of Desire, where

they go through the motions of renouncing the world, realizing

Nirvana, preaching the Dharma, and finally passing away all in

order to demonstrate the path to deliverance to those who are

ignorant and heedless of the truth.

The bodhisattvas and buddhas which he thus conjures up are

called

nirmanakayas

or bodies created (by psychic power) , but

while they are not, so to speak, the real buddha, it would be

a mistake to think that they are intangible phantoms of some sort,

for this would be to attribute to the world which appears to our

senses a degree of solid reality which, according to Buddhist

doctrine, it does not possess. In fact a little reflection will show

that the nirmanakaya must be considerably more solid than the

sambhogakaya and one may read in the Pali Canon

8

of the

analogous case of a deva who wished to descend to a lower deva

world than his own, and so was obliged to assume a body of

coarser matter in order to become visible there.

As for the third body , the dharmakaya the Mahayana does

not appear, in its canonical literature

at

least, to have made any

substantial modifications of the earlier view, for in all schools of

thought the essence of buddhahood

is

held to lie in a kind of

knowledge which transcends the ordinary categories of space and

time, and so resists conceptualization.

t

will be seen that this conception of buddhahood provides an

attractive solution to the problems that were mentioned above,

concerning the Buddha's accomplishments and his previous lives.

For on the one hand t exalts the buddhas to a level of attainment

which provides a fitting climax to their careers s bodhisattvas,

while

at

the same time allowing them full scope for compas

sionate activity in a cosmos no less vast than the one proposed

to us today by modern astronomy. And on the other hand it still

remains within the framework of traditional Buddhist doctrine,

in so far as it merely expands or elaborates on materials already

present in the earlier teachings.

In what follows, the Trikaya doctrine will be examined in more

detail, starting with the nirmlinakaya. I shall base my account

76 DN II 286, III 237.

77 Those who are reborn only once

more on

a subtler plane of

existence before attaining Nirvana.

78

DN II

210-11.

102


18/33

chiefly on four major sutras: the

Prajnaparamita or

"Transcen

dental Wisdom", specifically the

Ashtasahasrikfi,

the earliest

version in eight thousand

slokas;79

the

Saddharmapundar ika

or

"White Lotus of the True Dharma", commonly referred to

as

the

Lotus SzUra;

the

Vimalakirtinirdesa or

"Exposition by Vimala

kirti"; and the

Lankfivatara

or "Descent to Ceylon" (i.e. by the

Buddha).8o

Before beginning, it should perhaps be pointed out that

although

trikaya

literally means "triple body", or even "three

bodies", what the term is actually meant to indicate are three

aspects of the reality of buddhadhood, rather than three distinct

"bodies" in any purely literal sense.

8

An

analogy might be the

three "persons" of the Christian Trinity, which, while three and

personal, are at the same time not to be conceived of as separate

entities. Now let us examine the concept of the

nirmanakaya.

V

As has just been said, kaya means "body", but more than the

literal sense of the word is implied here. Just as Christian scrip

tures speak of the Church

as

the "body" of Christ,82 so for the

Buddhist sutras too kfiya indicates a principle as well

as

a

phenomenon. Nirmana means "creation" (from nih MA,

literally to "measure

out ),

and in this context has the connota

tion of creation by psychic power.

n

Chinese t is translated by

huah "transformation". The notion expressed by the word here

is more commonly encountered in the form of the past participle

nirmita (P. nimmita . t is used in the D1gha Nikaya, for

example, when beings are born as devas into the Brahma-world

(at

the lower levels of the Realm of Pure

Form) as

the universe

re-evolves after a period of dissolution. The first deva to be born

there comes in time to long for companionship, and when other

devas finally appear he concludes (erroneously) that they have

79 32-syllable verse-units, although the text of this sutra is actually in

prose.

80 For the first two and the last

of

these sutras, I have used Vaidya's

editions. References, however, will be given to earlier editions, as

listed below.

For the other text, which has

not

survived in Sanskrit,

I have used Lamotte's excellent translation from the Tibetan and

Chinese, L Enseignement de Vimalakirti (Louvain, 1962). Abbrevia

tions are as follows:

K = Kern's edition

of

the Lotus Sutra

M = Mitra's edition

of

the

Ashtasahasrika

N = Nanja's edition

of

the

Lankavatara

L = Lamotte's translation

of

the Vimalakirtinirdesa

T = the TaishO

Tripitaka

Numbers refer to pages.

