THE DOCTRINE OF TRIKÂYA.
{242}
(/Buddhist Theory of Trinity/.)
_The Human and the Super-human Buddha._
/One/ of the most remarkable differences between the Pâli and the
Sanskrit, that is, between the Hînayâna and the Mahâyâna Buddhist
literature, is in the manner of introducing the characters or persons
who take principal parts in the narratives. In the former, sermons are
delivered by the Buddha as a rule in such a natural and plain language
as to make the reader feel the presence of the teacher,
fatherly-hearted and philosophically serene; while in the latter
generally we have a mysterious, transcendent figure, more celestial
than human, surrounded and worshipped by beings of all kinds, human,
celestial, and even demoniac, and this mystical central character
performing some supernatural feats which might well be narrated by an
intensely poetical mind.
In the Pâli scriptures, the texts as a rule open with the formula,
“Thus it was heard by me” (_Evam me sutam_), then relate the events,
if any, which induced the Buddha to deliver them, and finally lead the
reader to the main subjects which are generally written in {243} lucid
style. Their opening or introductory matter is very simple, and we do
not notice anything extraordinary in its further development. But with
the Mahâyâna texts it is quite different. Here we have, as soon as
the curtain rises with the stereotyped formula, “Evam mayâ çrutam,”
a majestic prologue dramatically or rather grotesquely represented,
which prepares the mind of the audience to the succeeding scenes, in
which some of the boldest religio-philosophical proclamations are
brought forth. The perusal of this introductory part alone will
stupefy the reader by its rather monstrous grandeur, and he may
without much ado declare that what follows must be extraordinary and
may be even nonsensical.
The following is an illustration showing the typical manner of
introducing the characters in the Mahâyâna texts.[104]
“Thus it was heard by me. Buddha was once staying at Râjagriha, on
the Gridhrakuta mountain. He was in the Hall of Ratnachandra in the
Double Tower of Chandana. Ten years passed since his attainment of
Buddhahood. He was surrounded by a hundred thousand Bhikṣus and
Bodhisattvas and Mahâsattvas numbering sixty times as many as the
sands of the Ganges. All of them were in possession of the greatest
spiritual energy; they had paid homage to thousands of hundred
millions {244} of niyutas[105] of Buddhas; they were able to set
rolling the never-sliding-back Wheel of Dharma; and whoever heard
their names could establish themselves firmly in the Highest Perfect
Knowledge. Their names were.... [Here about fifty Bodhisattvas are
mentioned.]
“All these Bodhisattvas numbering sixty times as many as the sands of
the Ganges coming from innumerable Buddha-countries were accompanied
by numberless Devas, Nâgas, Yakṣas, Gandharvas, Açuras, Garudas,
Kinnaras, and Mahoragas.[106] This great assembly all joined in
revering, honoring, paying homage to the Bhagavat, the World-honored
One.
“At this time the Bhagavat in the Double Tower of Chandana seated
himself in the assigned seat, entered upon a samâdhi, and displayed a
marvelous phenomenon. There appeared innumerable lotus-flowers with
thousand-fold petals and each flower as large as a carriage-wheel.
They had perfectly beautiful color and fragrant odour, but their
petals containing celestial beings in them were not yet unfolded. They
all were raised now by themselves high up in the heavens and hung over
the earth like a canopy of pearls. Each one of these lotus-flowers
emitted innumerable rays of light and simultaneously grew in size with
wonderful vitality. But through the divine power of Buddha they all of
{245} a sudden changed color and withered. All the celestial Buddhas
sitting cross-legged within the flowers now came into full view, shone
with innumerable hundred thousand-fold rays of light. At this moment
the transcendent glory of the spot was beyond description.”...
As is here thus clearly shown, the Buddha in the Mahâyâna scriptures
is not an ordinary human being walking in a sensuous world; he is
altogether dissimilar to that son of Suddhodana, who resigned the
royal life, wandered in the wilderness, and after six years’ profound
meditation and penance discovered the Fourfold Noble Truth and the
Twelve Chains of Dependence; and we cannot but think that the Mahâyâna
Buddha is the fictitious creation of an intensely poetic mind. Let it
be so. But the question which engages us now is, “How did the
Buddhists come to relegate the human Buddha to oblivion, as it were,
and assign a mysterious being in his place invested with all possible
or sometimes impossible majesty and supernaturality?” This question,
which marks the rise of Mahâyâna Buddhism, brings us to the doctrine
of Trikâya,--which in a sense corresponds to the Christian theory of
trinity.
According to this doctrine, the Buddhists presume a triple existence
of the Tathâgata, that is, the Tathâgata is conceived by them as
manifesting himself in three different forms of existence: the Body of
Transformation, the Body of Bliss, and the Body of Dharma. Though they
are conceived as three, they are in fact all the manifestations of one
Dharmakâya,--the Dharmakâya that revealed itself in the historical
Çâkyamuni {246} Buddha as a Body of Transformation, and in the Mahâyâna
Buddha as a Body of Bliss. However differently they may appear from
the human point of view, they are nothing but the expression of one
eternal truth, in which all things have their _raison d’être_.
