CHAPTER X NOTES.
[104] What follows is selected from a short sûtra called The Mahâvaipulya-Tathâgatagarbha Sûtra, translated into Chinese by Buddhabhadra of the Eastern Tsin dynasty (A.D. 371-420). Nanjo, No. 384. ([return])
[105] Niyuta is an exceedingly large number, but generally considered to be equal to one billion. ([return])
[106] All these are unhuman forms of existence, including demons, dragon-kings, winged beasts, etc. ([return])
[107] Âçrava literally means “oozing,” or “flowing out,” and the Chinese translators rendered it by lou, dripping, or leaking. Roughly speaking, it is a general name for evils, principally material and sensuous. According to an Indian Buddhist scholar, Âçrava has threefold sense: (1) “keeping,” for it retains all sentient beings in the whirlpool of birth and death; (2) “flowing,” for it makes all sentient beings run in the stream of birth and death; (3) “leaking,” or “oozing,” for it lets such evils as avarice, anger, lust, etc., ooze out from the six sense-organs after the fashion of an ulcer, which lets out blood and filthy substance. The cause of Âçrava is a blind will, and its result is birth and death. Specifically, Bhâvâçrava is one of the three Âçravas, which are (1) kâmâçrava, (2) vidyâçrava, and (3) bhâvâçrava. The first is egotistic desires, the second is ignorance, and the third is the material existence which we have to suffer on account of our previous karma. ([return])
[108] Our thoughtful readers must have noticed here that the conceptions of the Buddha as entertained by the Mahâsangika School (Great Council) closely resemble those of the Mahâyâna Buddhism. Though we are still unable to trace step by step the development of Mahâyânism in India, the hypothesis assumed by most of Japanese Buddhist scholars is that the Mahâsangika was Mahâyânistic in tendency. ([return])
[109] The Mahâparinibbâna sutta. ([return])
[110] There are three Chinese translations of this sûtra: the first, by Dharmarakṣa during the first two decades of the fifth century A.D.; the second, by Paramârtha of the Liang dynasty, who came to China A.D. 546 and died A.D. 569; and the third, by I-tsing of the Tang dynasty who came back from his Indian pilgrimage in the year 695 and translated this sûtra A.D. 703. The last is the only complete Chinese translation of the Suvarnâ Prabhâ. A part of the original Sanskrit text recovered in Nepal was published by the Buddhist Text Society of India in 1898. Nanjo, Nos. 126, 127, 130. ([return])
[111] The notion that great men never die seems to be universal. Spiritually they would never perish, because the ideas that moved them and made them prominent in the history of humanity are born of truth. And in this sense every person who is possessed of worthy thoughts is immortal, while souls that are made of trumpery are certainly doomed to annihilation. But the masses are not satisfied with this kind of immortality. They must have something more tangible, more sensual, and more individual. The notion of bodily resurrection of Christ is a fine illustration of this truth. When the followers of Christ opened the master’s grave, they did not find his body, so says legend, and they at once conceived the idea of resurrection, for they reasoned that such a great man as Jesus could not suffer the same fate that befalls common mortals only. The story of his corporeal resurrection now took wing and went wild; some heard him speak to them, some saw him break bread, and others even touched his wounds. What a grossly materialistic conception early Christians (and alas, even some of the twentieth century) cherished about resurrection and immortality! It is no wonder, therefore, that primitive Buddhists raised a serious question about the personality of Buddha which culminated in the conception of the Sambhogakâya, Body of Bliss, by Mahâyânists. ([return])
[112] Compare this to the transfigured Christ. ([return])
[113] Cf. I Cor. XIII, II. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” This point of our ever-ascending spiritual progress is well illustrated in the Saddharma-pundarîka Sûtra. See Chapters II, III, IV, V, and XI. The following passage quoted from chap. II, p. 49 (Kern’s translation) will give a tolerably adequate view concerning diversity of means and unity of purpose as here expounded: “Those highest of men have, all of them, revealed most holy laws by means of illustrations, reasons and arguments, with many hundred proofs of skillfulness (upâyakauçalya). And all of them have manifested but one vehicle and introduced but one on earth; by one vehicle have they led to full ripeness inconceivably many thousands of kotis of beings.” As was elsewhere noted, this doctrine is sometimes known as the theory of Upâya. Upâya is very difficult term to translate into English; it literally means “way,” “method,” or “strategy.” For fuller interpretation see [p. 298], [footnote]. ([return])
[114] This is one of the most important philosophical works of the Yogacâra school. Vasubandhu wrote the text (Nanjo, No. 1215) which consists only of thirty verses, but there appeared many commentators after the death of the author, who naturally entertained widely different views among themselves on the subject-matter, as it is too tersely treated in the text. Hsüen Tsang made selections out of the ten noted Hindu exegetists in A.D. 659 and translated them into the Chinese language. The compilation consists of ten fascicles and is known as Discourse on the Ideality of the Universe (a free rendering of the Chinese title Chang wei shi lun, Nanjo, No. 1197). ([return])
[115] May I venture to say that the conception of God as entertained by most Christians is a Body of Bliss rather than the Dharmakâya itself? In some respects their God is quite spiritual, but in others he is thought of as a concrete material being like ourselves. It seems to me that the human soul is ever struggling to free itself from this paradox, though without any apparent success, while the masses are not so intellectual and reflective enough as to become aware of this eternal contradiction which is too deeply buried in their minds. ([return])
[116] The reader must not think that there is but one Pure Land which is elaborately described in the Sukhâvatî Vyûha Sûtra as the abode of the Tathâgata Amitâbha, situated innumerable leagues away in the West. On the contrary, the Mahâyâna texts admit the existence of as innumerable pure lands as there are Tathâgatas and Bodhisattvas, and every single one of these holy regions has no boundary and is coexistent with the universe, and, therefore, their spheres necessarily intercrossing and overlapping one another. It would look to every intelligent mind that those innumerable Buddha-countries existing in such a mysterious and incomprehensible manner cannot be anything else than our own subjective creation. ([return])
[117] For a description of these marks see the Dharmasangraha, pp. 53 ff. A process of mystifying or deifying the person of Buddha seems to have been going on immediately after the death of the Master; and the Mahâyânistic conception of Nirmânakâya and Sambhogakâya is merely the consummation of this process. Southern Buddhists who are sometimes supposed to represent a more “primitive” form of Buddhism describe just as much as Mahâyânism the thirty-two major and eighty minor excellent physical marks of a great man as having been possessed by Çâkyamuni, (for instance, see the Milindapañha, S. B. E. Vol. XXXV. p. 116). But any person with common sense will at once see the absurdity of representing any human being with those physical peculiarities. And this seems to have inspired more rational Mahâyânists to abandon the traditional way of portraying the human Buddha with those mysterious signs. They transferred them through the doctrine of Trikâya to the characterisation of the Sambhogakâya Buddha, that is, to the Buddha enjoying in a celestial abode the fruit of his virtuous earthly life. The Buddha who walked in the flesh as the son of King Suddhodana was, however, no more than an ordinary human being like ourselves, because he appeared to us in a form of Nirmânakâya, i.e. as a Body of Transformation, devoid of any such physical peculiarities known as thirty-two or eighty lakṣanas. Southern Buddhists, so called, seem, however, to have overlooked the ridiculousness of attributing these fantastic signs to the human Buddha; and this fact explains that as soon as the memory of the personal disciples of Buddha about his person vanished among the later followers, intense speculation and resourceful imagination were constantly exercised until the divers schools settled the question each in its own way. ([return])