8 H. V.

Guenther

prefers to speak of them as "stmctures

of

experi

ence". See his Tantra and Revelation",

History of Religions,

Uni

versity

of

Chicago Press, Vol. 7, No.4

(May

1968), pp. 294-5.

82 1 Corinthians 12.17. Cf. 10hn 15.5.

1 3


19/33

been "created" nimmita) by him, that is by his

ionging-a

conclusion which the other devas accept. 8 The term

is

also used

in a figurative sense, as when monks are said to be

dhammaja

and dhammanimmita, "born of Dharma" and "created by

Dharma".84

t

was shown above that the power to create mind-made bodies

is known to the Pali Canon, and that such psychic powers are

attributed to the Buddha.

So

later in Theravadin tradition, it

is

possible for Buddhaghosa to assert that when the Buddha went to

teach in one of the deva-worlds, he left a "created buddha"

nimmilabuddha) behind to take his place.

85

This concept of a

"created buddha" is almost identical with that of the

nirmana-

kdya. The only difference is that in the Mahayana tradition the

buddhas are thought of as residing permanently in the deva

worlds, while the whole of their apparent careers among men are

the work of nirmitabuddhas.

Thus one may read in the otus SzUra of the Buddha, while

"staying in another world" anyalokadhatusthita) , sending

"created"

nirmita)

beings (though in this case not buddhas but

Buddhists ) to assist those who preach the sutra's doctrines.

86

Further on there

is

mention of "many created nirmita) tathagata

bodies (-

vigraha)

preaching the Dharma to beings in buddha

fields and thousandfold world-systems in the ten directions", 87

and four chapters later the earthly career of the Buddha

Sakyamuni is treated as a mere device for the edification of the

ignorant: That the Tathagata, who has long been Awakened,

declares that he has become Awakened only recently-this is for

no other purpose than that of bringing beings to maturity".88

(For, as the sutra goes on to explain, if beings did not think that

buddhas were rarely met with, and that buddhahood was some

thing supremely difficult to obtain, they would not make the

necessary efforts to free themselves from suffering.)

89

The power to create nirmanakayas is not confined to buddhas

alone, however, for Chapter 13 of the

otus SCitra

tells of a

bodhisattva called Gadgadasvara preaching the sutra to all beings

everywhere under many different guises, including that of a

buddha, through the power of a

samadhi

(meditative concentra-

8

DN

I 17-18.

84 ltivuttaka 10l.

8

Visuddhimagga,

p.

39l.

86 K 235.

87

K

242. A "buddha-field"

buddhakshetra)

is the world-system which

is a buddha's sphere of influence. The "ten directions" are the four

points

of

the compass, the

four

intermediate points, and the zenith

and nadir.

88 K 318.

89

K

319-20.

104


20/33

tion) called sarvanlpasamdarsana, the displaying of all forms 9o

-which

once again demonstrates that the ability to create such

fictitious bodies could be acquired naturally through meditation.

Similarly, in the

Vimalakirtinirdesa,

the bodhisattva Vimalakirti,

who is ostensibly a mere householder, creates a fictitious bod

hisattva that he sends on an errand to a buddha in a remote part

of the universe-through buddha-fields as numerous as the sands

of forty-two Ganges

as

the sutra puts it. After completing his

errand, the b o d h i s t t v ~ then returns and preaches to the Disciples

in Vimalakirti's house.

9

In

the Lankiivatara S Ura the doctrine of the nirmanakiiya is

set forth fully and explicitly:

Dwelling in Akanishtha, the

Divine abode no evil stains,

Ever

intent, mind, its workings

And

conceivings all abandoned,

Knowledge, powers and masteries won,

Adept in the concentrations,

The buddhas there become awake,

While their creations nirmitiih) do so here.

Countless myriads

of

created

Bodies nirmiina-) of the buddhas appear,

And

the ignorant everywhere

Hear,

and hearken to the

Dharma.

92

In

the Prajnaparamita, which is among the earliest of the

Mahayana sutras,93 doctrinal statements about the

nirmanakaya

and sambhogakiiya are comparatively rare. This may be partly

because the concept of the Trikaya was not fully developed until

after the Prajnaparamita had been composed,

but

in any case this

sutra, in its various versions, is concerned above all with trans

cendental wisdom and its object-that is to say, with truth

which

is

necessarily formless, with the Dharmakaya. So although

the Buddha's

physical personality atmabhavasarira) is said

to spring from the skill in means of transcendental wisdom ,94

which hints at the nirmana-concept, the Buddha also repeatedly

points out that you should not think that this individual body

is my body ,95 and that those who cling to the Tathagata

through form or sound,

and

conceive of him

as

coming or going

are

as

foolish

as

those who would seek water in a mirage, for

the Tatbagata should not be seen as his physical form: the

dharma-bodies are the tathagatas .96

90 K 435.

9 322, 328.

