PRACTICAL BUDDHISM.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DHARMAKÂYA.
We have considered the doctrine of Suchness (Bhûtatathâtâ) under “Speculative Buddhism,” where it appeared altogether too abstract to be of any practical use to our earthly life. The theory as such did not seem to have any immediate bearings on our religious consciousness. The fact is, it must pass through some practical modification before it fully satisfies our spiritual needs. As there is no concrete figure in this world that is a perfect type of mathematical exactitude,—since everything here must be perceived through our more or less distorted physical organs; even so with pure reason: however perfect in itself, it must appear to us more or less modified while passing through our affective-intellectual objectives. This modification of pure reason, however, is necessary from the human point of view; because mere abstraction is contentless, lifeless, and has no value for our practical life, and again, because our religious cravings will not be satisfied with empty concepts lacking vitality.
We may sometimes ignore the claims of reason and rest satisfied, though usually unconsciously, with assertions which are conflicting when critically examined, but we cannot disregard by any means those of the religious sentiment, which finds satisfaction only in the very fact of things. If it ever harbored some flagrant contradictions in the name of faith, it was because its ever-pressing demands had to be met with even at the expense of reason. The truth is: the religious consciousness first of all demands fact, and when it attains that, it is not of much consequence to it whether or not its intellectual interpretation is logically tenable. If on the other hand logic be all-important and demand the first consideration and the sentiment had to follow its trail without a murmuring, our life would surely lose its savory aspect, turn tasteless, our existence would become void, the world would be a mere succession of meaningless events, and what remains would be nothing else than devastation, barrenness, and universal misery. The truth is, in this life the will predominates and the intellect subserves; which explains the fact that while all existing religions on the one hand display some logical inaccuracy and on the other hand a mechanical explanation of the world is gaining ground more and more, religion is still playing an important part everywhere in our practical life. Abstraction is good for the exercises of the intellect, but when it is the question of life and death we must have something more substantial and of more vitality than theorisation. It may not be a mathematically exact and certain proposition, but it must be a working, living, real theory, that is, it must be a faith born of the inmost consciousness of our being.
What practical transformations then has the doctrine of Suchness, in order to meet the religious demands, to suffer?
God.
Buddhism does not use the word God. The word is rather offensive to most of its followers, especially when it is intimately associated in vulgar minds with the idea of a creator who produced the world out of nothing, caused the downfall of mankind, and, touched by the pang of remorse, sent down his only son to save the depraved. But, on account of this, Buddhism must not be judged as an atheism which endorses an agnostic, materialistic interpretation of the universe. Far from it. Buddhism outspokenly acknowledges the presence in the world of a reality which transcends the limitations of phenomenality, but which is nevertheless immanent everywhere and manifests itself in its full glory, and in which we live and move and have our being.
God or the religious object of Buddhism is generally called Dharmakâya-Buddha and occasionally Vairocana-Buddha or Vairocana-Dharmakâya-Buddha; still another name for it is Amitâbha-Buddha or Amitâyur-Buddha,—the latter two being mostly used by the followers of the Sukhâvatî sect of Japan and China. Again, very frequently we find Çâkyamuni, the Buddha, and the Tathâgata stripped of his historical personality and identified with the highest truth and reality. These, however, by no means exhaust a legion of names invented by the fertile imagination of Buddhists for their object of reverence as called forth by their various spiritual needs.
Dharmakâya.
Western scholars usually translate Dharmakâya by “Body of the Law” meaning by the Law the doctrine set forth by Çâkyamuni the Buddha. It is said that when Buddha was preparing himself to enter into eternal Nirvâna, he commanded his disciples to revere the Dharma or religion taught by him as his own person, because a man continues to live in the work, deeds, and words left behind himself. So, Dharmakâya came to be understood by Western scholars as meaning the person of Buddha incarnated in his religion. This interpretation of the term is not very accurate, however, and is productive of some very serious misinterpretations concerning the fundamental doctrines of Mahâyânism. Historically, the Body of the Law as the Buddha incarnate might have been the sense of Dharmakâya, as we can infer from the occasional use of the term in some Hînayâna texts. But as it is used by Eastern Buddhists, it has acquired an entirely new significance, having nothing to do with the body of religious teachings established by the Buddha.
This transformation in the conception of Dharmakâya has been effected by the different interpretation the term Dharma came to receive from the hand of the Mahâyânists. Dharma is a very pregnant word and covers a wide range of meaning. It comes from the root dhṛ, which means “to hold,” “to carry”, “to bear,” and the primitive sense of dharma was “that which carries or bears or supports,” and then it came to signify “that which forms the norm, or regulates the course of things,” that is, “law,” “institution,” “rule,” “doctrine,” then, “duty,” “justice,” “virtue,” “moral merit,” “character,” “attribute,” “essential quality,” “substance,” “that which exists,” “reality,” “being,” etc., etc. The English equivalent most frequently used for dharma by Oriental scholars is law or doctrine. This may be all right as far as the Pâli texts go; but when we wish to apply this interpretation to the Mahâyâna terms, such as Dharmadhâtu, Dharmakâya, Dharmalakṣa, Dharmaloka, etc., we are placed in an awkward position and are at a loss how to get at the meaning of those terms. There are passages in Mahâyâna literature in which the whole significance of the text depends upon how we understand the word dharma. And it may even be said that one of the many reasons why Christian students of Buddhism so frequently fail to recognise the importance of Mahâyânism is due to their misinterpretation of dharma. Max Mueller, therefore, rightly remarks in his introduction to an English translation of the Vajracchedîka Sûtra, when he says: “If we were always to translate dharma by law, it seems to me that the whole drift of our treatise would become unintelligible.” Not only that particular text of Mahâyânism, but its entire literature would become utterly incomprehensible.
In Mahâyânism Dharma means in many cases “thing,” “substance,” or “being,” or “reality,” both in its particular and in its general sense, though it is also frequently used in the sense of law or doctrine. Kâya may be rendered “body,” not in the sense of personality, but in that of system, unity, and organised form. Dharmakâya, the combination of dharma and kâya, thus means the organised totality of things or the principle of cosmic unity, though not as a purely philosophical concept, but as an object of the religious consciousness. Throughout this work, however, the original Sanskrit form will be retained in preference to any English equivalents that have been used heretofore; for Dharmakâya conveys to the minds of Eastern Buddhists a peculiar religious flavor, which, when translated by either God or the All or some abstract philosophical terms, suffers considerably.
Dharmakâya as Religious Object.
As aforesaid, the Dharmakâya is not a product of philosophical reflection and is not exactly equivalent to Suchness; it has a religious signification as the object of the religious consciousness. The Dharmakâya is a soul, a willing and knowing being, one that is will and intelligence, thought and action. It is, as understood by the Mahâyânists, not an abstract metaphysical principle like Suchness, but it is living spirit, that manifests itself in nature as well as in thought. The universe as an expression of this spirit is not a meaningless display of blind forces, nor is it an arena for the struggle of diverse mechanical powers. Further, Buddhists ascribe to the Dharmakâya innumerable merits and virtues and an absolute perfect intelligence, and makes it an inexhaustible fountain-head of love and compassion; and it is in this that the Dharmakâya finally assumes a totally different aspect from a mere metaphysical principle, cold and lifeless.
The Avatamsaka Sûtra gives some comprehensive statements concerning the nature of the Dharmakâya as follows:
“The Dharmakâya, though manifesting itself in the triple world, is free from impurities and desires. It unfolds itself here, there, and everywhere responding to the call of karma. It is not an individual reality, it is not a false existence, but is universal and pure. It comes from nowhere, it goes to nowhere; it does not assert itself, nor is it subject to annihilation. It is forever serene and eternal. It is the One, devoid of all determinations. This Body of Dharma has no boundary, no quarters, but is embodied in all bodies. Its freedom or spontaneity is incomprehensible, its spiritual presence in things corporeal is incomprehensible. All forms of corporeality are involved therein, it is able to create all things. Assuming any concrete material body as required by the nature and condition of karma, it illuminates all creations. Though it is the treasure of intelligence, it is void of particularity. There is no place in the universe where this Body does not prevail. The universe becomes, but this Body forever remains. It is free from all opposites and contraries, yet it is working in all things to lead them to Nirvâna.”
More Detailed Characterisation.
The above gives us a general, concise view as to what the Dharmakâya is, but let me quote the following more detailed description of it, in order that we may more clearly and definitely see into the characteristically Buddhistic conception of the highest being.[92]
“O ye, sons of Buddha! The Tathâgata[93] is not a particular dharma, nor a particular form of activity, nor has it a particular body, nor does it abide in a particular place, nor is its work of salvation confined to one particular people. On the contrary, it involves in itself infinite dharmas, infinite activities, infinite bodies, infinite spaces, and universally works for the salvation of all things.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! It is like unto space. Space[94] contains in itself all material existences and all the vacuums that obtain between them. Again, it establishes itself in all possible quarters, and yet we cannot say of it that it is or it is not in this particular spot, for space has no palpable form. Even so with the Dharmakâya of the Tathâgata. It presents itself in all places, in all directions, in all dharmas, and in all beings; yet the Dharmakâya itself has not been thereby particularised. Because the Body of the Tathâgata has no particular body but manifests itself everywhere and anywhere in response to the nature and condition of things.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! It is like unto space. Space is boundless, comprehends in itself all existence, and yet shows no trace of passion [partiality]. It is even so with the Dharmakâya of the Tathâgata. It illuminates all good works worldly as well as religious, but it betrays no passion or prejudice. Why? Because the Dharmakâya is perfectly free from all passions and prejudices.[95]
“O ye, sons of Buddha! It is like unto the Sun. The benefits conferred by the light of the sun upon all living beings on earth are incalculable: e.g. by dispelling darkness it gives nourishment to all trees, herbs, grains, plants, and grass; it vanquishes humidity; it illuminates ether whereby benefitting all the living beings in air; its rays penetrate into the waters whereby bringing forth the beautiful lotus-flowers into full blossom; it impartially shines on all figures and forms and brings into completion all the works on earth. Why? Because from the sun emanate infinite rays of life-giving light.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! It is even so with the Sun-Body of the Tathâgata which in innumerable ways bestows benefits upon all beings. That is, it benefits us by destroying evils, all good things thus being quickened to growth; it benefits us with its universal illumination which vanquishes the darkness of ignorance harbored in all beings; it benefits us through its great compassionate heart which saves and protects all beings; it benefits us through its great loving heart which delivers all beings from the misery of birth and death; it benefits us by the establishment of a good religion whereby we are all strengthened in our moral activities; it benefits us by giving us a firm belief in the truth which cleanses all our spiritual impurities; it benefits by helping us to understand the doctrine by virtue of which we are not led to disavow the law of causation; it benefits us with a divine vision which enables us to observe the metempsychosis of all beings; it benefits us by avoiding injurious deeds which may destroy the stock of merits accumulated by all beings; it benefits us with an intellectual light which unfolds the mind-flowers of all beings; it benefits us with an aspiration whereby we are enlivened to practice all that constitutes Buddhahood. Why? Because the Sun-Body of the Tathâgata universally emits the rays of the Light of Intelligence.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! When the day breaks, the rising sun shines first on the peaks of all the higher mountains, then on those of high mountains, and finally all over the plains and fields; but the sunlight itself does not make this thought: I will shine first on all the highest mountains and then gradually ascending higher and higher shine on the plains and fields. The reason why one gets the sunlight earlier than another is simply because there is a gradation of height on the surface of the earth.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! It is even so with the Tathâgata who is in possession of innumerable and immeasurable suns of universal intelligence. The innumerable rays of the Light of Intelligence, emanating everlastingly from the spiritual Body of the Tathâgata, will first fall on the Bodhisattvas and Mahâsattvas who are the highest peaks among mankind, then on the Nidânabuddhas, then on the Çrâvakas, then on those beings who are endowed with definitely good character, as they will each according to his own capacity unhesitatingly embrace the doctrine of deliverance, and finally on all common mortals whose character may be either indefinite or definitely bad, providing them with those conditions which will prove beneficial in their future births. But the Light of Intelligence emanating from the Tathâgata does not make this thought: ‘I will first shine on the Bodhisattvas and then gradually pass over to all common mortals, etc.’ The Light is universal and illuminates everything without any prejudice, yet on account of the diversity that obtains among sentient beings as to their character, aspirations, etc., the Light of Intelligence is diversely perceived by them.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! When the sun rises above the horizon, those people born blind, on account their defective sight, cannot see the light at all, but they are nevertheless benefited by the sunlight, for it gives them just as much as to any other beings all that is necessary for the maintenance of life: it dispels dampness and coldness and makes them feel agreeable, it destroys all the injurious germs that are produced on account of the absence of sunshine, and thus keeps the blind as well as the not-blind comfortable and healthy.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! It is even so with the Sun of Intelligence of the Tathâgata. All those beings whose spiritual vision is blinded by false doctrine, or by the violation of Buddha’s precepts, or by ignorance, or by evil influences, never perceive the Light of Intelligence; because they are devoid of faith. But they are nevertheless benefited by the Light; for it disperses indiscriminately for all beings the sufferings arising from the four elements, and gives them physical comforts; for it destroys the root of all passions, prejudices, and pains for unbelievers as well as for believers... By virtue of this omnipresent Light of Intelligence, the Bodhisattvas will attain perfect purity and the knowledge of all things, the Nidânabuddhas and Çravakas will destroy all passions and desires; mortals poorly endowed and those born blind will rid of impurities, control the senses, and believe in the four views;[96] and those creatures living in the evil paths of existence such as hell, world of ghosts, and the animal realm, will be freed from their evils and torture and will, after death, be born in the human or celestial world...
