The journal of the Oriental SOciety of Australia.

The Conception of Buddhahood in Earlier and Later Buddhism

7
no. 1-2
1970
87-118
0030-5340

Tlft-e C~)neeption of BudiU~ahood in

and L{deB" Buddhism

EU'I9 lie.

A. J.

PRINCE

University of Sydney

I
All great religions have a dual character. On the one hand, as
repositories of timeless truth, they are impervious to change; but
on the other hand, as 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 prejudices 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 literature 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 doctrines 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
87

strange paradoxes to an unlikely audience of monks, gods, nature

spirits, and bodhisattvas little less exalted than himself.
Obviously, a considerable development of doctrine with regard
to the Buddha has taken place, and this has usually been explained by Western and Indian scholars in terms of "deification"
due to the pressure of popular devotion. Thus one authority
writes:
In (original Buddhism) the person of the Buddha was at first
quite human. He was the great Physician, healer of men, prescribing
the means of curing their misery; not, at first, a god.
But even within the sphere of Hinayana, there soon arose a
tendency to treat the Buddha as a god, or at least as superhuman
. . . In the Mahayfma, this idea was developed much farther. The
Buddha now came to be regarded as completely and permanently
above humanity . . . All Buddhas are divine and must be Worshipped devoutly by true Buddhists; Buddha~worship becomes a
fundamental element of Mahayana.!

Another scholar traces this transformation to the demands of the

laity:
If the monks, dedicated to a life of study and meditation, can
reconcile themselves to seeing in their founder only a sage who has
entered Nirvana, the lay followers, exposed to the difficulties of the
age, demand something other than a "dead god" whose "relics"
(sarira) alone can be venerated. They want a living god, a "god
superior to the gods" (devdtideva) who continues his work of salvation among them, who can foretell the future and perform miracles
and whose worship (pujd) will be something other than a mer~
commemoration (anusmrti).2

Certain objections might, however, be made against the interpretation put forward in these two passages, as in numerous
works by other writers. Firstly, it seems to underrate the very real
continuity of doctrine which still links the later concept of
buddhahood to the earlier one. Secondly, the importance placed
on the role of the laity and popular devotion, apart from being
inadequately supported by concrete evidence, hardly seems consistent with the fact that the Mahayana sutras not only are still
unmistakably monastic in style and content, but also expound
ideas which are much more complex and abstruse than those
taught in the canonical works of the earlier schools. In this
connection, one could also point to the fact that Theravada
Buddhism actually succeeded in supplanting the Mahayana in
much of South-east Asia, where it retains its popularity among
the laity to the present dav. And lastly-perhaps the most
important point of all-Buddhist doctrine is being interpreted
here, not in its own terms, but in the light of ideas drawn from
other religious traditions.
1 Franklin Edgerton, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Language and Literature (Banaras Hindu University, 1954), pp. 8-9.
2 Etienne Lamotte, Histoire du Bouddhisme lndien: des Origines il
['Ere Saka (Louvain, 1958), p. 714.
88

In 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 representative 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. In doing so, I shall confine my attention
strictly to Buddhist doctrine as expressed in the canonical literature, 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.

II
From the suttas of the Pfili Canon it would not be difficult to
draw a portrait of the Buddha that would strike a secular historian 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
DN = Digha Nikaya
MN = Majjhima Nikaya
SN = Samyutta Nikaya
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.
Proper names and technical terms will be given in their Sanskrit
form, where th~t c1iffers from the Pil.li, except where the reference is
to specifically Pli literature (e.g. "sutta").

89

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 en~
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
It 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 importance 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 completelyawakened (sammasambuddho)".lS Then there is the wellknown passage in which the Buddha, on being asked what sort of
5

6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

Lineage of the Silkyas given at DN I 92-3. (Note that this and

following references are intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive.)
Sn verses 423, 991; MN II 54, 133 etc.
MN 1163.
MN I 163-6.
MN I 247, 170.
MN I 21-3, 167.
MN 182; DN II 100.
DN II 155.
DN II 146-7, 156.
DN 146.
MN I 171-2.
90

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 17 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.
I know the lineage of ordinary folk,
But I am nothing: a sage I roam the world ...
You do wrong to ask about my lineage.