92 Sagiithakam verses 38-40, N 269.

93 Edward Conze suggests that its beginnings may go back to 100

RC.

See his The Development

of

Prajnaoi'iramita Thought ,

Thirty

Years o Buddhist Studies (Cassirer, Oxford, 1967), p. 124.

94

M

58.

95

M.94.

96 M 512-3. Note the plural. Cf. n. 105 below.

105


21/33

It is

important to note,

as

was pointed out above, that the

nirmanakayas are no mere ghosts or phantoms. The word refers,

in the case of Sakyamuni, to the same set of psychophysical data

that are the concern of the Pali Canon or even the secular his

torian. What is at issue is merely the interpretation of that data

and it

is

here that the Mahayana departs from the earlier schools:

for it interprets the Buddha's biography in the light of its under

standing of the sambhogakaya. t is to this second body , then,

that one must turn for the key to the Mahayanist conception of

buddhahood.

VII

The literal meaning of

sambhoga is

uncertain, for it may be

taken as either communal (Chinese gonqyonqshen or enjoy

ment (Chinese

showyonqshen ,

depending on whether the prefix

sam- has a collective or an intensive significance, and in neither

case would it correspond to the standard Chinese translation of

bawshen,

which suggests something like

vipakakCiya. In

fact there

seems to be considerable difference of opinion, not only about the

proper name of the body intermediate between the nirmanakaya

and the dharmakaya (as the different Chinese renderings indi

cate),

but

also about the precise number of such bodies -

which shows that it was in this area of doctrine that the new

developments in buddhology were taking place.

So

the Mahayana

literature mentions two, three, four,

five

and as many

as

ten

bodies of the Buddha, and one comes across such terms as

asecanakCitmabhava, the body of perfect beauty, prakrtyatma

bhava, the true or primary

body'?7

nishyandabuddha, the

buddha of emanation (literally 'flowing out')

98

and

vipakaja-,

vaipakika- or vipakastha-buddha, the resultant buddha .99 t is

this last group of terms which corresponds most closely

to

bawshen, the implication here being that the body in question is

the result of the bodhisattva's fund of good karma accumulated

throughout his long career.

Leaving aside the subtleties, however, one may take all these

terms

as

pointing to more or less the same idea that is represented

by the standard

sambho[?akaya,

which is that the true body of the

buddha, as an individual being, is not to be found in the Realm

of Desire, but rather at some higher level of the cosmos, where

he is continually engaged in teaching the devas and bodhisattvas,

and at the same time creating mind-made buddhas and bod

hisattvas on the lower planes, to instruct the beings there. I have

already tried to show how this notion might have evolved, by a

97 Edward Conze (trl.),

The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom

(Luzac,

1961), p. xv. (Hereafter referred to as Conze, Large Sutra.

98 D. T. Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1957), pp. 322-4.

99 Ibid.,

p. 326.

106


22/33

more or less logical process of development, from the earlier

conception of buddhahood. In what follows I shall analyze the

idea of the sambhogakdya in more detail, as it appears in the

Mahayana sutras.

First of all, it can be said that the

sambhogakdya

is the result

of all the merit acquired by the bodhisattva through aeons of

compassionate activity, according to the principle of karmic cause

and effect. The idea that buddhahood is the glorious culmination

of a long career is frequently expressed in the sutras in the form

of predictions and past histories. Thus, in the 19th chapter of the

Ashtasdhasrikd-Prajnaparamitd.

the Buddha predicts the eventual

attainment of buddhahood, in the far distant future, of the

Goddess of the Ganges; and the

otus

zUra devotes two chapters

(eight and nine) to predicting the future attainment of buddha

hood, after numberless aeons of striving, by the various monks in

the audience, giving the name each one will have as a buddha,

the length his life-span will be, and so on. An example to illus

trate past histories may be found in the sixth chapter of the

Vimalakirtinirdesa, in which Vimalakirti says of the devi or

goddess who has been instructing the Disciples: This goddess

has already served 92 myriad

lOO

buddhas. She has perfect mastery

of psychic power and wisdom, has

ful:filled

her vows and learnt to

accept the truth that all dharmas are unarisen (acquired the

anutpattikadharmakshdnti),

and she will never slip back on the

path to Complete Awakening ,l°l Or again, there is the story told

by the Buddha in the seventh chapter of the

otus

zUra about

sixteen bodhisattvas, who had been princes in the remote past,

and

had

now become buddhas, preaching the Dharma in world

systems of their own.