“O ye, sons of Buddha! The Light of Dharmakâya is like unto the full moon which has four wondrous attributes: (1) It outdoes in its brilliance all stars and satellites; (2) It shows in its size increase and decrease as observable in the Jambudvîpa; (3) Its reflection is seen in every drop or body of clear water; (4) Whoever is endowed with perfect sight, perceives it vis-a-vis.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! Even so with the Dharmakâya of the Tathâgata, that has four wondrous attributes: (1) It eclipses the stars of the Nidânabuddhas, Çrâvakas, etc.; (2) It shows in its earthly life a certain variation which is due to the different natures of the beings to whom it manifests itself,[97] while the Dharmakâya itself is eternal and shows no increase or decrease in any way; (3) Its reflection is seen in the Bodhi (intelligence) of every pure-hearted sentient being; (4) All who understand the Dharma and obtain deliverance, each according to his own mental calibre, think that they have really recognised in their own way the Tathâgata face to face, while the Dharmakâya itself is not a particular object of understanding, but universally brings all Buddha-works into completion.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! The Dharmakâya is like unto the Great Brahmarâja who governs three thousand chiliocosms. The Râja by a mysterious trick makes himself seen universally by all living beings in his realm and causes them to think that each of them has seen him face to face; but the Râja himself has never divided his own person nor is he in possession of diverse features.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! Even so with the Tathâgata; he has never divided himself into many, nor has he ever assumed diverse features. But all beings, each according to his understanding and strength of faith, recognise the Body of the Tathâgata, while he has never made this thought that he will show himself to such and such particular people and not to others...
“O ye, sons of Buddha! The Dharmakâya is like unto the maniratna in the waters, whose wondrous light transforms everything that comes in contact with it to its own color. The eyes that perceive it become purified. Wherever its illumination reaches, there is a marvelous display of gems of every description, which gives pleasure to all beings to see.
“O ye, sons of Buddha! It is even so with the Dharmakâya of the Tathâgata, which may rightly be called the treasure of treasures, the thesaurus of all merits, and the mine of intelligence. Whoever comes in touch with this light, is all transformed into the same color as that of the Buddha. Whoever sees this light, all obtains the purest eye of Dharma. Whoever comes in touch with this light, rids of poverty and suffering, attains wealth and eminence, enjoys the bliss of the incomparable Bodhi”......
Dharmakâya and Individual Beings.
From these statements it is evident that the Dharmakâya or the Body of the Tathâgata, or the Body of Intelligence, whatever it may be designated, is not a mere philosophical abstraction, standing aloof from this world of birth and death, of joy and sorrow, calmly contemplates on the folly of mankind; but that it is a spiritual existence which is “absolutely one, is real and true, and forms the raison d’être of all beings, transcends all modes of upâya, is free from desires and struggles [or compulsion], and stands outside the pale of our finite understanding.”[98] It is also evident that the Dharmakâya though itself free from ignorance (avidyâ) and passion (kleça) and desire (tṛṣnâ), is revealed in the finite and fragmental consciousness of human being, so that we can say in a sense that “this body of mine is the Dharmakâya”—though not absolutely; and also in a generalised form that “the body of all beings is the Dharmakâya, and the Dharmakâya is the body of all beings,”—though in the latter only imperfectly and fractionally realised. As we thus partake something in ourselves of the Dharmakâya, we all are ultimately destined to attain Buddhahood when the human intelligence, Bodhi, is perfectly identified with, or absorbed in, that of the Dharmakâya, and when our earthly life becomes the realisation of the will of the Dharmakâya.
The Dharmakâya as Love.
Here an important consideration forces itself upon us which is, that the Dharmakâya is not only an intelligent mind but a loving heart, that it is not only a god of rigorism who does not allow a hair’s breadth deviation from the law of karma, but also an incarnation of mercy that is constantly belaboring to develop the most insignificant merit into a field yielding rich harvests. The Dharmakâya relentlessly punishes the wrong and does not permit the exhaustion of their karma without sufficient reason; and yet its hands are always directing our life toward the actualisation of supreme goodness. “Pangs of nature, sins of will, defects of doubt, and stains of blood,”—discouraging and gloomy indeed is the karma of evil-doers! But the Dharmakâya, infinite in love and goodness, is incessantly managing to bring this world-transaction to a happy terminus. Every good we do is absorbed in the universal stock of merits which is no more nor less than the Dharmakâya. Every act of lovingkindness we practice is conceived in the womb of Tathâgata, and therein nourished and matured, is again brought out to this world of karma to bear its fruit. Therefore, no life walks on earth with aimless feet; no chaff is thrown into the fire unquenchable. Every existence, great or insignificant, is a reflection of the glory of the Dharmakâya and as such worthy of its all-embracing love.
For further corroboration of this view let us cite at random from a Mahâyâna sutra:[99]
“With one great loving heart
The thirsty desires of all beings he quencheth with coolness refreshing;
With compassion, of all doth he think,
Which like space knows no bounds;
Over the world’s all creation
With no thought of particularity he revieweth.“With a great heart compassionate and loving,
All sentient beings by him are embraced;
With means (upâya) which are pure, free from stain, and all excellent,
He doth save and deliver all creatures innumerable.
“With unfathomable love and with compassion
All creations caressed by him universally;
Yet free from attachment his heart is.“As his compassion is great and is infinite,
Bliss unearthly on every being he confereth,
And himself showeth all over the universe;
He’ll not rest till all Buddhahood truly attains.”
Later Mahâyânists’ view of the Dharmakâya.
The above has been quoted almost exclusively from the so-called sûtra literature of Mahâyâna Buddhism, which is distinguished from the other religio-philosophical treatises of the school, because the sûtras are considered to be the accounts of Buddha himself as recorded by his immediate disciples.[100] Let us now see by way of further elucidation what views were held concerning the Dharmakâya by such writers as Asanga, Vasubandhu, etc.
We read in the General Treatise on Mahâyânism by Asanga and Vasubandhu the following statement:
“When the Bodhisattvas think of the Dharmakâya, how have they to picture it to themselves?
“Briefly stated, they will think of the Dharmakâya by picturing to themselves its seven characteristics, which constitute the faultless virtues and essential functions of the Kâya. (1) Think of the free, unrivaled, unimpeded activity of the Dharmakâya, which is manifested in all beings; (2) Think of the eternality of all perfect virtues in the Dharmakâya; (3) Think of its absolute freedom from all prejudice, intellectual and affective; (4) Think of those spontaneous activities that uninterruptedly emanate from the will of the Dharmakâya; (5) Think of the inexhaustible wealth, spiritual and physical, stored in the Body of the Dharma; (6) Think of its intellectual purity which has no stain of onesidedness; (7) Think of the earthly works achieved for the salvation of all beings by the Tathâgatas who are reflexes of the Dharmakâya.”
As regards the activity of the Dharmakâya, which is shown in every Buddha’s work of salvation, Asanga enumerates five forms of operation: (1) It is shown in his power of removing evils which may befall us in the course of life, though the Buddha is unable to cure any physical defects which we may have, such as blindness, deafness, mental aberration, etc. (2) It is shown in his irresistible spiritual domination over all evil-doers, who, base as they are, cannot help doing some good if they ever come in the presence of the Buddha. (3) It is shown in his power of destroying various unnatural and irrational methods of salvation which are practiced by followers of asceticism, hedonism, or Ishvaraism. (4) It is shown in his power of curing those diseased minds that believe in the reality, permanency, and indivisibility of the ego-soul, that is, in the pudgalavâda. (5) It is shown in his inspiring influence over those Bodhisattvas who have not yet attained to the stage of immovability as well as over those Çrâvakas whose faith and character are still in a state of vacillation.
The Freedom of the Dharmakâya.
Those spiritual influences over all beings of the Dharmakâya through the enlightened mind of a Buddha, which we have seen above as stated by Asanga, are fraught with religious significance. According to the Buddhist view, those spiritual powers everlastingly emanating from the Body of Dharma have no trace of human elaboration or constrained effort, but they are a spontaneous overflow from its immanent necessity, or, as I take it, from its free will. The Dharmakâya does not make any conscious, struggling efforts to shower upon all sentient creatures its innumerable merits, benefits, and blessings. If there were in it any trace of elaboration, that would mean a struggle within itself of divers tendencies, one trying to gain ascendency over another. And it is apparent that any struggle and its necessary ally, compulsion, are incompatible with our conception of the highest religious reality. Absolute spontaneity and perfect freedom is one of those necessary attributes which our religious consciousness cannot help ascribing to its object of reverence. Buddhists therefore repeatedly affirm that the activity of the Dharmakâya is perfectly free from all effort and coercion, external and internal. Its every act of creation or salvation or love emanates from its own free will, unhampered by any struggling exertion which characterises the doings of mankind. This free will which is divine, standing in such a striking contrast with our own “free will” which is human and at best very much limited, is called by the Buddhists the Dharmakâya’s “Purvapranidhânabala.”[101]
As the Dharmakâya works of its own accord it does not seek any recompense for its deed; and it is evident that every act of the Dharmakâya is always for the best welfare of its creatures, for they are its manifestations and it must know what they need. We do not have to ask for our “daily bread,” nor have we to praise or eulogise its virtues to court its special grace, nor is there any necessity for us to offer prayer or supplication to the Dharmakâya. Consider the lilies of the field which neither toil nor spin,—and I might add,—which ask not for any favoritism from above; yet are they not arrayed even better than Solomon in all his glory? The Dharmakâya shines in its august magnificence everywhere there is life, nay, even where there is death. We are all living in the midst of it and yet, strange to say, as “the fish knows not the presence of water about itself,” and also as “the mountaineers recognise not the mountains among which they hunt,” even so we know not whence that power comes whose work is made manifest in us and whither it finally leadeth us. In spite of this profound ignorance, we really feel that we are here, and thereby we rest supremely contented. For we believe that all this is wrought through the mysterious and miraculous will of the Dharmakâya, who does all excellent works and seeks no recompense whatever.
The Will of the Dharmakâya.