It 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, immeasurable, unfathomable, as is the great ocean. 21 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
17
18

AN II 37-9.
Verses 455-6.
See Lamotte, op. cit., pp. 446-7.
19 Sn verse 1076.
20 DhTJ no. 93.
21 MN 1487.
22 SN III 118.
23 Lun-vii 7.1.
24 SN II 105-6.
91

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 par~icular sutta is especia~ly 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 traditional 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 it is that he has known
or awakened to, the Pftli texts will answer simply: reality. YathliSn verses 284-315.
Cf. MN II 169, 200.
E.g. Sn verses 82, 176,208; MN II 143.
MN I 386; SN I 192; Sn verse 356.
E.g. Dhp 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.
25
26
27
28
29

92

bhUtam 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 "profound", "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 "immeasurable", "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 36 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. dharmabhuta), "one who has become Dharma",39 or, as the Pali commentary 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
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

MN 1167.
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).
SN III 120.
DN II 138.
SN I 138-40.
MN III 9.
DN II 100-1.
DN m 84.
DN III 84; MN 1111, III 195, 224.
Dialo~'l1es of the Buddha (= DN), translated by T. W. and C. A. F.
Rhys Davids (Luzac, 1965), Part III, p. 81, n. 4.
93

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
from 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 developments 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 attributes. Such a being is called a mahlipurusha (P. mahapurisa) ,
which literally means a "great man" but might be better translated 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 it 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 "composed, 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. 41 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
42
43

MN I 22-3.
E.g. MN I 170.
These last two are the fifth and sixth of the abovementioned Ten
Powers.
44 MN I 34; DN I 78.
94

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 Buddha46
and his monks 47 are sometimes represented as doing. A related
power, mentioned separately,48 is the ability to create a mindmade (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. It 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. 52 It is important to note that the possession of these attributes does not invalidate the Buddha's humanity in any way. On
the contrary, it indicates that in him humanity has become
45
46
47
48
49

DN I 78.
E.g. MN I 326 ff.; Udana 22-3.
E.g. DN I 215-20.
DN I 77.
DN III 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.
95

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

and yet, in this conception of the Buddha as mahdpurusha
superman, one may see already the basis for the later notion of
the sambhogakdya.

0;

III
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 knowledg~
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 any
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 as
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 formulations, 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: If 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 an
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, as a corollary to this, the
53

54

Arhat (P. arahat), literally "worthy one", as a technical term indicates someone who has attained Nirvana. As such it is also applied
to the Buddha himself.
SN III 66.

96

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. 55

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 disciples, is made to confess on one occasion that he has no direct
or complete knowledge of the Buddha's mind. 56 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 it-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", 59 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 longforgotten truths; (2) his heroic achievement in attaining his goal
55
56
57
58
59
60
61

MN I 171.
DN III 100.
SN V 437.
See, e.g. MN I 69-71.
MN 1169.
MN I 171.
MN I 21, 83.
97

unaided; (3) his range of knowledge and, to a lesser extent, his

skill in supernormal powers; and (4) his compassion and
competence in teaching.
IV
Now in the Mahayfma, buddhahood is esteemed above arhatship 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 distinction which came even in the Pali Canon to be drawn between
buddhas and arhats served as a starting point for further developments which were to culminate in the Mahayanist doctrine of the
Trikaya. If 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 inexpressible, 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
63

MN I 190-1.
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

existence is detennined by our actions in previous lives, which

are said to have been literally innumerable. 64
It 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
Bodhisattva66 proved so popular, however, and such an ideal
medium for religious propaganda, that their number grew considerably, 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
65
66
67

See the 15th chapter of SN, passim.

E.g. DN I 134-43, II 230-51; SN 1154.
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.
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".