_An Historical View._
At present we are not in possession of any historical documents that
will throw light on the question as to how early this doctrine of
Trikâya or Buddhist trinity conception came to be firmly established
among Northern Buddhists and found its way in an already-finished form
as such into the Mahâyâna scriptures. As far as we know, it was
Açvaghoṣa, the first Mahâyâna philosopher, who incorporated this
conception in his _Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahâyâna_
as early as the first century before Christ. This work, as the author
declares, is a sort of synopsis of the Mahâyâna teachings, elucidating
their principal features as taught by the Buddha in his various sûtras.
It is not an original work which expounds the individual views of
Açvaghoṣa concerning Buddhism. He wrote the book in a concise and
comprehensive form, in order that the later generations who remote
from the Buddha could not have the privilege of being inspired by his
august presence, might peruse it with concentration of mind and
synthetically grasp the whole significance of many lengthy and
voluminous sûtras. Therefore, in the _Awakening of Faith_, we are
supposed {247} not to find any Mahâyâna doctrines that were not
already taught by the Buddha and incorporated in the sûtras.
Everything Açvaghoṣa treats in his work must be considered merely a
recapitulation of the doctrines which were not only formulated but
firmly established as the Mahâyâna faith long before him. His is
simply the work of a recorder. He carefully scanned all the Mahâyâna
scriptures that had existed prior to his time and faithfully collected
all the principal teachings of Mahâyânism here and there scatteringly
told in them. His merit lies in compilation and systematisation.
This being the case, we must assume that all the doctrines that are
found in Açvaghoṣa and distinct from those usually held to be
Hînayânistic are the teachings elaborated by Buddhists from the time
of Buddha’s death down to the time of Açvaghoṣa. But as the latter
apparently believes all these doctrines as Buddha’s own and raises no
doubt concerning their later origin, even if they were so, we must
assume again that these doctrines were in a state of completion long
before Açvaghoṣa’s time. If our calculation is correct that he lived
in the first century before Christ, the Mahâyâna faith must be said to
have been formulated at least two hundred years prior to his
age,--taking this presumably as the time that is required for the
formulation and dogmatical establishment of a doctrine. This
calculation places the development of the Mahâyâna faith during the
first century after the Buddha, and, we know, it was during this time
that so many schools and divisions,--among {248} which we must also
find the so-called “primitive” Buddhism of Ceylon, arose among the
Buddhists,--each claiming to be the only authentic transmission of the
Buddha’s teaching. Did Mahâyânism come out of this turmoil of
contention? Did it boldly raise itself from this chaos and claim to
have solved all the questions and doubts that agitated the minds of
Buddhists after the Nirvâna? For certain we do not know anything
concerning the chronology of the development of Buddhist philosophy
and dogmas in India, at least before Açvaghoṣa; but, as far as our
Chinese Buddhist literature records, we must conclude that this was
most probably the case.
To give our readers a glimpse of the state of things that were taking
place in those early days of Buddhism in India, I will quote some
passages from Vasumitra’s _Discourse on the Points of Controversy by
the Different Schools of Buddhism_,--the work once referred to in the
beginning of this book. The two principal schools that arose soon
after the Nirvâna of the Buddha were, as is well known, the Elders
and the Great Council, and though they were further divided into a
number of smaller sections and their views became so complex and
intermixed that some of the Elders shared similar views with the Great
Council School and vice versa, yet we can fairly distinguish one from
the other and describe the essential peculiarities of each school.
These points of difference, generally speaking, are as follows,
confining ourselves to their conceptions about the Buddha:
{249}
(1) According to the School of the Great Council, the Buddha’s
personality is transcendental (_lokottara_), and all the Tathâgatas
are free from the defilements that might come from the material
existence (_bhâva-âçrava_).[107] For in the Buddha all evil passions
hereditary and acquired were eternally uprooted, and his presence on
earth was absolutely spotless. (_The Vibhaṣa_, CLXXIII.) Contending
this view, the Elders held that the Buddha’s personality was not free
from Bhâvâçrava, though his mind was fully enlightened. His corporeal
existence was the product of blind love veiled with ignorance and
tangled with attachment. If this were not so, the Buddha’s feature
would not have awakened an impure affection in the heart of a maiden,
an ill-will in the heart of a highwayman, stupidity in the mind of an
ascetic, and arrogance in that of a haughty Brahman. These incidents
which {250} happened during the life of the Buddha evince that his
corporeal presence was apt to agitate others’ hearts, and to that
extent it was contaminated by Bhâvâçrava.