Summarily speaking, the Dharmakâya assumes three essential aspects as reflected in our religious consciousness: first, it is intelligence (prajñâ); secondly, it is love (karunâ); and thirdly, it is the will (pranidhânabala). We know that it is intelligence from the declaration that the Dharmakâya directs the course of the universe, not blindly but rationally; we know again that it is love because it embraces all beings with fatherly tenderness;[102] and finally we must assume that it is a will, because the Dharmakâya has firmly set down its aim of activity in that good shall be the final goal of all evil in the universe. Without the will, love and intelligence will not be realised; without love, the will and intelligence will lose their impulse; without intelligence, love and the will will be irrational. In fact, the three are co-ordinates and constitute the oneness of the Dharmakâya; and by oneness I mean the absolute, and not the numerical, unity of all these three things in the being of the Dharmakâya, for intelligence and love and the will are differentiated as such only in our human, finite consciousness.
Some Buddhists may not agree entirely with the view here expounded. They may declare: “We conform to your view when you say the Dharmakâya is intelligence and love, as this is expressly stated in the sûtras and çâstras; but we do not see how it could be made a will. Indeed, the Scriptures say that the Dharmakâya is in possession of the Pranidhânabala, but this bala or power is not necessarily the will, it is the power of prayers or intense vows. The Dharmakâya actually made solemn vows, and their spiritual energy abiding in the world of particulars works out its original plan and makes possible the universal salvation of all creatures.”
It is quite true that the word pranidhânabala means literally “the power of original prayers.” But this literary rendering totally ignores its inner significance without which the nature of the Dharmakâya would become unintelligible. We admit that the Dharmakâya knows no higher existence by which it is conditioned, nor has it any fragmentary, limited consciousness like that of human being, nor has it any intrinsic want by which it is necessitated to appeal to something other than itself. It is, therefore, utterly nonsensical to speak of its prayer, “original” or borrowed, as some Buddhists are inclined to think. On the other hand, we are perfectly justified in saying that whatever is done by the Dharmakâya is done by its own free will independent of all the determinations that might affect it from outside.
But I can presume the reason why they speak of the prayers of the Dharmakâya instead of its will. Here we have an instance of emotional outburst. The fervency of the intense religious sentiment not infrequently carries us beyond the limits of the intellect, landing us in a region full of mysteries and contradictions. It anthropomorphises everything beyond the proper measure of intellection and ascribes all earthly human feelings and passions to an object which the mind well-balanced demands to be above all the forms of human helplessness. The Buddhists, especially those of the Sukhâvatî sect,[103] recognise the existence of an all-powerful will, all-embracing love, and all-knowing intelligence in the Dharmakâya, but they want to represent it more concretely and in a more humanly fashion before the mental vision of the less intellectual followers. The result thus is that the Dharmakâya in spite of its absoluteness made prayers to himself to emancipate all sentient beings from the sufferings of birth and death. But are not these self-addressed prayers of the Dharmakâya which sprang out of its inmost nature exactly what constitutes its will?
CHAPTER X.
THE DOCTRINE OF TRIKÂYA.
(Buddhist Theory of Trinity.)
The Human and the Super-human Buddha.
One of the most remarkable differences between the Pâli and the Sanskrit, that is, between the Hînayâna and the Mahâyâna Buddhist literature, is in the manner of introducing the characters or persons who take principal parts in the narratives. In the former, sermons are delivered by the Buddha as a rule in such a natural and plain language as to make the reader feel the presence of the teacher, fatherly-hearted and philosophically serene; while in the latter generally we have a mysterious, transcendent figure, more celestial than human, surrounded and worshipped by beings of all kinds, human, celestial, and even demoniac, and this mystical central character performing some supernatural feats which might well be narrated by an intensely poetical mind.
In the Pâli scriptures, the texts as a rule open with the formula, “Thus it was heard by me” (Evam me sutam), then relate the events, if any, which induced the Buddha to deliver them, and finally lead the reader to the main subjects which are generally written in lucid style. Their opening or introductory matter is very simple, and we do not notice anything extraordinary in its further development. But with the Mahâyâna texts it is quite different. Here we have, as soon as the curtain rises with the stereotyped formula, “Evam mayâ çrutam,” a majestic prologue dramatically or rather grotesquely represented, which prepares the mind of the audience to the succeeding scenes, in which some of the boldest religio-philosophical proclamations are brought forth. The perusal of this introductory part alone will stupefy the reader by its rather monstrous grandeur, and he may without much ado declare that what follows must be extraordinary and may be even nonsensical.
The following is an illustration showing the typical manner of introducing the characters in the Mahâyâna texts.[104]
“Thus it was heard by me. Buddha was once staying at Râjagriha, on the Gridhrakuta mountain. He was in the Hall of Ratnachandra in the Double Tower of Chandana. Ten years passed since his attainment of Buddhahood. He was surrounded by a hundred thousand Bhikṣus and Bodhisattvas and Mahâsattvas numbering sixty times as many as the sands of the Ganges. All of them were in possession of the greatest spiritual energy; they had paid homage to thousands of hundred millions of niyutas[105] of Buddhas; they were able to set rolling the never-sliding-back Wheel of Dharma; and whoever heard their names could establish themselves firmly in the Highest Perfect Knowledge. Their names were.... [Here about fifty Bodhisattvas are mentioned.]
“All these Bodhisattvas numbering sixty times as many as the sands of the Ganges coming from innumerable Buddha-countries were accompanied by numberless Devas, Nâgas, Yakṣas, Gandharvas, Açuras, Garudas, Kinnaras, and Mahoragas.[106] This great assembly all joined in revering, honoring, paying homage to the Bhagavat, the World-honored One.
“At this time the Bhagavat in the Double Tower of Chandana seated himself in the assigned seat, entered upon a samâdhi, and displayed a marvelous phenomenon. There appeared innumerable lotus-flowers with thousand-fold petals and each flower as large as a carriage-wheel. They had perfectly beautiful color and fragrant odour, but their petals containing celestial beings in them were not yet unfolded. They all were raised now by themselves high up in the heavens and hung over the earth like a canopy of pearls. Each one of these lotus-flowers emitted innumerable rays of light and simultaneously grew in size with wonderful vitality. But through the divine power of Buddha they all of a sudden changed color and withered. All the celestial Buddhas sitting cross-legged within the flowers now came into full view, shone with innumerable hundred thousand-fold rays of light. At this moment the transcendent glory of the spot was beyond description.”...
As is here thus clearly shown, the Buddha in the Mahâyâna scriptures is not an ordinary human being walking in a sensuous world; he is altogether dissimilar to that son of Suddhodana, who resigned the royal life, wandered in the wilderness, and after six years’ profound meditation and penance discovered the Fourfold Noble Truth and the Twelve Chains of Dependence; and we cannot but think that the Mahâyâna Buddha is the fictitious creation of an intensely poetic mind. Let it be so. But the question which engages us now is, “How did the Buddhists come to relegate the human Buddha to oblivion, as it were, and assign a mysterious being in his place invested with all possible or sometimes impossible majesty and supernaturality?” This question, which marks the rise of Mahâyâna Buddhism, brings us to the doctrine of Trikâya,—which in a sense corresponds to the Christian theory of trinity.
According to this doctrine, the Buddhists presume a triple existence of the Tathâgata, that is, the Tathâgata is conceived by them as manifesting himself in three different forms of existence: the Body of Transformation, the Body of Bliss, and the Body of Dharma. Though they are conceived as three, they are in fact all the manifestations of one Dharmakâya,—the Dharmakâya that revealed itself in the historical Çâkyamuni Buddha as a Body of Transformation, and in the Mahâyâna Buddha as a Body of Bliss. However differently they may appear from the human point of view, they are nothing but the expression of one eternal truth, in which all things have their raison d’être.
An Historical View.
At present we are not in possession of any historical documents that will throw light on the question as to how early this doctrine of Trikâya or Buddhist trinity conception came to be firmly established among Northern Buddhists and found its way in an already-finished form as such into the Mahâyâna scriptures. As far as we know, it was Açvaghoṣa, the first Mahâyâna philosopher, who incorporated this conception in his Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahâyâna as early as the first century before Christ. This work, as the author declares, is a sort of synopsis of the Mahâyâna teachings, elucidating their principal features as taught by the Buddha in his various sûtras. It is not an original work which expounds the individual views of Açvaghoṣa concerning Buddhism. He wrote the book in a concise and comprehensive form, in order that the later generations who remote from the Buddha could not have the privilege of being inspired by his august presence, might peruse it with concentration of mind and synthetically grasp the whole significance of many lengthy and voluminous sûtras. Therefore, in the Awakening of Faith, we are supposed not to find any Mahâyâna doctrines that were not already taught by the Buddha and incorporated in the sûtras. Everything Açvaghoṣa treats in his work must be considered merely a recapitulation of the doctrines which were not only formulated but firmly established as the Mahâyâna faith long before him. His is simply the work of a recorder. He carefully scanned all the Mahâyâna scriptures that had existed prior to his time and faithfully collected all the principal teachings of Mahâyânism here and there scatteringly told in them. His merit lies in compilation and systematisation.
This being the case, we must assume that all the doctrines that are found in Açvaghoṣa and distinct from those usually held to be Hînayânistic are the teachings elaborated by Buddhists from the time of Buddha’s death down to the time of Açvaghoṣa. But as the latter apparently believes all these doctrines as Buddha’s own and raises no doubt concerning their later origin, even if they were so, we must assume again that these doctrines were in a state of completion long before Açvaghoṣa’s time. If our calculation is correct that he lived in the first century before Christ, the Mahâyâna faith must be said to have been formulated at least two hundred years prior to his age,—taking this presumably as the time that is required for the formulation and dogmatical establishment of a doctrine. This calculation places the development of the Mahâyâna faith during the first century after the Buddha, and, we know, it was during this time that so many schools and divisions,—among which we must also find the so-called “primitive” Buddhism of Ceylon, arose among the Buddhists,—each claiming to be the only authentic transmission of the Buddha’s teaching. Did Mahâyânism come out of this turmoil of contention? Did it boldly raise itself from this chaos and claim to have solved all the questions and doubts that agitated the minds of Buddhists after the Nirvâna? For certain we do not know anything concerning the chronology of the development of Buddhist philosophy and dogmas in India, at least before Açvaghoṣa; but, as far as our Chinese Buddhist literature records, we must conclude that this was most probably the case.
To give our readers a glimpse of the state of things that were taking place in those early days of Buddhism in India, I will quote some passages from Vasumitra’s Discourse on the Points of Controversy by the Different Schools of Buddhism,—the work once referred to in the beginning of this book. The two principal schools that arose soon after the Nirvâna of the Buddha were, as is well known, the Elders and the Great Council, and though they were further divided into a number of smaller sections and their views became so complex and intermixed that some of the Elders shared similar views with the Great Council School and vice versa, yet we can fairly distinguish one from the other and describe the essential peculiarities of each school. These points of difference, generally speaking, are as follows, confining ourselves to their conceptions about the Buddha:
(1) According to the School of the Great Council, the Buddha’s personality is transcendental (lokottara), and all the Tathâgatas are free from the defilements that might come from the material existence (bhâva-âçrava).[107] For in the Buddha all evil passions hereditary and acquired were eternally uprooted, and his presence on earth was absolutely spotless. (The Vibhaṣa, CLXXIII.) Contending this view, the Elders held that the Buddha’s personality was not free from Bhâvâçrava, though his mind was fully enlightened. His corporeal existence was the product of blind love veiled with ignorance and tangled with attachment. If this were not so, the Buddha’s feature would not have awakened an impure affection in the heart of a maiden, an ill-will in the heart of a highwayman, stupidity in the mind of an ascetic, and arrogance in that of a haughty Brahman. These incidents which happened during the life of the Buddha evince that his corporeal presence was apt to agitate others’ hearts, and to that extent it was contaminated by Bhâvâçrava.