t

is all this merit which is responsible for the splendour of the

sambhogakdya's

appearance, which identified with the traditional

body of the mahapurusha or superman. So the Suvarnaprabhasa

sutra,

the Sutra Resplendent as Gold , says: Through the

power of his original vow (to become a

buddha),

this body

appears complete with the thirty-two marks of a superman and

the eighty minor marks of excellence, with its upper half en

veloped in a halo of light. That body

is

called the sambhoga

kdya .102

An

elaborate description of the

sambhogakdya

forms

part of the dazzling scene which opens one of the longer versions

of the

Prajnapar'amitd:

100

1 1

102

Thereupon the Lord, mindful and self-possessed

surveyed

with clairvoyant vision the entire world-system, and his whole body

became radiant. From the wheels with a thousand spokes imprinted

Translating kotinayuta or -niyuta), IiteraIIy ten (English) biIIion ,

by the literally much smaIIer but suitably vague term myriad .

L 284.

T No. 665, p. 408b, 11.23-4; I-ching's translation.

The

Chinese term

used here is yinqshen the body of response .

107


23/33

on

the soles

of

his feet issued six million myriad rays, and so from

his ten toes, his ankles, legs, knees, thighs, hips and navel, from his

two sides, and from the swastika

on

his chest, a

mark of

the

SUper-

man. So also from his ten fingers, his two arms and shoulders, his

neck, his forty teeth, his nostrils, ears and eyes, from the hair-tuft

between his eyebrows, and from the cowl on top of his head. And

through these rays this great system

of

a thousand million worlds

was illumined and lit up.

And

in the east

and

the other nine

directions world-systems as numerous as the sands

of

the Ganges

were lit

up and

illumined by this great effulgence of rays,l03

That

the Buddha's true body

is

the one formed from accumu

lated good deeds is stated in the

Vimalakirtinirdesa

when

Vimalaklrti, after pointing out that the material body is transient

unstable, feeble and unreliable ,

104

goes on to say: '

My

friends, the body of the

Tathagata is

the dharma-bodY,105 born

of

wisdom.

The body of

the

TatMgata

is

born of

merit, of

generosity,

of

morality, concentration

and

wisdom,

born of

all

the perfections pdramitd) . . . My friends, the body of the

Tathagata

is born of

innumerable good actions,l06

Just as these good actions are responsible for the splendour of

the buddhas' true bodies, so also they create the beauty of their

buddha-fields , for most of them, unlike the inferior specimen

in which we live 107 are said to be jewelled paradises, perfectly

flat (hills and valleys being considered signs of imperfection),

of

vast dimensions, adorned with trees made of gems, and refreshed

by clear, sweet-sounding waters. The most famous such buddha

field

is

of course Sukhavatl, the world presided over by the

buddha Amitabha, which is described in lavish detail in the larger

and smaller

Sukhtivatlvyuha

and the

Amitdyurdhyanasutra.

That

the purity of the buddha-field

is

determined by the bodhisattva's

virtues is stated in the

Vimalaklrtinirdesa,

in which the Buddha

says:

The

bodhisattva who wishes to purify his buddha-field

must first strive to adorn his own mind. Why? Because it

is

in

so

far as the bodhisattva's mind

is

pure that his buddha-field

becomes purified

108

Of such buddha-fields there is,

as

was shown above, an

infinite number. As numerous

as

the sands of the Ganges

is

the

standard phrase,

but

one also reads of buddha-fields as numerous

as the sands of eighteen, thirty-two (01' thirty-six), and even

sixty Ganges.1°

Another important point about the

sambhogakaya

is that it

is

the source of the Mahayfma sutras, and hence stands for the

communication and transmission of the Dharma as understood by

103 Conze,

Large Sutfa,

pp. 2-3. Translation slightly modified.

104 L 132.

105

Note that

the

dharmakdya and sambhogakdya

are not clearly dis-

tinguished here.

106 L 138-40.

107 See L, Appendix 1, p. 397.

108

L

119.

109

L

247;

K

298, 423.

108


24/33

the Mahayfma.

So

the Buddha (as sambhogaki iya) says in the

Lotus Satra:

I make a show of attaining Nirvana,

And teach this as a device for training beings,

Yet I do not attain Nirvana at that time,

But continue to reveal the Dharma here.