(2) The Great Council School insists that every word uttered by a
Tathâgata has a religious, spiritual meaning and purports to the
edification of his fellow-beings; that his one utterance is variously
interpreted by his audience each according to his own disposition, but
all to his spiritual welfare; that every instruction given out by the
Buddha is rational and perfect. Against these views the Elders think
that the Buddha occasionally uttered things which had nothing to do
with the enlightenment of others; that even with the Buddha something
was out of his attainment, for instance, he could not make every one
of his hearers perfectly understand his preachings; that though the
Buddha never taught anything irrational and heretical, yet all his
speeches were not perfect, he said some things which had no concern
with rationality or orthodoxy.
(3) The corporeal body (_rûpakâya_) of the Buddha has no limits
(_koṭi_); his majestic power has no limits; every Buddha’s life is
unlimited; a Buddha knows no fatigue, knows not when to rest, always
occupying himself with the enlightenment of all sentient beings and
with the awakening in their hearts of pure faith. Against these
tendencies of the Great Council School to deify the historical Buddha,
the Elders generally insist on the humanity of Buddhahood. Though the
{251} Elders agree with the Great Council in that the body assumed by
the Buddha as the result of his untiring accumulation of good karma
through eons of his successive existences possesses a wonderful power,
spiritual and material, they do not conceive it to be beyond all
limitations.
(4) The Great Council School says that with the Buddha sleep is not
necessary and he has no dreams. The Elders admit that the Buddha never
dreams, but denies that he does not need any sleep.
(5) As the Buddha is always in the state of a deep, exalted spiritual
meditation, it is not necessary for him to think what to say when
requested to answer certain questions. Though he might appear to the
inquirers as if he thoroughly cogitates over the problems presented to
him for solution, the Buddha’s response is in fact immediate and
without any efforts. The Elders, on the other hand, presume the
Buddha’s mental calculation as to how to express his ideas as best
suited to the understanding of the audience. Indeed, he does not
cogitate over the problem itself, for with him everything is
transparent, but he thinks over the best method of presenting his
ideas before his pupils.[108]
{252}
Now to return to the doctrine of Dharmakâya and Trikâya. When we
consider these controversies as above stated, it is apparent that
among many other questions which arose soon after the demise of the
Buddha Çâkyamuni, there was one, which in all probability most
agitated the minds of his disciples. I mean the question of the
personality of Buddha. Was he merely a human being like ourselves?
Then, how could he reach such a height of moral perfection? Or was he
a divine being? But Buddha himself did not communicate anything to his
disciples concerning his divinity, nor did he tell them to accept the
Dharma on account of his divine personality, but solely for the sake
of truth. But for all that how could the disciples ever eradicate from
their hearts the feeling of sacred reverence for their teacher, which
was so indelibly engraved there? Whenever they recalled the sermons,
anecdotes, or gâthâs of their master, the truth and spirit embodied
in them and the author must have become so closely associated that
they could not but ask themselves: “What in the Buddha caused him to
perceive and declare these solemn profound truths? What was it that
formed in him such a noble majestic character? What was there in the
mind of Buddha that raised him to such a perfection of intellectual
and religious life? How was it possible that, possessed of such
exalted moral and spiritual virtues, Buddha too had to succumb to the
law of birth and death that is the lot of common mortals?” Some such
questions must have been repeatedly asked before they {253} could
answer them by the doctrines of Dharmakâya and Trikâya.
_Who was the Buddha?_
The evidence that these questions were constantly disturbing the minds
of the disciples ever since the Master’s entrance into Parinirvâna,
is scatteringly revealed throughout the Buddhist texts both Southern
and Northern. The regret of the immediate followers that they did not
ask the Buddha to prolong his earthly life, while the Buddha told them
that he could do so if he wished, and their lamentation over the
remains of the Blessed One, “How soon the Light of the World has
passed away!”[109]--these utterances may be considered the first
drops foreboding the showers of doubt and speculation as to his
personality.
According to the _Suvarna Prabhâ Sûtra_,[110] a Bodhisattva, by the
name of Ruciraketu, was greatly annoyed by the doubt why Çâkyamuni
Tathâgata had such a short life terminating only at eighty. He {254}
taught the disciples that those who did not injure any living beings,
and those who generously practised charity, in their former lives,
could enjoy a considerably long life on earth; why then was the life
of the Blessed One himself cut so short, who practised those virtues
from time immemorial? The sûtra now records that this doubt was
dispelled by the declaration of four Tathâgatas who mysteriously
appeared to the sceptic and told him that “Every drop of water in the
vast ocean can be counted, but the age of Çâkyamuni none can
measure. Crush the mount Sumeru into particles as fine as mustard
seeds and we can count them, but the age of Çâkyamuni none can
measure..... the Buddha never entered into Parinirvana; the Good
Dharma will never perish. He showed an earthly death merely for the
benefits of sentient beings.”.....