(2) The Great Council School insists that every word uttered by a Tathâgata has a religious, spiritual meaning and purports to the edification of his fellow-beings; that his one utterance is variously interpreted by his audience each according to his own disposition, but all to his spiritual welfare; that every instruction given out by the Buddha is rational and perfect. Against these views the Elders think that the Buddha occasionally uttered things which had nothing to do with the enlightenment of others; that even with the Buddha something was out of his attainment, for instance, he could not make every one of his hearers perfectly understand his preachings; that though the Buddha never taught anything irrational and heretical, yet all his speeches were not perfect, he said some things which had no concern with rationality or orthodoxy.
(3) The corporeal body (rûpakâya) of the Buddha has no limits (koṭi); his majestic power has no limits; every Buddha’s life is unlimited; a Buddha knows no fatigue, knows not when to rest, always occupying himself with the enlightenment of all sentient beings and with the awakening in their hearts of pure faith. Against these tendencies of the Great Council School to deify the historical Buddha, the Elders generally insist on the humanity of Buddhahood. Though the Elders agree with the Great Council in that the body assumed by the Buddha as the result of his untiring accumulation of good karma through eons of his successive existences possesses a wonderful power, spiritual and material, they do not conceive it to be beyond all limitations.
(4) The Great Council School says that with the Buddha sleep is not necessary and he has no dreams. The Elders admit that the Buddha never dreams, but denies that he does not need any sleep.
(5) As the Buddha is always in the state of a deep, exalted spiritual meditation, it is not necessary for him to think what to say when requested to answer certain questions. Though he might appear to the inquirers as if he thoroughly cogitates over the problems presented to him for solution, the Buddha’s response is in fact immediate and without any efforts. The Elders, on the other hand, presume the Buddha’s mental calculation as to how to express his ideas as best suited to the understanding of the audience. Indeed, he does not cogitate over the problem itself, for with him everything is transparent, but he thinks over the best method of presenting his ideas before his pupils.[108]
Now to return to the doctrine of Dharmakâya and Trikâya. When we consider these controversies as above stated, it is apparent that among many other questions which arose soon after the demise of the Buddha Çâkyamuni, there was one, which in all probability most agitated the minds of his disciples. I mean the question of the personality of Buddha. Was he merely a human being like ourselves? Then, how could he reach such a height of moral perfection? Or was he a divine being? But Buddha himself did not communicate anything to his disciples concerning his divinity, nor did he tell them to accept the Dharma on account of his divine personality, but solely for the sake of truth. But for all that how could the disciples ever eradicate from their hearts the feeling of sacred reverence for their teacher, which was so indelibly engraved there? Whenever they recalled the sermons, anecdotes, or gâthâs of their master, the truth and spirit embodied in them and the author must have become so closely associated that they could not but ask themselves: “What in the Buddha caused him to perceive and declare these solemn profound truths? What was it that formed in him such a noble majestic character? What was there in the mind of Buddha that raised him to such a perfection of intellectual and religious life? How was it possible that, possessed of such exalted moral and spiritual virtues, Buddha too had to succumb to the law of birth and death that is the lot of common mortals?” Some such questions must have been repeatedly asked before they could answer them by the doctrines of Dharmakâya and Trikâya.
Who was the Buddha?
The evidence that these questions were constantly disturbing the minds of the disciples ever since the Master’s entrance into Parinirvâna, is scatteringly revealed throughout the Buddhist texts both Southern and Northern. The regret of the immediate followers that they did not ask the Buddha to prolong his earthly life, while the Buddha told them that he could do so if he wished, and their lamentation over the remains of the Blessed One, “How soon the Light of the World has passed away!”[109]—these utterances may be considered the first drops foreboding the showers of doubt and speculation as to his personality.
According to the Suvarna Prabhâ Sûtra,[110] a Bodhisattva, by the name of Ruciraketu, was greatly annoyed by the doubt why Çâkyamuni Tathâgata had such a short life terminating only at eighty. He taught the disciples that those who did not injure any living beings, and those who generously practised charity, in their former lives, could enjoy a considerably long life on earth; why then was the life of the Blessed One himself cut so short, who practised those virtues from time immemorial? The sûtra now records that this doubt was dispelled by the declaration of four Tathâgatas who mysteriously appeared to the sceptic and told him that “Every drop of water in the vast ocean can be counted, but the age of Çâkyamuni none can measure. Crush the mount Sumeru into particles as fine as mustard seeds and we can count them, but the age of Çâkyamuni none can measure..... the Buddha never entered into Parinirvana; the Good Dharma will never perish. He showed an earthly death merely for the benefits of sentient beings.”.....
Here we have the conception of a spiritual Dharmakâya germinating out of the corporeal death of Çâkyamuni.[111] Here we have the bridge that spans the wide gap between the human Çâkyamuni Buddha and the spiritual existence of the Dharmakâya. The Buddha did not die after he partook of the food offered by Chunda. His age was not eighty. His life did not pass to an airy nothingness when his cinerary urns were divided among kings and Brahmans. His virtues and merits which were accumulated throughout innumerable kalpas, could not come to naught so abruptly. What constituted the essence of his life—and that of ours too—could not perish with the vicissitudes of the corporeal existence. The Buddha as a particular individual being was certainly subject to transformation—so is every mortal, but his truth must abide forever. His Dharmakâya is above birth and death and even above Nirvâna; but his Body of Transformation comes out of the womb of Tathâgata as destined by karma and vanishes into it when the karma exhausts its force. The Buddha who is still seated at the summit of the Gridhrakuta, delivering to all beings the message of joy and bliss, and who among other precious teachings bequeathed to us such sûtras as the Avatamsaka, the Pundarîka, etc., is no more nor less than an expression of the eternal spirit. Thus came the doctrine of Dharmakâya to be formulated by the Mahâyânists, and from this the transition to that of Trikâya was but a natural sequence. Because one without the other could not give an adequate solution of the problems above cited.
The Trikâya as Explained in the Suvarna Prabhâ.
What then is the Trikâya or triple body of the Tathâgata? It is (1) Nirmâna Kâya, the Body of Transformation; (2): Sambhoga Kâya, the Body of Bliss; and (3) Dharma Kâya, the Body of Dharma. If we draw a parallelism between the Buddhist and the Christian trinity, the Body of Transformation may be considered to correspond to Christ in the flesh, the Body of Bliss either to Christ in glory or to Holy Ghost, and Dharmakâya to Godhead.
Let us again quote from the Suvarna Prabhâ, in which (I-tsing’s translation, chap. III.) we find the following statements concerning the doctrine of Trikâya.
“The Tathâgata, when he was yet at the stage of discipline, practised divers deeds of morality for the sake of sentient beings. The practise finally attained perfection, reached maturity, and by virtue of its merits he acquired a wonderful spiritual power. The power enabled him to respond to the thoughts, deeds, and livings of sentient beings. He thoroughly understood them and never missed the right opportunity [to respond to their needs]. He revealed himself in the right place and in the right moment; he acted rightly, assuming various bodily forms [in response to the needs of mortal souls]. These bodily forms are called the Nirmânakâya of the Tathâgata.
“But when the Tathâgatas, in order to make the Bodhisattvas thoroughly conversant with the Dharma, to instruct them in the highest reality, to let them understand that birth-and-death (samsâra) and Nirvâna are of one taste, to destroy the thoughts of the ego, individuality, and the fear [of transmigration], and to promote happiness, to lay foundation for innumerable Buddha-dharmas, to be truly in accord with Suchness, the knowledge of Suchness, and the Spontaneous Will, manifest themselves to the Bodhisattvas in a form which is perfect with the thirty-two major and eighty minor features of excellence and shining with the halo around the head and the back, the Tathâgatas are said to have assumed the Body of Bliss or Sambhogakâya.[112]
“When all possible obstacles arising from sins [material, intellectual, and emotional] are perfectly removed, and when all possible good dharmas are preserved, there would remain nothing but Suchness and the knowledge of Suchness,—this is the Dharmakâya.
“The first two forms of the Tathâgata are provisional [and temporal] existences; but the last one is a reality, wherein the former two find the reason of their existence. Why? Because when deprived of the Dharma of Suchness and of knowledge of non-particularity, no Buddha-dharma can ever exist; because it is Suchness and Knowledge of Suchness that absorbs within itself all possible forms of Buddha-wisdom and renders possible a complete extinction of all passions and sins [arising from particularity].”
According to the above, the Dharmakâya which is tantamount to Suchness or Knowledge of Suchness is absolute; but like the moon whose image is reflected in a drop of water as well as in the boundless expanse of the waves, the Dharmakâya assumes on itself all possible aspects from the grossest material form to the subtlest spiritual existence. When it responds to the needs of the Bodhisattvas whose spiritual life is on a much higher plane than that of ordinary mortals, it takes on itself the Body of Bliss or Sambhogakâya. This Body is a supernatural existence, and almost all the Buddhas in the Mahâyâna scriptures belong to this class of being. Açvaghoṣa (p. 101) says: “The Body has infinite forms. The form has infinite attributes. The attribute has infinite excellences. And the accompanying fruition, that is, the region where they are destined to be born [by their previous karma], also has infinite merits and ornamentations. Manifesting itself everywhere, the Body of Bliss is infinite, boundless, limitless, unintermittent [in its activity] which comes directly from the Mind [Dharmakâya].”
But the Buddhas revealed to the eyes of common mortals are not of this kind. They are common mortals themselves, and the earthly Çâkyamuni who came out of the womb of Mâyâdevî and passed away under the sâla trees at the age of eighty years was one of them. He was essentially a manifestation of the Dharmakâya, and as such we ordinary people also partake something of him. But the masses, unless favored by good karma accumulated in the past, are generally under the spell of ignorance. They do not see the glory of Dharmakâya in its perfect purity shining in the lilies of the field and sung by the fowls of the air. They are blindly groping in the dark wilderness, they are vainly seeking, they are wildly knocking. To the needs of these people the Dharmakâya responds by assuming an earthly form as a human Buddha.
Revelation in All Stages of Culture.
En passant, let us remark that it is in this sense that Christ is conceived by Buddhists also as a manifestation of the Dharmakâya in a human form. He is a Buddha and as such not essentially different from Çâkyamuni. The Dharmakâya revealed itself as Çâkyamuni to the Indian mind, because that was in harmony with its needs. The Dharmakâya appeared in the person of Christ on the Semitic stage, because it suited their taste best in this way. The doctrine of Trikâya, however, goes even further and declares that demons, animal gods, ancestor-worship, nature-worship, and what not, are all due to the activity and revelation of the Dharmakâya responding to the spiritual needs of barbarous and half-cultured people. The Buddhists think that the Dharmakâya never does things that are against the spiritual welfare of its creatures, and that whatever is done by it is for their best interests at that moment of revelation, no matter how they comprehend the nature of the Dharmakâya. The Great Lord of Dharma never throws a pearl before the swine, for he knows the animal’s needs are for things more substantial. He does not reveal himself in an exalted spiritual form to the people whose hearts are not yet capable of grasping anything beyond the grossly material. As they understand animal gods better than a metaphysical or highly abstracted being, let them have them and derive all possible blessings and benefits through their worshiping. But as soon as they become dissatisfied with the animal or human-fashioned gods, there must not be a moment’s hesitation to let them have exactly what their enlightened understanding can comprehend.[113] They are thus all the while being led, though unconsciously on their part, to the higher and higher region of mystery, till they come fully to grasp the true and real meaning of the Dharmakâya in its absolute purity, or, to use Christian terminology, till “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Cor III. 18.)