99

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-systems68
which evolve, are destroyed and evolve again69 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. arCtpadhfitu), 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 commentator 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. 73 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 compassion as the essential motivation of buddhas, together with the
conviction that they possessed formidable skill in psychic powers,
68
69
70
71
72

73
74

MN III 102.
DN III 84-5.
Cf. n. 64 above.
These realms mentioned at DN III 215-6, 275; MN 1 410, III 63;
Sn verse 754; ltivuttaka 45.
VisuddhimaRfW p. 414.
DN III 99-100.
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

would make people reluctant to think that their beneficent

activities would be confined to one segment of so vast a universe.
With this consideration we are on the threshold of the
MaMyfma, so I will pause briefly to recapitulate before taking
the next step. I have said that according to the earlier schools of
Buddhism, as represented by the Theravada, buddhas are beings
who have awakened to the true nature of things after innumerable
lifetimes of striving for self-development and the welfare of others.
They appear at rare intervals, teaching the same truths, and their
lives, in their final existence, follow a more or less standard
pattern. Their essential motive is compassion, and in carrying out
their teaching work they are aided by their psychic powers,
acquired through their skill in meditation. They may be considered, I suggested, under three aspects: as embodiments of the
truth that they have realized, as mahapurushas or "supermen",
the archetypes of human perfection, and lastly as historical individuals. Of these three aspects, the first is the most important, the
second slightly less important, in theory at least, and the third of
no intrinsic importance at all. I further suggested that it would
not be unreasonable, in the light of this conception of buddhahood, to resolve some apparent anomalies in the Buddha's biography by interpreting them as devices meant to serve as an
example for others; and also that a universe extended virtually
to infinity would invite, and indeed almost compel, belief in the
concurrent existence of different buddhas in different parts of it.
From this conception of buddhahood I shall now proceed to
the MaMyanist view as embodied in the Trikaya doctrine. While
there is certainly a difference between the earlier and later
schools here, I hope it will be apparent that there is also continuity, and that there is no need to postulate a radical break in
Buddhist tradition, brought about by the intrusion of nonBuddhist influences.
V
Although the details vary from text to text, then, an outline of
Mahayana doctrine on buddhahood would run roughly as follows.
The culmination of a bodhisattva's career, his final attainment of
buddhahood, does not take place in this Realm of Desire at all,
but on some higher plane, generally assumed to be the
Akanishtha Heaven, which is the most rarefied stratum of the
Realm of Pure Form. 75 (This particular location would in fact
be the natural choice, for it is in the Akanishtha world, according
75

This is the view of the Lankavatara Sutra: N 28, 33, 51, 56, 215,
269, 361. It is accepted by Tibetan tradition today: cf. H. H. Tenzin
Gyatsho, the XIVth Dalai Lama of Tibet, The Opening of the
Wisdom-Eye (The Social Science Association Press of Thailand,
Bangkok, 1968), p. 91.
101

to the P~Ui Canon,76 that Nonreturners 77 find release.) Here the

buddha is visible, as 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 it 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 Canon78 of the
analogous case of a deva who wished to descend to a lower devaworld 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.
It 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 it exalts the buddhas to a level of attainment
which provides a fitting climax to their careers as bodhisattvas,
while at the same time allowing them full scope for compassionate 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
77
78

DN II 286, III 237.

Those who are reborn only once more-on a subtler plane of
existence-before attaining Nirvana.
DN II 210-11.
102

chiefly on four major sutras: the Prajnaparamita or "Transcendental 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 Vimalakirti"; 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.

VI
As has just been said, kaya means "body", but more than the
literal sense of the word is implied here. Just as Christian scriptures speak of the Church as the "body" of Christ,82 so for the
Buddhist sutras too kfiya indicates a principle as well as a
MA,
phenomenon. Nirmana means "creation" (from nih
literally to "measure out"), and in this context has the connotation of creation by psychic power. In Chinese it 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). It 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). Abbreviations 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.
81 H. V. Guenther prefers to speak of them as "stmctures of experience". See his "Tantra and Revelation", History of Religions, University of Chicago Press, Vol. 7, No.4 (May 1968), pp. 294-5.
82 1 Corinthians 12.17. Cf. 10hn 15.5.