Here we have the conception of a spiritual Dharmakâya germinating out
of the corporeal death of Çâkyamuni.[111] Here we have the bridge
that spans {255} the wide gap between the human Çâkyamuni Buddha and
the spiritual existence of the Dharmakâya. The Buddha did not die
after he partook of the food offered by Chunda. His age was not
eighty. His life did not pass to an airy nothingness when his cinerary
urns were divided among kings and Brahmans. His virtues and merits
which were accumulated throughout innumerable kalpas, could not come
to naught so abruptly. What constituted the essence of his life--and
that of ours too--could not perish with the vicissitudes of the
corporeal existence. The Buddha as a particular individual being was
certainly subject to transformation--so is every mortal, but his truth
must abide forever. His Dharmakâya is above birth and death and even
above Nirvâna; but his Body of Transformation comes out of the womb
of Tathâgata as destined by karma and vanishes into it when the karma
exhausts its force. The Buddha who is still seated at the summit of
the Gridhrakuta, delivering to all beings the message of joy and
bliss, and who among other precious teachings bequeathed to us {256}
such sûtras as the _Avatamsaka_, the _Pundarîka_, etc., is no more
nor less than an expression of the eternal spirit. Thus came the
doctrine of Dharmakâya to be formulated by the Mahâyânists, and
from this the transition to that of Trikâya was but a natural sequence.
Because one without the other could not give an adequate solution of
the problems above cited.
_The Trikâya as Explained in the Suvarna Prabhâ._
What then is the Trikâya or triple body of the Tathâgata? It is (1)
Nirmâna Kâya, the Body of Transformation; (2): Sambhoga Kâya, the Body
of Bliss; and (3) Dharma Kâya, the Body of Dharma. If we draw a
parallelism between the Buddhist and the Christian trinity, the Body
of Transformation may be considered to correspond to Christ in the
flesh, the Body of Bliss either to Christ in glory or to Holy Ghost,
and Dharmakâya to Godhead.
Let us again quote from the _Suvarna Prabhâ_, in which (I-tsing’s
translation, chap. III.) we find the following statements concerning
the doctrine of Trikâya.
“The Tathâgata, when he was yet at the stage of discipline, practised
divers deeds of morality for the sake of sentient beings. The practise
finally attained perfection, reached maturity, and by virtue of its
merits he acquired a wonderful spiritual power. The power enabled him
to respond to the thoughts, deeds, and livings of sentient beings. He
thoroughly understood them and never missed the right opportunity
{257} [to respond to their needs]. He revealed himself in the right
place and in the right moment; he acted rightly, assuming various
bodily forms [in response to the needs of mortal souls]. These bodily
forms are called the Nirmânakâya of the Tathâgata.
“But when the Tathâgatas, in order to make the Bodhisattvas thoroughly
conversant with the Dharma, to instruct them in the highest reality,
to let them understand that birth-and-death (_samsâra_) and Nirvâna
are of one taste, to destroy the thoughts of the ego, individuality,
and the fear [of transmigration], and to promote happiness, to lay
foundation for innumerable Buddha-dharmas, to be truly in accord with
Suchness, the knowledge of Suchness, and the Spontaneous Will,
manifest themselves to the Bodhisattvas in a form which is perfect
with the thirty-two major and eighty minor features of excellence and
shining with the halo around the head and the back, the Tathâgatas are
said to have assumed the Body of Bliss or Sambhogakâya.[112]
“When all possible obstacles arising from sins [material, intellectual,
and emotional] are perfectly removed, and when all possible good
dharmas are preserved, there would remain nothing but Suchness and the
knowledge of Suchness,--this is the Dharmakâya.
“The first two forms of the Tathâgata are provisional [and temporal]
existences; but the last one is a reality, wherein the former two find
the reason of {258} their existence. Why? Because when deprived of the
Dharma of Suchness and of knowledge of non-particularity, no
Buddha-dharma can ever exist; because it is Suchness and Knowledge of
Suchness that absorbs within itself all possible forms of
Buddha-wisdom and renders possible a complete extinction of all
passions and sins [arising from particularity].”
According to the above, the Dharmakâya which is tantamount to Suchness
or Knowledge of Suchness is absolute; but like the moon whose image is
reflected in a drop of water as well as in the boundless expanse of
the waves, the Dharmakâya assumes on itself all possible aspects from
the grossest material form to the subtlest spiritual existence. When
it responds to the needs of the Bodhisattvas whose spiritual life is
on a much higher plane than that of ordinary mortals, it takes on
itself the Body of Bliss or Sambhogakâya. This Body is a supernatural
existence, and almost all the Buddhas in the Mahâyâna scriptures
belong to this class of being. Açvaghoṣa (p. 101) says: “The Body has
infinite forms. The form has infinite attributes. The attribute has
infinite excellences. And the accompanying fruition, that is, the
region where they are destined to be born [by their previous karma],
also has infinite merits and ornamentations. Manifesting itself
everywhere, the Body of Bliss is infinite, boundless, limitless,
unintermittent [in its activity] which comes directly from the Mind
[Dharmakâya].”