The Mahâyânists now argue that the reason why Çâkyamuni entered into Parinirvana when his worldly career was thought by him to be over is that by this his resignation to the law of birth and death, he wished to exemplify in him the impermanency of worldly life and the folly of clinging to it as final reality. As for his Dharmakâya, it has an eternal life, it was never born, and it would never perish; and when called by the spiritual needs of the Bodhisattvas, it will cast off the garb of absoluteness and preach in the form of a Sambhogakâya “never-ceasing sermons which run like a stream for ever and aye.” It will be evident from this that Buddhists are ready to consider all religious or moral leaders of mankind, whatever their nationality, as the Body of Transformation of the Dharmakâya. Translated into Christian thoughts, God reveals himself in every being that is worthy of him. He reveals himself not only at a certain period in history, but everywhere and all the time. His glory is perceived throughout all the stages of human culture. This manifestation, from the very nature of God, cannot be intermittent and sporadic as is imagined by some “orthodox Christians.” The following from St. Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians (Chap. XIII), when read in this connection, sounds almost like a Buddhist philosopher’s utterance: “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues; but all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”
The Sambhogakâya.
One peculiar point in the doctrine of Trikâya, which modern minds find rather difficult to comprehend, is the conception of the Sambhogakâya, or the Body of Bliss. We can understand the relation between the Dharmakâya and Nirmânakâya, the latter being similar to the notion of God incarnate or to that of Avatara. Inasmuch as the Dharmakâya does not exist outside the triple world but in it as the raison d’être of its existence, all beings must be considered a partial manifestation of it; and in this sense Buddhists sometimes call themselves Bodhisattvas, that is, beings of intelligence, because intelligence (Bodhi) is the psychological aspect of the Dharmakâya as realised in sentient beings. But the conception of Sambhogakâya is altogether too mysterious to be fathomed by a limited consciousness. The fact becomes more apparent when we are told that the Sambhogakâya, Body of Bliss, is a corporeal existence and at the same time filling the universe and that there are two forms of the Body of Bliss, one for self-enjoyment and the other as a sort of religious object for the Bodhisattvas.
That the Body of Bliss is corporeal and yet infinite has already been shown by the quotations from the Suvarna Prabhâ and Açvaghoṣa on the preceding pages. For further confirmation of this point no less authority than Asanga and Vasubandhu will be here referred to.
In A Comprehensive Treatise on the Mahâyana and in its commentary, the author Asanga and the commentator Vasubandhu endeavor to prove why the Body of Bliss cannot be the raison d’être of the Dharmakâya, instead of vice versa; and in this connection they argue that (1) the Body of Bliss consists of the five Skandhas, that is, of material form (rûpa), sensation (vedanâ), ideas (samjñâ), deeds (sanskâra), and consciousness (vijñâna); (2) it is subject to particularisation; (3) it reveals different virtues and characters according to the desires of Bodhisattvas; (4) even to the same individual it appears differently at different times; (5) when it manifests itself simultaneously before an assemblage of Bodhisattvas of divers characters and qualifications, it at once assumes divers forms, in order to satisfy their infinitely diversified inclinations; (6) it is a creation of the Âlayavijñâna, All-conserving Mind.
These six peculiarities of the Body of Bliss as enumerated by Asanga and Vasubandhu make it indeed entirely dependent on the Dharmakâya, but they do not place us in any better position to penetrate into the deep mystery of its nature. Its supernatural incomprehensibility remains the same forever. In a certain sense, however, the Body of Bliss may be considered to be corresponding to the Christian idea of an angel. Supernaturalness and luminosity are the two characters possessed by both, but angels are merely messengers of God communicating the latter’s will to human beings. When they reveal themselves to a specially favored person, it is not of their own account. When they speak to him at all, it is by the name of the being who sent them. They do not represent him, they do not act his own will by themselves. On the contrary, the Body of Bliss is the master of its own. It is an expression of the Dharmakâya. It instructs and benefits all the creatures who come to it. It acts according to its own will and judgment. In these respects the Body of Bliss is altogether different from the Christian conception of angels. But will it be more appropriately compared to Christ in glory?
Let us make another quotation from later authorities than Asanga and his brother Vasubandhu, and let us see more convincingly what complicated notions are involved in the idea of the Body of Bliss. According to the commentators on Vasubandhu’s Vijñânamâtra Çâstra (a treatise on the Yoga philosophy),[114] the Body of Bliss has two distinct aspects: (1) The body obtained by the Tathâgata for his self-enjoyment, by dint of his religious discipline through eons; (2) The body which the Tathâgata manifests to the Bodhisattvas in Pure Land (sukhâvatî). This last body is in possession of wonderful spiritual powers, reveals the Wheel of Dharma, resolves all the religious doubts raised by the Bodhisattvas, and lets them enjoy the bliss of the Mahâyâna Dharma.
A Mere Subjective Existence.
Judging from all these characterisations, the most plausible conclusion that suggests itself to modern sceptical minds is that the Sambhogakâya must be a mere creation of an intelligent, finite mind, which is intently bent on reaching the highest reality, but, not being able, on account of its limitations, to grasp the object in its absoluteness, the finite mind fabricates all its ideals after its own fashion into a spiritual-material being, which is logically a contradiction, but religiously an object deserving veneration and worship. And this being is no more than the Body of Bliss.[115] It lies half way between the pure being of Dharmakâya and the earthly form of Nirmânakâya, the Body of Transformation. It does not belong to either, but partakes something of both. It is in a sense spiritual like the Dharmakâya, and yet it cannot go beyond material limitations, for it has a form, definite and determinate. When the human soul is thirsty after a pure being or an absolute which cannot be comprehended in a palpable form, it creates a hybrid, an imitation, or a reflection, and tries to be satisfied with it, just as a little girl has her innate and not yet fully developed maternity satisfied by tenderly embracing and nursing the doll, an inanimate imitation of a real living baby. And the Mahâyânists seem to have made most of this childish humanness. They produced as many sûtras as their spiritual yearnings demanded, quite regardless of historical facts, and made the Body of Bliss of the Tathâgata the author of all these works. For if the Dharmakâya of the Tathâgata never entered into Parinirvâna, why then could he not deliver sermons and cite gâthâs as often as beings of intelligence (Bodhisattvas) felt their needs? The Suvarna Prabhâ (fas. 2, chap. 3) again echoes this sentiment as follows:
“To illustrate by analogy, the sun or the moon does not make any conscious discrimination, nor does the water-mirror, nor the light [conceived separate from the body from which it emanates]. But when all these three are brought together, there is produced an image [of the sun or the moon in the water]. So it is with Suchness and Knowledge of Suchness. It is not possessed of any particular consciousness, but by virtue of the Spontaneous Will [inherent in the nature of Suchness, or what is the same thing, in the Dharmakâya], the Body of Transformation or of Bliss [as a shadow of the Dharmakâya] reveals itself in response to the spiritual needs of sentient beings.
“And, again, as the water-mirror boundlessly expanding reflects in all different ways the images of âkâsa (void space) through the medium of light, while space itself is void of all particular marks, so the Dharmakâya reflects its images severally in the receiving minds of believers, and this by virtue of Spontaneous Will. The Will creates the Body of Transformation as well as the Body of Bliss in all their possible aspects, while the original, the Dharmakâya, does not suffer one whit a change on this account.”
According to this, it is evident that whenever our spiritual needs become sufficiently intense there is a response from the Dharmakâya, and that this response is not always uniform as the recipient minds show different degrees of development, intellectually and spiritually. If we call this communion between sentient souls and the Dharmakâya an inspiration, all the phenomena that flow out of fulness of heart and reflect purity of soul should be called “works of inspiration”; and in this sense the Mahâyânists consider their scriptures as emanating directly from the fountainhead of the Dharmakâya.
Attitude of Modern Mahâyânists.
Modern Mahâyânists in full accordance with this interpretation of the Doctrine of Trikâya do not place much importance on the objective aspects of the Body of Bliss (Sambhogakâya). They consider them at best the fictitious products of an imaginative mind; they never tarry a moment to think that all these mysterious Tathâgatas or Bodhisattvas who are sometimes too extravagantly and generally too tediously described in the Mahâyâna texts are objective realities, that the Sukhâvatîs or Pure Lands[116] are decorated with such worldly stuff as gold, silver, emerald, cat’s eye, pearl, and other precious stones, that pious Buddhists would be transferred after their death to these ostentatiously ornamented heavens, be seated on the pedestals of lotus-flowers, surrounded by innumerable Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, and would enjoy all the spiritual enjoyments that human mind can conceive. On the contrary, modern Buddhists look with disdain on these egotistic materialistic conceptions of religious life. For, to a fully enlightened soul, of what use could those worldly treasures be? What happiness, earthly or heavenly, does such a soul dream of, outside the bliss of embracing the will of the Dharmakâya as his own?
Recapitulation.
To sum up, the Buddha in the Pâli scriptures was a human being, though occasionally he is credited to have achieved things supernatural and superhuman. His historical career began with the abandonment of a royal life, then the wandering in the wilderness, and a long earnest meditation on the great problems of birth-and-death, and his final enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, then his fifty years’ religious peregrination along the valleys of the Ganges, and the establishment of a religious system known as Buddhism, and finally his eternal entrance into the “Parinirvâna that leaves nothing behind” (anupadhiçeṣanirvâna). And as far as plain historical facts are concerned, these seem to exhaust the life of Çâkyamuni on earth. But the deep reverence which was felt by his disciples could not be satisfied with this prosaic humanness of their master and made him something more than a mortal soul. So even the Pâli tradition gives him a supramundane life besides the earthly one. He is supposed to have been a Bodhisattva in the Tuṣita heaven before his entrance into the womb of Mâyâdevî. The honor of Bodhisattvahood was acceded to him on account of his deeds of self-sacrifice which were praised throughout his innumerable past incarnations. While he was walking among us in the flesh, he was glorified with the thirty-two major and eighty minor excellent characteristics of a great man.[117] But he was not the first Buddha that walked on earth to teach the Dharma, for there were already seven Buddhas before him, nor was he the last one that would appear among us, for a Bodhisattva by the name of Maitreya is now in heaven and making preparations for the attainment of Buddhahood in time to come. But here stopped the Pâli writers, they did not venture to make any further speculation on the nature of Buddhahood. Their religious yearnings did not spur them to a higher flight of the imagination. They recited simple sûtras or gâthâs, observed the çilas (moral precepts) as strictly and literally as they could, and thought the spirit of their Master still alive in these instructions;—let alone the personality of the Tathâgata.
But there was at the same time another group of the disciples of the Buddha, whose religious and intellectual inclinations were not of the same type as their fellow-believers; and on that account a simple faith in the Buddha as present in his teachings did not quite satisfy them. They perhaps reasoned in this fashion: “If there were seven Buddhas before the advent of the Great Muni of Çakya and there would be one more who is to come, where, let us ask, did they derive their authority and knowledge to preach? How is it that there cannot be any more Buddhas, that they do not come to us much oftener? If they were human beings like ourselves, why not we ourselves be Buddhas?” These questions, when logically carried out, naturally led them to the theory of Dharmakâya, that all the past Buddhas, and those to come, and even we ordinary mortals made of clay and doomed to die soon, owe the raison d’être of their existence to the Dharmakâya, which alone is immortal in us as well as in Buddhas. The first religious effort we have to make is, therefore, to recognise this archetype of all Buddhas and all beings. But the Dharmakâya as such is too abstract for the average mind to become the object of its religious consciousness; so they personified or rather materialised it. In other words, they idealised Çâkyamuni, endowed him not only with the physical signs (lakṣas) of greatness as in the Pâli scriptures, but with those of celestial transfiguration, and called him a Body of Bliss of the Tathâgata; while the historical human Buddha was called a Body of Transformation and all sentient beings Bodhisattvas, that is, beings of intelligence destined to become Buddhas.