103

been "created" (nimmita) by him, that is by his ionging-a

conclusion which the other devas accept. 83 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
It 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 nirmanakdya. The only difference is that in the Mahayana tradition the
buddhas are thought of as residing permanently in the devaworlds, while the whole of their apparent careers among men are
the work of nirmitabuddhas.
Thus one may read in the Lotus 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) tathagatabodies (- vigraha) preaching the Dharma to beings in buddhafields 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 something 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 Lotus 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 concentra83
84
85
86
87

88
89

DN I 17-18.
ltivuttaka 10l.
Visuddhimagga, p. 39l.
K 235.
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.
K. 318.
K. 319-20.

104

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 bodhisattva 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 bodhisattv~ then returns and preaches to the Disciples
in Vimalakirti's house. 91
In the Lankiivatara SCUra 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 "transcendental 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
91
92
93
94
95
96

K. 435.
L 322, 328.
Sagiithakam verses 38-40, N 269.
Edward Conze suggests that its beginnings may go back to 100 RC.
See his "The Development of Prajnaoi'iramita Thought", Thirty
Years of Buddhist Studies (Cassirer, Oxford, 1967), p. 124.
M 58.
M.94.
M 512-3. Note the plural. Cf. n. 105 below.
105

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 historian. 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 understanding of the sambhogakaya. It 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 "enjoyment" (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 indicate), 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, prakrtyatmabhava, "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 It 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 bodhisattvas on the lower planes, to instruct the beings there. I have
already tried to show how this notion might have evolved, by a
97
98
99

Edward Conze (trl.), The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom (Luzac,

1961), p. xv. (Hereafter referred to as Conze, Large Sutra.)
D. T. Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1957), pp. 322-4.
Ibid., p. 326.
106

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 Lotus SzUra devotes two chapters
(eight and nine) to predicting the future attainment of buddhahood, 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 illustrate 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",ll Or again, there is the story told
by the Buddha in the seventh chapter of the Lotus SzUra about
sixteen bodhisattvas, who had been princes in the remote past,
and had now become buddhas, preaching the Dharma in worldsystems of their own.
It 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 Suvarnaprabhasasutra, 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 enveloped in a halo of light. That body is called the sambhogakdya".102 An elaborate description of the sambhogakdya forms
part of the dazzling scene which opens one of the longer versions
of the Prajnapar'amitd:
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
100 Translating kotinayuta (or -niyuta), IiteraIIy "ten (English) biIIion",
by the literally much smaIIer but suitably vague term "myriad".
101 L 284.
102 T No. 665, p. 408b, 11.23-4; I-ching's translation. The Chinese term
used here is yinqshen "the body of response".
107

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 SUperman. 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 accumulated 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 buddhafield 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 9
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 distinguished here.
106 L 138-40.
107 See L, Appendix 1, p. 397.
108 L 119.
109 L 247; K 298, 423.
108

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") surrounded 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 establishes concerns such matters as generosity, meditation and concentration, . . . 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 Lotus satra, when
"the Saha-world114 split and burst open everywhere, and from the
clefts there emerged many hundred thousand myriads of bod110

K 323.
K 337.
112 N 56-7.
113 Conze, Large Sutra, p. 3.
114 SaMlaka (sahti = "the enduring (earth)"; laka =
name of Sakyamuni's buddha-field, in which we live.
111

109

"world") is the

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 bodhisattvas 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 assembly 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 .1 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 unaware of the uses of symbolism. Thus, for example, in the tenth
chapter of the Lotus SCUra 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 dwe1lingplace, 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 17 There are some well-known verses of similar import
in the seventh chapter of the Vimalakirtinirdesa, when Vim alaklrti, 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 sambhogakdya, may be found in the opening section of the larger
Prajnapara.mita:
Thereupon the Lord . . . put out his tongue, with which he covered
the world-system of a thousand million worlds, and many hundred
115 K
116 L
117 K
118 L

297-8.
104-5.
234.
293.
110

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 clearlydefined 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

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
It 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 transcendental wisdom with such warnings as these:
Since I do not find, apprehend or discover anything corresponding
to the term "bodhisattva", nor any transcendental wisdom, ... what
bodhisattva should I 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 independently 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 Lotus 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
124
125
126
127

L 166.
L 274.
M 7.
M 21.
K 20-21.