110

And in the next chapter, he says of those who will revere the

Lotus satra

in future that they will behold me teaching the

Dharma here on Mount Grdhrakuta ( Vulture Peak ) sur

rounded and honoured by a host of bodhisattvas, in the centre of

a congregation of Disciples .111

In

this respect the

sambhogakaya

is contrasted with the

nirmanakaya,

for as the latter the Buddha

confines himself to teaching the more elementary doctrines that

are common to all schools of Buddhist thought.

So

the

Lankavatara

says that what the

nirmitanirmanabuddha

estab

lishes concerns such matters as generosity, meditation and con

centration, . . . wisdom, the aggregates (of phenomena which

comprise a living being), the elements (ayatana) and bases

(dhatu) of cognition, deliverance and so on, while the

sambhogaki iya,

which is here called

dharmatanishyandabuddha,

the buddha who flows from the true nature of things , is said

to teach the specific doctrines of the

Lankavatara.1

12

There is another interesting point to be noted about the

sambhogakaya.

However far-fetched the ideas so far outlined may

seem to those who do not happen to believe in them, they do not,

I think, contain anything that

is

intrinsically implausible. But as

anyone who has read the Mahayana sutras will be aware, the

buddhas and bodhisattvas therein are often shown performing

marvels which, if taken literally, would overstrain the credulity

of even the most naive and devout believer. For example, one

may be prepared to allow that the sambhogakaya could be

radiant,

but

what is one to think when one

is

informed that from

each single pore of the Buddha's body there issued six million

myriad rays which lit up a thousand million

worldS?l13

Perhaps

it could be put down to the Indian passion for hyperbole through

multiplication, an almost Mahayanist example of which can be

seen already in the account of the buddha Vipassin in the

Mahfipadanasutta

of the

Pi1li Digha Nikilya.

But even this hardly

seems sufficient to account for fantastic scenes such as the one

which occurs in the fourteenth chapter of the

otus

sa·tra,

when

the Saha-world

114

split and burst open everywhere, and from the

clefts there emerged many hundred thousand myriads of bod-

110 K 323.

K 337.

112 N 56-7.

113 Conze,

Large Sutra,

p. 3

114 SaMlaka (sahti the enduring

(earth) ;

laka world ) is the

name

of Sakyamuni's buddha-field, in which we live.

109


25/33

hisattvas, endowed with golden bodies and the thhty-two marks

of a superman, who had been dwelling in the element of space

underneath the great earth, close by this Saba-world . Each

of

these bodhisattvas

is

accompanied by a retinue of other bod

hisattvas

as

numerous

as

the sands of sixty Ganges rivers, and

they all proceed to pay their respects to the innumerable buddhas

also present at the meeting on Vulture Peak by circumambulating

(several hundred thousand times) their thrones, which, we were

informed three chapters earlier, are about thirty-five miles high

(taking one

yojana

as equivalent to about seven miles) and

placed

at

the foot of magically created jewel-trees about twelve

hundred miles

high 11s

Or again, there is the incident at the beginning of the

Vimalakirtinirdesa

when the Buddha, by his psychic power

converts

five

hundred jewelled parasols into a single parasol with

which he covers the entire cosmos, so that the astonished assem

bly can see all the suns, moons and stars, mountains, rivers and

oceans, and the towns and dwelling-places of all the various

beings clearly visible beneath it, while at the same time they can

hear the voices of the buddhas preaching in all the ten

directions

16

Obviously such passages can never have been intended to be

taken literally. What then do they mean? Are we to understand

them in some symbolic sense? Certainly the sutras are not un

aware of the uses of symbolism. Thus, for example, in the tenth

chapter

of the otus

S Ura

the Buddha recommends that any

bodhisattva who preaches the

sutra in the latter days of the

Dharma should do

so

after entering the Tatbagata's dwe1ling-

place, putting on the Tatbagata's robe, and occupying the

Tathagata's seat . What, he goes on to ask, are these three

things? And he answers that they are, respectively, abiding

in

loving-kindness towards all beings, delighting in great patience

and forbearance, and penetration into the emptiness of all

dharmas.1

7

There are some well-known verses of similar import

in the seventh chapter of the Vimalakirtinirdesa when Vim ala

klrti, on being asked about his parents and household, replies:

Transcendental wisdom

is

the mother of the pure bodhisattvas,

their father

is

skill in means, delight in Dharma

is

their wife

and so

on 1

18

A more striking example, relating directly to the sambhoga-

kdya may be found in the opening section of the larger

Prajnapara.mita:

Thereupon the

ord

. . . put out his tongue, with which he covered

the world-system

of

a thousand million worlds, and many hundred

115 K 297-8.

116 L 104-5.

117 K 234.

118 L 293.

110


26/33

thousand myriad rays issued from it. From each one of these rays

there arose lotuses, made of the finest precious stones, of golden

colour, and with thousands of petals; and on these lotuses there

were, seated and standing, buddha-figures expounding Dharma

namely this very exposition

of

Dharma (i.e. the doctrines

of

the

sfara

itself) associated with the six perfections. They went in all the

ten directions to countless world-systems . . . and expounded

the

Dharma

,119

This conceit, which also occurs in the twentieth chapter of the

Lotus SCttra 12o is clearly meant to symbolize the universality of

the Mahayana doctrine and its communication through the

preaching of the Buddha as sambhogakdya.

Nevertheless there still remain many passages where symbolic

significance would be hard to find, and one seems to be dealing

with exuberant fantasy indulged in for its own sake. I think that

the clue to understanding these passages may be found in the

Vimalakirtinirdesa. Consider, for example, the thrones which

Vimalakirti, by means of his psychic power, imports from another

buddha-field innumerable universes away. Since the heights of the

buddha and bodhisattvas of that far-off world are about sixty

million miles and thirty million miles respectively, their thrones

are in

proportion-about

fifty million and twenty-five million

miles high. Of these colossal thrones Vimalakirti brings three

thousand two hundred into his house, which, one must remember,

is

supposed to be an ordinary house in the city of Vaisali in

north-eastern India during the days of the Buddha.

And

yet,

despite the fact that the house appears to enlarge itself sufficiently

to accommodate its new furniture with ease, we are expressly told

that no one in the town outside noticed anything unusual. On

being questioned about this, Vimalakirti points out that the

buddhas and the most advanced bodhisattvas have such psychic

power that they can fit Sumeru, king of mountains, . . . into a

mustard seed, and yet this

is

done without the mustard seed

being enlarged or Sumeru being diminished in size . Nor, it

is

added for good measure, are the devas who inhabit Mount

Sumeru even aware of what is going on.

121

Now, the absurdity of all this is not only self-evident, it

is

even

underlined, with obvious relish, by the sutra itself, and it

is

impossible

not

to be reminded of other passages in the same

sutra, or in the sutras on transcendental wisdom, in which

paradox

is

insisted on in just the same way but for a clearly

defined doctrinal purpose. Such passages, for example, as the

following:

You

should accept

your

food while accepting nothing,122

119 Conze, Large Sutra p. 3 Translation slightly modified.

120 K 387-8.

121 L 247-52.

122 L 152.

111


27/33

Nothing whatever has arisen, is arising or will arise;

nothing whatever has ceased, is ceasing

or

will cease:

this is the meaning of the word impermanent .123

t

is because I have attained and realized nothing

that my wisdom and eloquence are such. Those who

think

that

they have attained

or

realized anything

are considered deluded in the Doctrine and Discipline

that is well expounded (i.e. by the Buddha)

.124

These are from the Vimalakirtinirdesa itself.

In

similar vein, the

Prajnaparamita

begins its instruction of the bodhisattvas in trans

cendental wisdom with such warnings as these:

Since do not find, apprehend

or

discover anything corresponding

to the term bodhisattva , nor any transcendental wisdom, ... what

bodhisattva should instmct in what transcendental wisdom?125

Just so, Subhuti, does a bodhisattva, a great being

mahiisattva)

,

cause

an

immeasurable,

an

incalculable number

of

beings to attain

Nirvana; and yet there are no beings who attain Nirvana, and none

who cause

them

to

do

so 126

As is well known, such passages are intended to break down

habitual patterns of thought and undermine the conviction that

reality can be apprehended by means of concepts and ideas about

what is real or unreal, true or false, thus preparing the mind for

the arising of transcendental wisdom, which can penetrate to that

which lies beyond all such discriminations.

In

effect, as the

philosopher Nagaxjuna was later to demonstrate, the sutras are

assuming here a

reductio ad absurdum

of all conceptualization, at

least in so far as concepts are taken for realities.

In the same 'way, I would suggest, the fantastic scenes

with

which the sutras abound indicate a similar kind of reductio ad

absurdum, but

of percepts instead of

concepts-not

of abstract

ideas, that is, but rather of the physical universe itself, as we

perceive it.