But the Buddhas revealed to the eyes of common {259} mortals are not
of this kind. They are common mortals themselves, and the earthly
Çâkyamuni who came out of the womb of Mâyâdevî and passed away under
the sâla trees at the age of eighty years was one of them. He was
essentially a manifestation of the Dharmakâya, and as such we ordinary
people also partake something of him. But the masses, unless favored
by good karma accumulated in the past, are generally under the spell
of ignorance. They do not see the glory of Dharmakâya in its perfect
purity shining in the lilies of the field and sung by the fowls of the
air. They are blindly groping in the dark wilderness, they are vainly
seeking, they are wildly knocking. To the needs of these people the
Dharmakâya responds by assuming an earthly form as a human Buddha.
_Revelation in All Stages of Culture._
_En passant_, let us remark that it is in this sense that Christ is
conceived by Buddhists also as a manifestation of the Dharmakâya in a
human form. He is a Buddha and as such not essentially different from
Çâkyamuni. The Dharmakâya revealed itself as Çâkyamuni to the Indian
mind, because that was in harmony with its needs. The Dharmakâya
appeared in the person of Christ on the Semitic stage, because it
suited their taste best in this way. The doctrine of Trikâya, however,
goes even further and declares that demons, animal gods,
ancestor-worship, nature-worship, and what not, are all due to the
activity and revelation of the Dharmakâya responding to the spiritual
needs of barbarous {260} and half-cultured people. The Buddhists think
that the Dharmakâya never does things that are against the spiritual
welfare of its creatures, and that whatever is done by it is for their
best interests at that moment of revelation, no matter how they
comprehend the nature of the Dharmakâya. The Great Lord of Dharma
never throws a pearl before the swine, for he knows the animal’s needs
are for things more substantial. He does not reveal himself in an
exalted spiritual form to the people whose hearts are not yet capable
of grasping anything beyond the grossly material. As they understand
animal gods better than a metaphysical or highly abstracted being, let
them have them and derive all possible blessings and benefits through
their worshiping. But as soon as they become dissatisfied with the
animal or human-fashioned gods, there must not be a moment’s hesitation
to let them have exactly what their enlightened understanding can
comprehend.[113] {261} They are thus all the while being led, though
unconsciously on their part, to the higher and higher region of
mystery, till they come fully to grasp the true and real meaning of
the Dharmakâya in its absolute purity, or, to use Christian
terminology, till “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the
glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory, even as
by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Cor III. 18.)
The Mahâyânists now argue that the reason why Çâkyamuni entered into
Parinirvana when his worldly career was thought by him to be over is
that by this his resignation to the law of birth and death, he wished
to exemplify in him the impermanency of worldly life and the folly of
clinging to it as final reality. As for his Dharmakâya, it has an
eternal life, it was never born, and it would never perish; and when
called by the spiritual needs of the Bodhisattvas, it will cast off
the garb of absoluteness and preach in the form of a Sambhogakâya
“never-ceasing sermons which run like a stream for ever and aye.” It
will be evident from this that Buddhists are ready to consider all
religious or moral leaders of mankind, whatever their nationality, as
the Body of Transformation of the Dharmakâya. Translated into Christian
thoughts, God reveals himself in every being that is worthy of him. He
reveals himself not only at a certain {262} period in history, but
everywhere and all the time. His glory is perceived throughout all the
stages of human culture. This manifestation, from the very nature of
God, cannot be intermittent and sporadic as is imagined by some
“orthodox Christians.” The following from St. Paul’s first Epistle to
the Corinthians (Chap. XIII), when read in this connection, sounds
almost like a Buddhist philosopher’s utterance: “Now there are
diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities
of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of
operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the
manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.
For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the
word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same
Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another
the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another divers kinds
of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues; but all these
worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man
severally as he will. For as the body is one and hath many members,
and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so
also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body,
whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have
been all made to drink into one Spirit.”
{263}
_The Sambhogakâya._
One peculiar point in the doctrine of Trikâya, which modern minds find
rather difficult to comprehend, is the conception of the Sambhogakâya,
or the Body of Bliss. We can understand the relation between the
Dharmakâya and Nirmânakâya, the latter being similar to the notion of
God incarnate or to that of Avatara. Inasmuch as the Dharmakâya does
not exist outside the triple world but in it as the raison d’être of
its existence, all beings must be considered a partial manifestation
of it; and in this sense Buddhists sometimes call themselves
Bodhisattvas, that is, beings of intelligence, because intelligence
(_Bodhi_) is the psychological aspect of the Dharmakâya as realised in
sentient beings. But the conception of Sambhogakâya is altogether too
mysterious to be fathomed by a limited consciousness. The fact becomes
more apparent when we are told that the Sambhogakâya, Body of Bliss,
is a corporeal existence and at the same time filling the universe and
that there are two forms of the Body of Bliss, one for self-enjoyment
and the other as a sort of religious object for the Bodhisattvas.