112

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 sambhogakiiya. 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 In
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, whereupon 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 it ...
Those who see such things as I saw
Will fail to see the Lord Buddha.1 32

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

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 it 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 Lotus 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: "essentially 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 K 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 II 46.
135 K 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

VIII

In 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 realization 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 Sam buddha,
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

It 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
Sanskrit verse quoted in Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra,
p.315.
140 See n. 38 above. It 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.
141 E.g. MN III 195,224.
142 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.
143 T No. 665, p. 408b 1.27-p. 408c 1.4.
139

115

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 indestructible one . . . It is the dharmaktiya. . . . The Tathagata's
body is a body which is no body. It knows neither arising nor
ceasing, neither training nor practice. It is boundless, infinite,
untraceable, without knowledge or form, absolutely pure and
motionless. . . ."146 And the Prajniiptiramita, lastly, makes the
same point by stating that "the Tathagata's suchness ... is also
no suchness ... It is totally immutClble, free from discrimination,
and is everywhere unhindered. . . . For the suchness of the
Tathagata is the suchness of all things (dharmas); they are one
single suchness, not two, not divided-a nondual suchness, which
is nowhere to be found, comes from nowhere, and belongs to
none."147
This dharmakaya, then, is the true body of the Buddha, according to the Mahayana, and the essence of buddhahood. In
adopting this position, however, the Mahayana has done little
more than restate the view of all earlier schools, which was
summed up above in the well-known admonition from the Pali
Canon: "What is there in this foul body? Who sees the Dharma
sees me; who sees me sees the Dharma".148

IX
In conclusion, I would like to return to the question raised at
the beginning of this paper: does the development of the Trikaya
doctrine in the Mahayana amount to a "deification" of the
Buddha, in contrast to a purely "human" conception of him in
the earlier schools? I hope that my analysis of the two conceptions of buddhahood in question has been sufficient to show that
in fact this is not the case, that the Buddha is never thought of
as merely "human" in earlier Buddhist tradition, any more than
he is regarded as "divine" by the Mahayana. The truth is that the
whole contrast between the divine and the human belongs to a
theistic outlook which is quite foreign to Buddhism. In Buddhism
the category of the divine is represented by the devas, and so
ranks lower than the category of the human, which finds its
highest expression in the person of the Buddha. Thus the devas
are depicted as coming for instruction to the Buddha, who is
expressly designated "teacher of devas and men".
144 N 192-3.
145 L 356.
146 T No. 374, p. 382c 1.27-p. 383a 1.9.
147 M 307.
148 Cf. n. 33 above.