This idealised Buddha, or, what is the same thing, a personified Dharmakâya, according to the Mahâyâna Buddhists, not only revealed himself in the particular person of Siddhârtha Gautama in Central Asia a few thousand years ago, but is revealing himself in all times and all places. There is no specially favored spot on the earth where only the Buddha makes his appearance; from the zenith of Akaniṣta heaven down to the bottom of Nâraka, he is manifesting uninterruptedly and unintermittently and is working out his ideas, of which, however, our limited understanding is unable to have an adequate knowledge. The Avatamsaka Sûtra (Buddhabhadra’s translation, fas. 45, chap. 34) describes how the Buddha works out his scheme of salvation in all possible ways. (See also the Saddharma pundarîka, Kern’s translation, chap. 2, p. 30 et seq., and also pp. 413-411.).
“In this wise the Buddha teaches and delivers all sentient beings through his religious teachings whose number is innumerable as atoms. He may reveal sometimes in the world of devas, sometimes in that of Nâgas, Yakṣas, Gandharvas, Asuras, Garudas, Kinnaras, Mahoragas, etc., sometimes in the world of Brahmans, sometimes in the world of human beings, sometimes in the palace of Yâmarâja (king of death), sometimes in the underworld of damned spirits, ghosts, and beasts. His all-swaying compassion, intelligence, and will would not rest until all beings had been brought under his shelter through all possible means of salvation. He may achieve his work of redemption sometimes by means of his name, sometimes by means of memory, sometimes of voice, sometimes of perfect illumination, sometimes of the net of illumination. Whenever and wherever conditions are ripe for his appearance, he would never fail to present himself before sentient beings and also to manifest views of grandeur and splendor.
“The Buddha does not depart from his own region, he does not depart from his seat in the tower; yet he reveals himself in all the ten quarters of the globe. He would sometimes emanate from his own body the clouds of Nirmânakâyas, or sometimes reveal himself in an undivided personality, and itinerating in all quarters would teach and deliver all sentient beings. He may assume sometimes the form of a Çrâvaka, sometimes that of a Brahmadeva, sometimes that of an ascetic, sometimes that of a good physician, sometimes that of a tradesman, sometimes that of a Bhikṣu [or honest worker], sometimes that of an artist, sometimes that of a deva. Again, he may reveal himself sometimes in all the forms of art and industry, sometimes in all the places of congregation, such as towns, cities, villages, etc. And whatever his subjects for salvation may be, and whatever his surroundings, he will accommodate himself to all possible conditions and achieve his work of enlightenment and salvation”[118]....
The practical sequence of this doctrine of Trikâya is apparent; it has ever more broadened the spirit of tolerance in Buddhists. As the Dharmakâya universally responds to the spiritual needs of all sentient beings in all times and in all places and at any stage of their spiritual development, Buddhists consider all spiritual leaders, whatever their nationality and personality, as the expressions of the one omnipotent Dharmakâya. And as the Dharmakâya always manifests itself for the best interests of sentient creatures, even those doctrines and their authors that are apparently against the teachings of Buddhism are tolerated through the conviction that they are all moving according to the Spontaneous Will that pervades everywhere and works all the time. Though, superficially, they may appear as evils, their central and final aim is goodness and harmony which are destined by the Will of the Dharmakâya to overcome this world of tribulations and contradictions. The general intellectual tendency of Buddhism has done a great deal towards cultivating a tolerant spirit in its believers, and we must say that the doctrine of Trinity which appears sometimes too radical in its pantheistic spirit has contributed much to this cause.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BODHISATTVA.
Next to the conception of Buddha, what is important in Mahâyâna Buddhism is that of Bodhisattva (intelligence-being) and of that which constitutes its essence, Bodhicitta, intelligence-heart. As stated above, the followers of Mahâyânism do not call themselves Çrâvakas or Pratyekabuddhas or Arhats as do those of Hînayânism; but they distinguish themselves by the title of Bodhisattva. What this means will be the subject-matter of this chapter.
Let us begin with a quotation from the Saddharma-pundarîka Sûtra, in which a well-defined distinction between the Çrâvakas and the Pratyekabuddhas and the Bodhisattvas is given.[119]
The Three Yânas.
“Now, Çâriputra, the beings who have become wise, have faith in the Tathâgata, the father of the world, and consequently apply themselves to his commandments.
“Amongst them there are some who, wishing to follow the dictate of an authoritative voice, apply themselves to the commandment of the Tathâgata to acquire the knowledge of the Four Great Truths, for the sake of their own complete Nirvana. These, one may say, to be those who, seeking the vehicle of the Çrâvaka, fly from the triple world.....
“Other beings desirous of the unconditioned knowledge, of self-restraint and tranquillity, apply themselves to the commandment of the Tathâgata to learn to understand the Twelve Chains of Dependence, for the sake of their own complete Nirvana. These, one may say, to be those who, seeking the vehicle of the Pratyekabuddha, fly from the triple world.....
“Other beings again desirous of omniscience, Buddha-knowledge, absolute knowledge, unconditioned knowledge, apply themselves to the commandment of the Tathâgata and to learn to understand the knowledge, powers, and conviction of the Tathâgata, for the sake of the common weal and happiness, out of compassion to the world, for the benefit, weal and happiness of the world at large, of both gods and men, for the sake of the complete Nirvana of all beings. These, one may say, to be those who seeking the Great Vehicle (Mahâyâna) fly from the triple world. Therefore, they are called Bodhisattva-mahâsattvas.”.....
This characterisation of the Bodhisattvas as distinct from the Çrâvakas and Pratyekabuddhas constitutes one of the most significant features of Mahâyâna Buddhism. Here the Bodhisattva does not exert himself in religious discipline for the sake of his own weal, but for the sake of the spiritual benefit of all his fellow-creatures. If he will, he could, like the Çrâvakas and Pratyekabuddhas, enter into eternal Nirvana that never slides back; he could enjoy the celestial bliss of undisturbed tranquillity in which all our worldly tribulations are forever buried; he could seclude himself from the hurly-burly of the world, and, sitting cross-legged in a lonely cave, quietly contemplate on the evanescence of human interests and the frivolity of earthly affairs, and then self-contentedly await the time of final absorption into the absolute All, as streams and rivers finally run into one great ocean and become of one taste. But, in spite of all these self-sufficient blessings, the Bodhisattva would not seek his own ease, but he would mingle himself in the turmoil of worldly life and devote all his energy to the salvation of the masses of people, who, on account of their ignorance and infatuation, are forever transmigrating in the triple world, without making any progress towards the final goal of humanity.
Along this Bodhisattvaic devotion, however, there was another current of religious thought and practice running among the followers of Buddha. By this I mean the attitude of the Çrâvakas and the Pratyekabuddhas. Both of them sought peace of mind in asceticism and cold philosophical speculation. Both of them were intently inclined to gain Nirvana which may be likened unto an extinguished fire. It was not theirs to think of the common weal of all beings, and, therefore, when they attained their own redemption from earthly sins and passions, their religious discipline was completed, and no further attempt was made by them to extend the bliss of their personal enlightenment to their fellow-creatures.[120] They recoiled from mingling themselves among vulgar people lest their holy life should get contaminated. They did not have confidence enough in their own power to help the masses to break the iron yoke of ignorance and misery. Moreover, everybody was supposed to exert himself for his own emancipation, however unbearable his pain was for others could not do anything to alleviate it. Sympathy was of no avail; because the reward of his own karma good or evil could be suffered by himself alone, nor could it be avoidable even by the doer himself. Things done were done once for all, and their karma made an indelible mark on the pages of his destiny. Even Buddha who was supposed to have attained that exalted position by practising innumerable pious deeds in all his former lives, could not escape the fruit of evil karma which was quite unwittingly committed by him. This iron arm of karma seizes everybody in person and does not allow any substitute whatever. Those who wish to give a halt to the working of karma could do so only by applying a counter-force to it, and this with no other hand than his own. The Mahâyânist conception of Bodhisattvahood may be considered an effort somewhat to mitigate this ruthless mechanical rigidity of the law of karma.
Strict Individualism.
The Buddhism of the Çrâvakas and the Pratyekabuddhas is the most unscrupulous application to our ethico-religious life of the individualistic theory of karma. All things done are done by oneself; all things left undone are left undone by oneself. They would say: “Your salvation is exclusively your own business, and whatever sympathy I may have is of no avail. All that I can do toward helping you is to let you see intellectually the way to emancipation. If you do not follow it, you have but to suffer the fruition of your folly. I am helpless with all my enlightenment, even with my Nirvana, to emancipate you from the misery of perpetual metempsychosis.” But with the Buddhism of the Mahâyâna Bodhisattvas the case is entirely different. It is all-sympathy, it is all-compassion, it is all-love. A Bodhisattva would not seclude himself into the absolute tranquillity of Nirvana, simply because he wishes to emancipate his fellow-creatures also from the bondage of ignorance and infatuation. Whatever rewards he may get for his self-enjoyment as the karma of his virtuous deeds, he would turn them over (parivarta) towards the uplifting of the suffering masses. And this self-sacrifice, this unselfish devotion to the welfare of his fellow-beings constitutes the essence of Bodhisattvahood. The ideal Bodhisattva, therefore, is thought to be no more than an incarnation of Intelligence and Love, of Prajñâ and Karunâ.
The irrefragability of karma seems to be satisfactory from the intellectual and individualistic standpoint, for the intellect demands a thorough application of logic, and individualism does not allow the transferring of responsibility from one person to another. From this viewpoint, therefore, a rigorous enforcement as demanded by Hînayânism of the principle of self-emancipation does not show any logical fault; divine grace must be suspended as the curse of karma produced by ignorance tenaciously clings to our soul. But when viewed from the religious side of the question, this inflexibility of karma is more than poor mortals can endure. They want something more elastic and pliable that yields to the supplication of the feeling. When individuals are considered nothing but isolated, disconnected atoms, between which there is no unifying bond which is the feeling, they are too weak to resist and overcome the ever-threatening force of evil, whose reality as long as a world of particulars exists cannot be contradicted. This religious necessity felt in our inmost consciousness may explain the reason why Mahâyâna Buddhism proposed the doctrine of parivarta (turning over) founded on the oneness of Dharmakâyâ.
The Doctrine of Parivarta.
The doctrine of turning over (parivarta) of one’s own merits to others is a great departure from that which seems to have been the teaching of “primitive Buddhism.” In fact, it is more than a departure, it is even in opposition to the latter in some measure. Because while individualism is a predominant feature in the religious practice of the Çrâvakas and the Pratyekabuddhas, universalism or supra-individualism, if I am allowed to use these terms, is the principle advocated by the Bodhisattvas. The latter believe that all beings, being a manifestation of the Dharmakâya, are in their essence of one nature; that individual existences are real so far as subjective ignorance is concerned; and that virtues and merits issuing directly from the Dharmakâya which is intelligence and love, cannot fail to produce universal benefit and to effect final emancipation of all beings. Thus, the religion of the Bodhisattvas proposes to achieve what was thought impossible by the Çrâvakas and the Pratyekabuddhas, that is, the turning over of one’s own merits to the service of others.
It is in this spirit that the Bodhisattvas conceive the seriousness of the significance of life; it is in this spirit that, pondering over the reason of their existence on earth, they come to the following view of life:
“All ignorant beings are daily and nightly performing evil deeds in innumerable ways; and, on this account, their suffering beggars description. They do not recognise the Tathâgata, do not listen to his teachings, do not pay homage to the congregation of holy men. And this evil karma will surely bring them a heavy crop of misery. This reflection fills the heart of a Bodhisattva with gloomy feelings, which in turn gives rise to the immovable resolution, that he himself will carry all the burdens for ignorant beings and help them to reach the final goal of Nirvana. Inestimably heavy as these burdens are, he will not swerve nor yield under their weight. He will not rest until all ignorant beings are freed from the entangling meshes of desire and sin, until they are uplifted above the darkening veil of ignorance and infatuation; and this his marvelous spiritual energy defies the narrow limitations of time and space, and will extend even to eternity when the whole system of worlds comes to a conclusion. Therefore, all the innumerable meritorious deeds practised by the Bodhisattvas are dedicated to the emancipation of ignorant beings.