That the Body of Bliss is corporeal and yet infinite has already been
shown by the quotations from the _Suvarna Prabhâ_ and Açvaghoṣa on
the preceding pages. For further confirmation of this point no less
authority than Asanga and Vasubandhu will be here referred to.
In _A Comprehensive Treatise on the Mahâyana_ and {264} in its
commentary, the author Asanga and the commentator Vasubandhu endeavor
to prove why the Body of Bliss cannot be the raison d’être of the
Dharmakâya, instead of vice versa; and in this connection they argue
that (1) the Body of Bliss consists of the five Skandhas, that is, of
material form (_rûpa_), sensation (_vedanâ_), ideas (_samjñâ_), deeds
(_sanskâra_), and consciousness (_vijñâna_); (2) it is subject to
particularisation; (3) it reveals different virtues and characters
according to the desires of Bodhisattvas; (4) even to the same
individual it appears differently at different times; (5) when it
manifests itself simultaneously before an assemblage of Bodhisattvas
of divers characters and qualifications, it at once assumes divers
forms, in order to satisfy their infinitely diversified inclinations;
(6) it is a creation of the Âlayavijñâna, All-conserving Mind.
These six peculiarities of the Body of Bliss as enumerated by Asanga
and Vasubandhu make it indeed entirely dependent on the Dharmakâya,
but they do not place us in any better position to penetrate into the
deep mystery of its nature. Its supernatural incomprehensibility
remains the same forever. In a certain sense, however, the Body of
Bliss may be considered to be corresponding to the Christian idea of
an angel. Supernaturalness and luminosity are the two characters
possessed by both, but angels are merely messengers of God
communicating the latter’s will to human beings. When they reveal
themselves to a specially favored person, it is not of their own {265}
account. When they speak to him at all, it is by the name of the being
who sent them. They do not represent him, they do not act his own will
by themselves. On the contrary, the Body of Bliss is the master of its
own. It is an expression of the Dharmakâya. It instructs and benefits
all the creatures who come to it. It acts according to its own will
and judgment. In these respects the Body of Bliss is altogether
different from the Christian conception of angels. But will it be more
appropriately compared to Christ in glory?
Let us make another quotation from later authorities than Asanga and
his brother Vasubandhu, and let us see more convincingly what
complicated notions are involved in the idea of the Body of Bliss.
According to the commentators on Vasubandhu’s _Vijñânamâtra Çâstra_
(a treatise on the Yoga philosophy),[114] the Body of Bliss has two
distinct aspects: (1) The body obtained by the Tathâgata for his
self-enjoyment, by dint of his religious discipline through eons; (2)
The body which the Tathâgata manifests to the {266} Bodhisattvas in
Pure Land (_sukhâvatî_). This last body is in possession of wonderful
spiritual powers, reveals the Wheel of Dharma, resolves all the
religious doubts raised by the Bodhisattvas, and lets them enjoy the
bliss of the Mahâyâna Dharma.
_A Mere Subjective Existence._
Judging from all these characterisations, the most plausible
conclusion that suggests itself to modern sceptical minds is that the
Sambhogakâya must be a mere creation of an intelligent, finite mind,
which is intently bent on reaching the highest reality, but, not being
able, on account of its limitations, to grasp the object in its
absoluteness, the finite mind fabricates all its ideals after its own
fashion into a spiritual-material being, which is logically a
contradiction, but religiously an object deserving veneration and
worship. And this being is no more than the Body of Bliss.[115] It
lies half way between the pure being of Dharmakâya and the earthly
form of Nirmânakâya, the Body of Transformation. It does not belong
to either, but partakes something of both. It is in a sense spiritual
{267} like the Dharmakâya, and yet it cannot go beyond material
limitations, for it has a form, definite and determinate. When the
human soul is thirsty after a pure being or an absolute which cannot
be comprehended in a palpable form, it creates a hybrid, an imitation,
or a reflection, and tries to be satisfied with it, just as a little
girl has her innate and not yet fully developed maternity satisfied by
tenderly embracing and nursing the doll, an inanimate imitation of a
real living baby. And the Mahâyânists seem to have made most of this
childish humanness. They produced as many sûtras as their spiritual
yearnings demanded, quite regardless of historical facts, and made the
Body of Bliss of the Tathâgata the author of all these works. For if
the Dharmakâya of the Tathâgata never entered into Parinirvâna, why
then could he not deliver sermons and cite gâthâs as often as beings
of intelligence (Bodhisattvas) felt their needs? The _Suvarna Prabhâ_
(fas. 2, chap. 3) again echoes this sentiment as follows:
“To illustrate by analogy, the sun or the moon does not make any
conscious discrimination, nor does the water-mirror, nor the light
[conceived separate from the body from which it emanates]. But when
all these three are brought together, there is produced an image [of
the sun or the moon in the water]. So it is with Suchness and
Knowledge of Suchness. It is not possessed of any particular
consciousness, but by virtue of the Spontaneous Will [inherent in the
nature of Suchness, or what is the same thing, in the {268}
Dharmakâya], the Body of Transformation or of Bliss [as a shadow of
the Dharmakâya] reveals itself in response to the spiritual needs of
sentient beings.