(For

in Buddhist thought the external world

is

always regarded as something perceived, and never as an in

dependently existing object .) By staging these extraordinary

metamorphoses, in other words, the sutras are in effect saying:

You

see: this world which appears so solid to you is in reality

nothing more than a fantasy, an illusion, and the buddhas and

bodhisattvas who have transcended all illusions can treat it

as

an

insubstantial toy .

One might illustrate this point by comparing the passage in the

first chapter of the otus

Siltra

in which a buddha of the past is

said to have preached this same sutra without rising from his seat

(or

boring his audience) for sixty middle-length kalpas

127

a

few billion years would be a very modest estimate-with a later

123 L 166.

124

L

274.

125 M 7.

126 M 21.

127 K 20-21.

112


28/33

passage in which the Buddha Sakyamuni compresses the fifty

kalpas during which the bodhisattvas mentioned above have been

emerging from the earth into the space of a single afternoon,

128

thus providing a vivid demonstration of the illusory character

of

time, as well as of the psychic powers of the Buddha as sambho-

gakiiya.

So

the sutra subsequently remarks: The TatMgata sees

the triple world as it really

is:

it is not born, it does not die,

it is neither existent nor nonexistent, neither real nor unreal, . . .

the TatMgata does not see the triple world as the foolish common

people do .J29 Similarly, the

Lankiivatiira

observes that the

tatMgatas of the past, present and future declare that all dharmas

are unarisen. . . . All dharmas, Mahamati, are just like the horns

of the hare, horse, donkey or camel, and the foolish common

people imagine and conceive of things which do not exist

130

n

fact, despite the boldness and seeming paradoxicalness of these

assertions, they are not very far removed from the traditional

teachings of the earlier schools concerning impermanence and

insubstantiality:

One should see it as a bubble,

One should see it as a mirage.

Whoever views the world like this

The King of Death will fail to

see.131

This suggests a final point which should be made about the

sambhogakiiya,

and that

is,

that the illusory character of the

cosmos is held to apply with equal force to the buddha-fields and

their presiding buddhas. This

is

well illustrated by the incident

which opens the Lankiivatiira Sutra. Ravana, the demon yaksha)

king

of

Ceylon comes to the Buddha seeking instruction, where

upon the Buddha conjures up for him a vision of countless

jewelled mountains, on each of which a luminous Buddha

is

seen,

together with a duplicate of Ri'tvana himself, and of the whole

assembly and surroundings. Then the vision disappears, and

Ri'tvana reflects:

What did I see? And who saw it?

Where is the town? And the Buddha?

Those buddha-fields

kshetrani),

and those Buddhas

Resplendent with jewels, where are they?

Was it a dream

or

illusion?

This is rather the true nature

Of all things,

There

is

neither seer nor seen,

No

speech and no one to speak

t

Those who see such things as saw

Will fail to see the Lord Buddha.1

3

2

The same lesson

is

taught by other texts. For example, the

Lotus

128

K 300.

129

K 318.

130 N 62.

131

Dhv

no. 170.

132 N 8-9.

113


29/33

SCara in an extended verse

passage 133

describes the bodhisattva's

career and attainment of buddhahood as something seen in a

dream; while later on, it affirms that a bodhisattva who keeps

and teaches the sutra will see the entire cosmos, with all its

buddhas and bodhisattvas, visible on his own body as if in a

mirrorP4

All these splendid buddha-fields, then, are no less in the eye, or

mind, of the beholder than the grosser world in which the

nirmanakaya appears.

So

when it

is

said in the first chapter of the

Vimalaklrtinirdesa

that the purity of a buddha-field is determined

by the purity of the bodhisattva's mind before his attainment of

buddhahood, and Sariputra wonders why, in that case, the

buddha-field of Sakyamuni is so impure, he is informed that t

is

his own mental blindness which prevents him from perceiving

its

intrinsic purity. To prove this, the Buddha touches the ground

with his toe, whereupon the world becomes transformed into the

standard jewelled paradise. Exactly the same point is made by

some verses in the fifteenth chapter of the otus

SCUra.