“The Bodhisattvas do not feel, however, that they are being compelled by any external force to devote their lives to the edification and uplifting of the masses. They do not recognise any outward authority, the violation of which may react upon them in the form of a punishment. They have already passed beyond this stage of world-conception which implies a dualism; they are on the contrary moving in a much wider and higher sphere of thought. All that is done by them springs from their spontaneous will, from the free activity of the Bodhicitta, which constitutes their reason of existence; and thus there is nothing compulsory in their thoughts and movements. [To use Laotzean terminology, they are practising non-action, wu wei, and whatever may appear to the ignorant and unenlightened as a strenuous and restless life, is merely a natural overflow from the inexhaustible fount of energy called Bodhicitta, heart of intelligence].”[121]
Bodhisattva in “Primitive” Buddhism.
The notion of Bodhisattva was not entirely absent in “primitive” Buddhism, only it did not have such a wide signification. All Buddhas were Bodhisattvas in their former lives. The Jâtaka stories minutely describe what self-sacrificing deeds were done by them and how by the karma of these merits they finally attained Buddhahood. Çâkyamuni was not the only Buddha, but there had already been seven or twenty-four Buddhas prior to him, and the coming Buddha to be known as Maitreya is believed to be disciplining himself in the Tuṣita heaven and going through the stages of Bodhisattvahood. The one who is thus destined to be the future Buddha must be extraordinarily gifted in spiritual energy. He must pass through eons of self-discipline, must practise deeds of non-atman with unflinching courage and fortitude through innumerable existences.
The following quotation from the Jâtaka tales will be sufficient to see what ponderous and exacting conditions were conceived by the so-called Hînayânists to be necessary for a human being to become a fully qualified Buddha.[122]
“Of men it is he, and only he, who is in a fit condition by the attainment of saintship in that same existence, that can successfully make a wish to be a Buddha. Of those in a fit condition it is only he who makes the wish in the presence of a living Buddha that succeeds in his wish; after the death of a Buddha a wish made at a relic shrine, or at the foot of a Bo-tree, will not be successful. Of those who make the wish in the presence of a Buddha it is he and only he who has retired from the world that can successfully make the wish, and not one who is a layman. Of those who have retired from the world it is only he who is possessed of the Five High Powers and is master of the Eight Attainments that can successfully make the wish, and no one can do so who is lacking in these excellences. Of those, even, who possess these excellences, it is he, and only he, who has such firm resolve that he is ready to sacrifice his life for the Buddhas that can successfully make the wish, but no other. Of those who possess this resolve it is he, and only he, who has great zeal, determination, strenuousness, and endeavor in striving for the qualities that make a Buddha that is successful. The following comparisons will show the intensity of the zeal. If he is such a one as to think: ‘The man who, if all within the rim of the world were to become water, would be ready to swim across it with his own arms and get further shore,—he is the one to attain the Buddhaship: or, in case all within the rim of the world were to become a jungle of bamboo, would be ready to elbow and trample his way through it and get to the further side,—he is the one to attain the Buddhaship; or, in case all within the rim of the world were to become a terra firma of thick-set javelins, would be ready to tread on them and go afoot to the further side,—he is the one to attain the Buddhaship; or, in case all within the rim of the world were to become live coals, would be ready to tread on them and so get to the further side,—he is the one to attain the Buddhaship,’—if he deems not even one of these feats too hard for himself but has such great zeal, determination, strenuousness, and power of endeavor that he would perform these feats in order to attain the Buddhaship, then, but not otherwise, will his wish succeed.”
From this it is apparent that everybody could not become a Buddha in “primitive” Buddhism; the highest aspiration that could be cherished by him was to believe in the teachings of Buddha, to follow the precepts laid down by him, and to attain at most to Arhatship. The idea of Arhatship, however, was considered by Mahâyânists cold, impassionate, and hard-hearted, for the saint calmly reviews the sight of the suffering masses; and therefore Arhatship was altogether unsatisfactory to be the object for the Bodhisattvas of their high religious aspirations.
The Mahâyânists wanted to go even beyond the attainment of Arhatship, however exalted its spirituality may be. They wanted to make every humble soul a being like Çâkyamuni, they wanted lavishly to distribute the bliss of enlightenment; they wanted to remove all the barriers that were supposed to lie between Buddhahood and the common humanity. But how could they do this when the iron hands of karma held tight the fate of each individual! How was it possible for him to identify his being with the ideal of mankind? Perhaps this serious problem could not very well be solved by Buddhists, when their memory of the majestic personality of Çâkyamuni was still vivid before their mental eyes. It was probably no easy task for them to overcome the feeling of awe and reverence which was so deeply engraved in their hearts, and to raise themselves to such a height as reached by their Master, even ideally. This was certainly an act of sacrilege. But, as time advances, the personal recollection of the Master would naturally wane and would not play so much influence as their own religious consciousness which is ever fresh and active. Generally speaking, all great historical characters that command the reverence and awe of posterity do so only when their words or acts or both unravel the deepest secrets of the human heart. And this feeling of awe and reverence and even of worship is not due so much to the great characters themselves as to the worshiper’s own religious consciousness. History passes, but the heart persists. An individual called Çâkyamuni may be forgotten in the course of time, but the sacred chord in the inmost heart struck by him reverberates through eternity. So with the Mahâyâna Buddhists, the religious sentiment at last asserted itself in spite of the personal recollection and reverential feeling for the Master. And perhaps in the following way was the reasoning then advanced by them relative to the great problem of Buddhahood.
We are all Bodhisattvas.
As Çâkyamuni was a Bodhisattva in his former lives destined to become a Buddha, so we are all Bodhisattvas and even Buddhas in a certain sense, when we understand that all sentient beings, the Buddha not excepted, are one in the Dharmakâya. The Dharmakâya manifests in us as Bodhi which is the essence of Buddhas as well as of Bodhisattvas. This Bodhi can suffer no change whatever in quantity even when the Bodhisattva attains finally to the highest human perfection as Çâkyamuni Buddha. In this spirit, therefore, the Buddha exclaimed when he obtained enlightenment, “It is marvelous indeed that all beings animate and inanimate universally partake of the nature of Tathâgatahood.” The only difference between a Buddha and the ignorant masses is that the latter do not make manifest in them the glory of Bodhi.
They only are not Bodhisattvas who, enveloped in the divine rays of light in a celestial abode, philosophically review the world of tribulations. Even we mortals made of dust are Bodhisattvas, incarnates of the Bodhi, capable of being united in the all-embracing love of the Dharmakâya and also of obliterating the individual curse of karma in the eternal and absolute intelligence of the Dharmakâya. As soon as we come to live in this love and intelligence, individual existences are no hindrance to the turning over (parivarta) of one’s spiritual merits (punya) to the service of others. Let us only have an insight into the spirituality of our existence and we are all Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. Let us abandon the selfish thought of entering into Nirvana that is conceived to extinguish the fire of heart and leave only the cold ashes of intellect. Let us have sympathy for all suffering beings and turn over all our merits, however small, to their benefit and happiness. For in this way we are all made the Bodhisattvas.[123]
The Buddha’s Life.
This spirit of universal love prevails in all Mahâyâna literature, and the Bodhisattvas are everywhere represented as exercising it with utmost energy. The Mahâyânists, therefore, could not rest satisfied with a simple, prosaic, and earthly account of Çâkyamuni, they wanted to make it as ideal and poetic as possible, illustrating the gospel of love, as was conceived by them, in every phase of the life of the Buddha.
The Mahâyânists first placed the Buddha in the Tuṣita heaven before his birth, (as was done by the Hînayânists), made him feel pity for the distressed world below, made him resolve to deliver it from “the ocean of misery which throws up sickness as its foam, tossing with the waves of old age, and rushing with the dreadful onflow of death,” and after his Parinirvana, they made him abide forever on the peak of the Mount Vulture delivering the sermon of immortality to a great assemblage of spiritual beings. In this wise, they explained the significance of the appearance of Çâkyamuni on earth, which was nothing but a practical demonstration of the “Great Loving Heart” (mahâkarunâcitta).
The Bodhisattva and Love.
Nâgârjuna in his work on the Bodhicitta[124] elucidates the Mahâyânist notion of Bodhisattvahood as follows:
“Thus the essential nature of all Bodhisattvas is a great loving heart (mahâkarunâcitta), and all sentient beings constitute the object of its love. Therefore, all the Bodhisattvas do not cling to the blissful taste that is produced by the divers modes of mental tranquilisation (dhyâna), do not covet the fruit of their meritorious deeds, which may heighten their own happiness.
“Their spiritual state is higher than that of the Çrâvakas, for they do not leave all sentient beings behind them [as the Çrâvakas do]. They practise altruism, they seek the fruit of Buddha-knowledge [instead of Çrâvaka-knowledge].
“With a great loving heart they look upon the sufferings of all beings, who are diversely tortured in Avici Hell in consequence of their sins—a hell whose limits are infinite and where an endless round of misery is made possible on account of all sorts of karma [committed by sentient creatures]. The Bodhisattvas filled with pity and love desire to suffer themselves for the sake of those miserable beings.
“But they are well acquainted with the truth that all those diverse sufferings causing diverse states of misery are in one sense apparitional and unreal, while in another sense they are not so. They know also that those who have an intellectual insight into the emptiness (çûnyatâ) of all existences, thoroughly understand why those rewards of karma are brought forth in such and such ways [through ignorance and infatuation].
“Therefore, all Bodhisattvas, in order to emancipate sentient beings from misery, are inspired with great spiritual energy and mingle themselves in the filth of birth and death. Though thus they make themselves subject to the laws of birth and death, their hearts are free from sins and attachments. They are like unto those immaculate, undefiled lotus-flowers which grow out of mire, yet are not contaminated by it.
“Their great hearts of sympathy which constitute the essence of their being never leave suffering creatures behind [in their journey towards enlightenment]. Their spiritual insight is in the emptiness (çûnyatâ) of things, but [their work of salvation] is never outside the world of sins and sufferings.”
The Meaning of Bodhi and Bodhicitta.
What is the meaning of the word “Bodhisattva”? It is a Sanskrit term consisting of two words, “Bodhi,” and “sattva.” Bodhi which comes from the root budh meaning “to wake,” is generally rendered “knowledge” or “intelligence.” Sattva (sat-tva) literally means “state of being”; thus “existence,” “creature,” or “that which is,” being its English equivalent. “Bodhisattva” as one word means “a being of intelligence,” or “a being whose essence is intelligence.” Why the Mahâyânists came to adopt this word in contradistinction to Çrâvaka is easily understood, when we see what special significance they attached to the conception of Bodhi in their philosophy. When Bodhi was used by the Çrâvakas in the simple sense of knowledge, it did not bear any particular import. But as soon as it came to express some metaphysical relation to the conception of Dharmakâya, it ceased to be used in its generally accepted sense.
Bodhi, according to the Mahâyânists, is an expression of the Dharmakâya in the human consciousness. Philosophically speaking, Suchness or Bhûtatathâtâ is an ontological term, and Dharmakâya or Tathâgata or Buddha bears a religious significance; while all these three, Bodhi, Bhûtatathâtâ, and Dharmakâya, and their synonyms are nothing but different aspects of one and the same reality refracting through the several defective lenses of a finite intellect.
Bodhi, though essentially an epistemological term, assumes a psychological sense when it is used in conjunction with citta, i.e. heart or soul. Bodhicitta, or Bodhihṛdaya which means the same thing, is more generally used than Bodhi singly in the Mahâyâna texts, especially when its religious import is emphasised above its intellectual one. Bodhicitta, viz. intelligence-heart is a reflex in the human heart of its religious archetype, the Dharmakâya.
Bodhicitta when further amplified is called anuttara-samyak-sambodhicitta, that is, “intelligence-heart that is supreme and most perfect.”