116

Apart from the devas, with whom the gods of Vedic Brahmanism were equated by the Buddhists, theistic concepts are lacking
in Buddhism, and certainly the Buddha, even in the Mabayfma
sutras, would cut a very poor figure as an isvara or creator-God.
He does not create the world, for that is the work of ignorance
and craving. He does not establish the laws of righteousness: he
merely discovers them. He does not judge or condemn anyone;
nor does he even save anybody, except indirectly, through his
teaching-which states, among other things, that there is really
nobody to save in any case.
I would suggest, then, that this belief in the "deification" of
the Buddha comes simply from interpreting Buddhist doctrine in
terms of concepts which do not belong to it, being usually drawn
from Christianity or Hinduism. Now, while it is perfectly legitimate for a believing Hindu or Christian to interpret Buddhism in
the light of his own faith, as long as he is speaking as a believer,
the disinterested scholar is obliged to base his understanding
solely on the relevant data-which in this case means the texts
and traditions that are peculiar to Buddhism itself. One can no
more equate fundamental doctrines from one religious system
with those of another than one can identify words which have a
rich semantic content in one language with a single equivalent
in some other language. Thus there is no counterpart of "God"
in Buddhism, or of "Nirvana" in Christianity, any more than
there is a Sanskrit word for the English "love" or an English
word for the Sanskrit "dharma".
Even where there is no conscious confusion of doctrines, to
discuss Buddhist concepts in terms which carry non-Buddhist
overtones may still lead one unintentionally astray. So Edward
Conze, after pointing out that Buddhist teachings concerning
"saviours" may appear similar to Christian views at first glance,
goes on to warn that
at the same time, when the exact words of the original are faithfully
rendered into English it becomes obvious that there are no precise
equivalents to the key terms, that the finer shades of meaning and
the emotional flavours and overtones differ throughout, that much of
this teaching must seem strange to Christians, and that in fact the
logic behind it is at variance -with all the basic suppositions of
Christianity. From the very start we must be careful to eschew such
loaded words as worship, prayer, sin, love, eternal or supernatural,
and instead use more neutral terms such as revere . . . , vow, evil,
devotion, deathless and supernormal, and we must also distrust any
description of Buddhist doctrine which, without many qualifications,
attributes to the saviours "grace", "mercy" or "forgiveness",149

This is very sound advice, and it suggests a number of other

terms which should also be avoided when discussing the conception of buddhahood, particularly as expressed in the Trikaya
149

"Buddhist Saviours", in Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies, pp. 33-4.

117

doctrine. Thus it would be wrong to translate nirmanaktiya as

"incarnation" or "avatar", words which belong to Christian or
Hindu theology, or as "emanation", which would suggest Gnostic
or Neoplatonic ideas. Equally inappropriate would be its description as a "phantom body", or references to the Christian heresy
of Docetism, for these would imply a contrast between a "real"
world and an "illusory" nirmdnakaya that would be quite at
variance with the Buddhist view of the matter. The best translation here would probably be the literal one of "created body".
With the sambhogakdya, the difficulties arise not so much from
mistranslation as simply from misconception. As has been pointed
out, the concept bears no real resemblance to that of "God" or
"Isvara", and it would be wise, in this context, to refrain from
speaking of "gods" or "heavens", to say nothing of "pantheons"
or "theology". The inadequacy of theistic interpretations here is
shown by the fact that even Amitabha, perhaps the most widely
and highly revered sambhogakdya, is considered to have once
been a monk called Dhannakara, and to have attained his present
exalted state, and created Sukhavat!, solely by the force of his
original vows and the merit acquired during his long career as a
bodhisattva. 150
In the case of the dharmakdya, it is perhaps best to avoid
translation altogether, since even the word "body" can be very
misleading. Words which should not be used here would include
"Absolute", a term derived from Western metaphysics, to which
"unconditioned" (S. asamskrta, P. asankhata) would be a more
suitable alternative, "godhead", which suggests theistic doctrines,
"Brahman", a specifically Hindu concept, and lastly "substance"
or "essence", terms that would be especially distasteful to Buddhist tradition, which, particularly in its Mahayfma form, insists
that the essence of things is precisely that they have no essence,
that they are svabhdvasf1nya, "empty of essence or substance" (or
"having emptiness as their essence or substance").
In short, then, whatever the differences between earlier and
later Buddhism on the subject, the conception of buddhahood
remains something sui f!eneris. To paraphrase the Buddha's own
reply to a questioner,151 it cannot be reduced to the more familiar
categories of manhood or godhead, but must be taken on its own
terms, as simply buddha-hood.

150 This is the teaching of the Larger Sukhavativyuha. Dharmakara's

original name and the names of his parents are also apparently on
record: see John Blofeld (trL), The Zen Teaching of Hui Hai
(Rider, 1962), p. 93.
151 Cf. n. 16 above.
118