“And, again, as the water-mirror boundlessly expanding reflects in all
different ways the images of âkâsa (void space) through the medium
of light, while space itself is void of all particular marks, so the
Dharmakâya reflects its images severally in the receiving minds of
believers, and this by virtue of Spontaneous Will. The Will creates
the Body of Transformation as well as the Body of Bliss in all their
possible aspects, while the original, the Dharmakâya, does not suffer
one whit a change on this account.”
According to this, it is evident that whenever our spiritual needs
become sufficiently intense there is a response from the Dharmakâya,
and that this response is not always uniform as the recipient minds
show different degrees of development, intellectually and spiritually.
If we call this communion between sentient souls and the Dharmakâya
an inspiration, all the phenomena that flow out of fulness of heart
and reflect purity of soul should be called “works of inspiration”;
and in this sense the Mahâyânists consider their scriptures as
emanating directly from the fountainhead of the Dharmakâya.
_Attitude of Modern Mahâyânists._
Modern Mahâyânists in full accordance with this interpretation of
the Doctrine of Trikâya do not place {269} much importance on the
objective aspects of the Body of Bliss (_Sambhogakâya_). They consider
them at best the fictitious products of an imaginative mind; they
never tarry a moment to think that all these mysterious Tathâgatas or
Bodhisattvas who are sometimes too extravagantly and generally too
tediously described in the Mahâyâna texts are objective realities,
that the Sukhâvatîs or Pure Lands[116] are decorated with such
worldly stuff as gold, silver, emerald, cat’s eye, pearl, and other
precious stones, that pious Buddhists would be transferred after their
death to these ostentatiously ornamented heavens, be seated on the
pedestals of lotus-flowers, surrounded by innumerable Bodhisattvas and
Buddhas, and would enjoy all the spiritual enjoyments that human mind
can conceive. On the contrary, modern Buddhists look with disdain on
these egotistic materialistic conceptions of religious life. For, to a
fully enlightened soul, of what use could those worldly treasures {270}
be? What happiness, earthly or heavenly, does such a soul dream of,
outside the bliss of embracing the will of the Dharmakâya as his own?
_Recapitulation._
To sum up, the Buddha in the Pâli scriptures was a human being, though
occasionally he is credited to have achieved things supernatural and
superhuman. His historical career began with the abandonment of a
royal life, then the wandering in the wilderness, and a long earnest
meditation on the great problems of birth-and-death, and his final
enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, then his fifty years’ religious
peregrination along the valleys of the Ganges, and the establishment
of a religious system known as Buddhism, and finally his eternal
entrance into the “Parinirvâna that leaves nothing behind”
(_anupadhiçeṣanirvâna_). And as far as plain historical facts are
concerned, these seem to exhaust the life of Çâkyamuni on earth. But
the deep reverence which was felt by his disciples could not be
satisfied with this prosaic humanness of their master and made him
something more than a mortal soul. So even the Pâli tradition gives
him a supramundane life besides the earthly one. He is supposed to
have been a Bodhisattva in the Tuṣita heaven before his entrance into
the womb of Mâyâdevî. The honor of Bodhisattvahood was acceded to him
on account of his deeds of self-sacrifice which were praised throughout
his innumerable past incarnations. While he was walking {271} among us
in the flesh, he was glorified with the thirty-two major and eighty
minor excellent characteristics of a great man.[117] But he was not
the first Buddha that walked on earth to teach the Dharma, for there
were already seven Buddhas before him, nor was he the last one that
would appear among us, for {272} a Bodhisattva by the name of Maitreya
is now in heaven and making preparations for the attainment of
Buddhahood in time to come. But here stopped the Pâli writers, they
did not venture to make any further speculation on the nature of
Buddhahood. Their religious yearnings did not spur them to a higher
flight of the imagination. They recited simple sûtras or gâthâs,
observed the çilas (moral precepts) as strictly and literally as they
could, and thought the spirit of their Master still alive in these
instructions;--let alone the personality of the Tathâgata.