135

Since the character of the buddha-fields

is

thus relative to the

state of mind of the observer, from the point of view of true

wisdom they will appear

as

Vimalakirti describes them: "essen

tially devoid of substance, still, unrealized and undestroyed,

resembling space".1

36

No less than the

nirmanakaya,

they are

illusory appearances created for the benefit of sentient beings

(which are of course also nonexistent ) :

Sons of good family, all lands are like empty space. But the Lord

Buddhas, in order to bring sentient beings to maturity, conform to

their desires by displaying buddha-fields of all types: pure, impure,

and those of indeterminate character. Yet in truth all buddha-fields

are pure and undifferentiated.1

37

Lastly, one might mention the passage in the

Lankavatara

in

which the bodhisattva Mahilmati asks whether statements to the

effect that "the tathagatas of the past, present and future are like

the sands of the river Ganges" are to be taken literally, and the

Buddha replies:

Mahamati, it should not be taken in its literal sense, for the

buddhas of the three periods of time cannot be measured by the

sands

of

the Ganges The tathagatas are suchness tattva:

"thatness", truth, reality), and consequently similes

and

analogies

do

not

apply to them.138

133 K 294-5.

134 369-70. Perhaps an allusion to the traditional teaching

that the

world, its arising and ceasing may all be discerned in one's own body

and mind:

cf. AN

46.

135 324-5, verses 11-14.

136 Hslian Tsang's translation: T No. 476, p. 570a, 1.20.

137 Ibid.,

p.

579c, 11.25-8.

138 N229 31.

114


30/33

V

n this last passage the Lankdvatdra takes up a position which

is entirely in accordance with the views of Earlier Buddhism:

namely, that the true nature of a buddha does not lie in his

physical appearance, of whatever kind,

but

rather in his realiza

tion of the truth. In the terminology of the Mahilyfma: the

buddha's true body is neither of his form-bodies rupakdya) but

the

dharmakdya

alone.

So

the

Suvarnaprabhdsa

says:

The dharmakaya is the Sambuddha,

The

dharmadhatu the Tathfigata.l

39

What then is the dharmakdya? The basic meaning of dharma

is that which

is

true or right or real . One might therefore

translate body of truth , body of reality or body of the

Dharma (in the sense of the Buddha's teaching). The word

occurs in the Pili Canon,

as

was shown above, but only once.

140

The term dhammabhuta, become Dharma , is not uncommon,

however, and one also finds terms of similar import, such as

cakkhubhuta

become vision ,

ndnabhuta

become knowledge ,

and dhammasdmin lord of Dharma .141 The Buddha is therefore

ultimately identified, by both earlier and later Buddhism, with his

Awakening to true knowledge, with bodhi itself.

Furthermore, since for Buddhism, with its psychological bias,

true knowledge and truth are basically synonymous, the

dharmakdya may also be identified with truth itself, with the

reality of things as perceived by those who have attained the state

of bodhi. In this sense, dharmakaya is interchangeable with such

terms as tathatd or tathdtva, thusness or suchness , and

dharmadhdtu

or

dharmatd,

reality or true nature 142 So the

Suvarnaprabhdsa Sutra says:

The

first two bodies exist only

as

unreal concepts (literally false

names ),

while the third exists in truth, and

is

the basis

of

the first

two. Why? Because apart from the suchness of things dharmas),

and from non-discriminating wisdom, all the buddhas are without

distinctive qualities dharmas) of their own Therefore the

suchness

of

things and the true knowledge

of

suchness contain all

the qualities of buddhahood.143

t

is for this reason that the Buddha can say in the

Lankdvatdra

Sutra that others recognize me as one who neither arises nor

passes away, as emptiness, suchness, truth, reality, ultimate

139

140

4

42

43

Sanskrit verse quoted in Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra,

p.315.

See n. 38 above. t is more common in the Chinese translation of

the agamas, particularly the Ekottaragama (corresponding to AN):

see the references in H6bOgirin (Tokyo, 1930), Fascicule 2, article

Busshin , 01'. 176-7.

E.g. MN III 195,224.

The equivalents of all these terms except tathata also occur in PaH

aoparently with the same meaning, according to the

PaIi

Text

Society's Pali-Enrdish Dictionarv.

T No. 665, p. 408b

1.27-p.

408c 1.4.

115


31/33

reality,

dharmadhtitu, nirvana,

the eternal, sameness, the nondual,

. . . and so

on while

adding a warning that no words are

capable of conveying the truth.144

Similarly, Vimalakirti says that he sees the Buddha as though

there were nothing to see ,145 and the

Mahiiparinirvana Sutra

claims that the body of the Tathagata is a permanent and in

destructible one . . . t is the

dharmaktiya.

. . . The Tathagata's

body is a body which is no body.

It

knows neither arising nor

ceasing, neither training nor practice.

t

is boundless, infinite,

untraceable, without knowledge or form, absolutely pure and

m