But there was at the same time another group of the disciples of the
Buddha, whose religious and intellectual inclinations were not of the
same type as their fellow-believers; and on that account a simple
faith in the Buddha as present in his teachings did not quite satisfy
them. They perhaps reasoned in this fashion: “If there were seven
Buddhas before the advent of the Great Muni of Çakya and there would
be one more who is to come, where, let us ask, did they derive their
authority and knowledge to preach? How is it that there cannot be any
more Buddhas, that they do not come to us much oftener? If they were
human beings like ourselves, why not we ourselves be Buddhas?” These
questions, when logically carried out, naturally led them to the
theory of Dharmakâya, that all the past Buddhas, and those to come,
and even we ordinary mortals made of clay and doomed to die soon, owe
the raison d’être of their existence to the Dharmakâya, which alone
is immortal in us {273} as well as in Buddhas. The first religious
effort we have to make is, therefore, to recognise this archetype of
all Buddhas and all beings. But the Dharmakâya as such is too abstract
for the average mind to become the object of its religious
consciousness; so they personified or rather materialised it. In other
words, they idealised Çâkyamuni, endowed him not only with the
physical signs (_lakṣas_) of greatness as in the Pâli scriptures,
but with those of celestial transfiguration, and called him a Body of
Bliss of the Tathâgata; while the historical human Buddha was called
a Body of Transformation and all sentient beings Bodhisattvas, that
is, beings of intelligence destined to become Buddhas.
This idealised Buddha, or, what is the same thing, a personified
Dharmakâya, according to the Mahâyâna Buddhists, not only revealed
himself in the particular person of Siddhârtha Gautama in Central
Asia a few thousand years ago, but is revealing himself in all times
and all places. There is no specially favored spot on the earth where
only the Buddha makes his appearance; from the zenith of Akaniṣta
heaven down to the bottom of Nâraka, he is manifesting uninterruptedly
and unintermittently and is working out his ideas, of which, however,
our limited understanding is unable to have an adequate knowledge. The
_Avatamsaka Sûtra_ (Buddhabhadra’s translation, fas. 45, chap. 34)
describes how the Buddha works out his scheme of salvation in all
possible ways. (See also the _Saddharma_ {274} _pundarîka_, Kern’s
translation, chap. 2, p. 30 et seq., and also pp. 413-411.).
“In this wise the Buddha teaches and delivers all sentient beings
through his religious teachings whose number is innumerable as atoms.
He may reveal sometimes in the world of devas, sometimes in that of
Nâgas, Yakṣas, Gandharvas, Asuras, Garudas, Kinnaras, Mahoragas, etc.,
sometimes in the world of Brahmans, sometimes in the world of human
beings, sometimes in the palace of Yâmarâja (king of death), sometimes
in the underworld of damned spirits, ghosts, and beasts. His
all-swaying compassion, intelligence, and will would not rest until
all beings had been brought under his shelter through all possible
means of salvation. He may achieve his work of redemption sometimes by
means of his name, sometimes by means of memory, sometimes of voice,
sometimes of perfect illumination, sometimes of the net of
illumination. Whenever and wherever conditions are ripe for his
appearance, he would never fail to present himself before sentient
beings and also to manifest views of grandeur and splendor.
“The Buddha does not depart from his own region, he does not depart
from his seat in the tower; yet he reveals himself in all the ten
quarters of the globe. He would sometimes emanate from his own body
the clouds of Nirmânakâyas, or sometimes reveal himself in an
undivided personality, and itinerating in all quarters would teach and
deliver all sentient beings. He may assume sometimes the form of a
Çrâvaka, sometimes that of a Brahmadeva, sometimes that of {275} an
ascetic, sometimes that of a good physician, sometimes that of a
tradesman, sometimes that of a Bhikṣu [or honest worker], sometimes
that of an artist, sometimes that of a deva. Again, he may reveal
himself sometimes in all the forms of art and industry, sometimes in
all the places of congregation, such as towns, cities, villages, etc.
And whatever his subjects for salvation may be, and whatever his
surroundings, he will accommodate himself to all possible conditions
and achieve his work of enlightenment and salvation”[118]....
The practical sequence of this doctrine of Trikâya is apparent; it
has ever more broadened the spirit of tolerance in Buddhists. As the
Dharmakâya universally responds to the spiritual needs of all sentient
beings in all times and in all places and at any stage of their
spiritual development, Buddhists consider all spiritual leaders,
whatever their nationality and personality, as the expressions of the
one omnipotent Dharmakâya. And as the Dharmakâya always manifests
itself for the best interests of sentient creatures, even those
doctrines and their authors that are apparently against the teachings
of Buddhism are tolerated through the conviction that they are all
moving according to the Spontaneous Will that pervades everywhere and
works all the time. Though, superficially, they may appear as evils,
their central and final aim is goodness and harmony which are destined
by the Will of the Dharmakâya to overcome this world of tribulations
and {276} contradictions. The general intellectual tendency of
Buddhism has done a great deal towards cultivating a tolerant spirit
in its believers, and we must say that the doctrine of Trinity which
appears sometimes too radical in its pantheistic spirit has
contributed much to this cause.