It will be easily understood now that what constitutes the essence of the Bodhicitta is the very same thing that makes up the Dharmakâya. For the former is nothing but an expression of the latter, though finitely, fragmentarily, imperfectly realised in us. The citta is an image and the Dharmakâya the prototype, yet one is just as real as the other, only the two must not be conceived dualistically. There is a Dharmakâya, there is a human heart, and the former reflects itself in the latter much after the fashion of the lunar reflection in the water:—to think in this wise is not perfectly correct; because the fundamental teaching of Buddhism is to view all these three conceptions, the Dharmakâya, human heart, and the reflections of the former in the latter, as different forms of one and the same activity.
Love and Karunâ.
The Bodhicitta or Intelligence-heart, therefore, like the Dharmakâya is essentially love and intelligence, or, to use Sanskrit terms, karunâ and prajñâ. Here some may object to the use of the term “love” for karunâ, perhaps on the ground that karunâ does not exactly correspond to the Christian notion of love, as it savors more of the sense of commiseration. But if we understand by love a sacrifice of the self for the sake of others (and it cannot be more than that), then karunâ can correctly be rendered love, even in the Christian sense. Is not the Bodhisattva willing to abandon his own Nirvanic peace for the interests of suffering creatures? Is he not willing to dedicate the karma of his meritorious deeds performed in his successive existences to the general welfare of his fellow-beings? Is not his one fundamental motive that governs all his activities in life directed towards a universal emancipation of all sentient beings? Is he not perfectly willing to forsake all the thoughts and passions that arise from egoism and to embrace the will of the Dharmakâya? If this be the case, then there is no reason why karunâ should not be rendered by love.
Christians say that without love we are become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal; and Buddhists would declare that without karunâ we are like unto a dead vine hanging over a frozen boulder, or like unto the cold ashes left after a blazing fire.
Some may say, however, that the Buddhist sympathy or commiseration somewhat betrays a sense of passive contemplation on evils. When Christians say that God loves his creatures, the love implies activity and shows God’s willingness to do whatever for the actual benefits of his subject-beings. Quite true. Yet when the Buddha is stated to have declared that all sentient beings in the triple world are his own children or that he will not enter into his final Nirvana unless all beings in the three thousand great chiliocosms, not a single soul excepted, are emancipated from the misery of birth and death, his self-sacrificing love must be considered to be all-comprehensive and at the same time full of energy and activity. Whatever objections there may be, we do not see any sufficient reason against speaking of the love-essence of the Dharmakâya and the Bodhicitta.
Nâgârjuna and Sthiramati on the Bodhicitta.
Says Nâgârjuna in his Discourse on the Transcendentality of the Bodhicitta: “The Bodhicitta is free from all determinations, that is, it is not included in the categories of the five skandhas, the twelve âyatanas, and the eighteen dhâtus. It is not a particular existence which is palpable. It is non-atmanic, universal. It is uncreated and its self-essence is void [çûnya, immaterial, or transcendental].
“One who understands the nature of the Bodhicitta sees everything with a loving heart, for love is the essence of the Bodhicitta.
“The Bodhicitta is the highest essence.
“Therefore, all Bodhisattvas find their raison d’être of existence in this great loving heart.
“The Bodhicitta, abiding in the heart of sameness (samatâ) creates individual means of salvation (upaya).[125] One who understands this heart becomes emancipated from the dualistic view of birth and death and performs such acts as are beneficial both to oneself and to others.”
Sthiramati advocates in his Discourse on the Mahâyâna-Dharmadhâtu[126] the same view as Nâgârjuna’s on the nature of the Bodhicitta, which I summarise here: “Nirvâna, Dharmakâya, Tathâgata, Tathâgata-garbha, Paramârtha, Buddha, Bodhicitta, or Bhûtatathâtâ,—all these terms signify merely so many different aspects of one and the same reality; and Bodhicitta is the name given to a form of the Dharmakâya or Bhûtatathâtâ as it manifests itself in the human heart, and its perfection, or negatively its liberation from all egoistic impurities, constitutes the state of Nirvana.”
Being a reflex of the Dharmakâya, the Bodhicitta is practically the same as the original in all its characteristics; so continues Sthiramati: “It is free from compulsive activities; it has no beginning, it has no end; it cannot be defiled by impurities, it cannot be obscured by egoistic individualistic prejudices; it is incorporeal, it is the spiritual essence of Buddhas, it is the source of all virtues earthly as well as transcendental; it is constantly becoming, yet its original purity is never lost.
“It may be likened unto the ever-shining sunlight which may temporarily be hidden behind the clouds. All the modes of passion and sin arising from egoism may sometimes darken the light of the Bodhicitta, but the Citta itself forever remains free from these external impurities. It may again be likened unto all-comprehending space which remains eternally identical, whatever happenings and changes may occur in things enveloped therein. When the Bodhicitta manifests itself in a relative world, it looks as if being subject to constant becoming, but in reality it transcends all determinations, it is above the reach of birth and death (samsâra).
“So long as it remains buried under innumerable sins arising from ignorance and egoism, it is productive of no earthly or heavenly benefit. Like the lotus-flower whose petals are yet unfolded, like the gold that is deeply entombed under the débris of dung and dirt, or like the light of the full moon eclipsed by Açura; the Bodhicitta, when blindfolded by the clouds of passion, avarice, ignorance, and folly, does not reveal its intrinsic spiritual worth.
“Destroy at once with your might and main all those entanglements; then like the full-bloomed lotus-flower, like genuine gold purified from dirt and dust, like the moon in a cloudless sky, like the sun in its full glory, like mother earth producing all kinds of cereals, like the ocean containing innumerable treasures, the eternal bliss of the Bodhicitta will be upon all sentient beings. All sentient beings are then emancipated from the misery of ignorance and folly, their hearts are filled with love and sympathy and free from the clinging to things worthless.
“However defiled and obscured the Bodhicitta may find itself in profane hearts, it is essentially the same as that in all Buddhas. Therefore, says the Muni of Çakya: ‘O Çâriputra, the world of sentient beings is not different from the Dharmakâya; the Dharmakâya is not different from the world of sentient beings. What constitutes the Dharmakâya is the world of sentient beings; and what constitutes the world of sentient beings is the Dharmakâya.’
“As far as the Dharmakâya or the Bodhicitta is concerned, there is no radical distinction to be made between profane hearts and the Buddha’s heart; yet when observed from the human standpoint [that is, from the phenomenal side of existence] the following general classification can be made:
“(1) The heart hopelessly distorted by numberless egoistic sins and condemned to an eternal transmigration of birth and death which began in the timeless past, is said to be in the state of profanity.
“(2) The heart that, loathing the misery of wandering in birth and death and taking leave of all sinful and depraved conditions, seeks the Bodhi in the ten virtues of perfection (pâramitâ) and 84,000 Buddha-dharmas and disciplines itself in all meritorious deeds, is said to be the [spiritual] state of a Bodhisattva.
“(3) The state in which the heart is emancipated from the obscuration of all passions, has distanced all sufferings, has eternally effaced the stain of all sins and corruptions, is pure, purer, and purest, abides in the essence of Dharma, has reached the height from which the states of all sentient beings are surveyed, has attained the consummation of all knowledges, has realised the highest type of manhood, has gained the power of spiritual spontaneity which frees one from attachment and hesitation,—this spiritual state is that of the fully, perfectly, enlightened Tathâgata”.
The Awakening of the Bodhicitta.
The Bodhicitta is present in the hearts of all sentient beings. Only in Buddhas it is fully awakened and active with its immaculate virility, while in ordinary mortals it is dormant and miserably crippled by its unenlightened intercourse with the world of sensuality. One of the most favorite parables told by the Mahâyânists to illustrate this point is to compare the Bodhicitta to the moonlight in the heavens. When the moon shines with her silvery light in the clear, cloudless skies, she is reflected in every drop and in every mass of water on the earth. The crystal dews on the quivering leaves reflect her like so many pearls hung on the branches. Every little water-pool, probably formed temporarily by heavy showers in the daytime, reflects her like so many stars descended on earth. Perhaps some of the pools are muddy and others even filthy, but the moonlight does not refuse to reflect her immaculate image in them. The image is just as perfect there as in a clear, undisturbed, transparent lake, where cows quench their thirst and swans bathe their taintless feathers. Wherever there is the least trace of water, there is seen a heavenly image of the goddess of night. Even so with the Bodhicitta: where there exists a little warmth of the heart, there it unfailingly glorifies itself in its best as circumstances permit.
Now, the question is: How should this dormant Bodhicitta in our hearts be awakened to its full sense? This is answered more or less definitely in almost all the Mahâyâna writings, and we may here recite the words of Vasubandhu from his Discourse on the Awakening of the Bodhicitta,[127] for they give us a somewhat systematic statement of those conditions which tend to awaken the Bodhicitta from its lethargic inactivity. (Chap. II.)
The Bodhicitta or Intelligence-heart is awakened in us (1) by thinking of the Buddhas, (2) by reflecting on the faults of material existence, (3) by observing the deplorable state in which sentient beings are living, and finally (4) by aspiring after those virtues which are acquired by a Tathâgata in the highest enlightenment.
To describe these conditions more definitely:
(1) By thinking of the Buddhas. “All Buddhas in the ten quarters, of the past, of the future, and of the present, when first started on their way to enlightenment, were not quite free from passions and sins (kleça) any more than we are at present; but they finally succeeded in attaining the highest enlightenment and became the noblest beings.
“All the Buddhas, by strength of their inflexible spiritual energy, were capable of attaining perfect enlightenment. If enlightenment is attainable at all, why should we not attain it?
“All the Buddhas, erecting high the torch of wisdom through the darkness of ignorance and keeping awake an excellent heart, submitted themselves to penance and mortification, and finally emancipated themselves from the bondage of the triple world. Following their steps, we, too, could emancipate ourselves.
“All the Buddhas, the noblest type of mankind, successfully crossed the great ocean of birth and death and of passions and sins; why, then, we, being creatures of intelligence, could also cross the sea of transmigration.
“All the Buddhas manifesting great spiritual power sacrificed the possessions, body, and life, for the attainment of omniscience (sarvajñâ); and we, too, could follow their noble examples.”
(2) The faults of the material existence. “This our bodily existence consisting of the five skandhas and the four mahats (elements) is a perpetuator of innumerable evil deeds; and therefore it should be cast aside. This our bodily existence constantly secretes from its nine orifices filths and impurities which are truly loathsome; and therefore it should be cast aside. This our bodily existence, harboring within itself anger, avarice, and infatuation, and other innumerable evil passions, consumes a good heart; and therefore it should be destroyed. This our bodily existence is like a bubble, like a spatter, and is decaying every minute. It is an undesirable possession and should be abandoned. This our bodily existence engulfed in ignorance is creating evil karma all the time, which throws us into the whirlpool of transmigration through the six gatis.”
(3) The miserable conditions of sentient beings which arouse the sympathy of the Bodhisattvas. “All sentient beings are under the bondage of ignorance. Spell-bound by folly and infatuation, they are suffering the severest pain. Not believing in the law of karma, they are accumulating evils; going astray from the path of righteousness, they are following false doctrines; sinking deeper in the whirlpool of passions, they are being drowned in the four waters of sin.
“They are being tortured with all sorts of pain. They are needlessly haunted by the fear of birth and death and old age, and do not seek the path of emancipation. Mortified with grief, anxiety, tribulation, they do not refrain from committing further foul deeds. Clinging to their beloved ones and being always afraid of separation, they do not understand that there is no individual reality, that individual existences are not worth clinging to. Trying to shun enmity, hatred, pain, they cherish more hatred.”........
(4) The virtues of the Tathâgata. “All the Tathâgatas, by virtue of their discipline, have acquired a noble, dignified mien which aspires every beholder with the thought that dispels pain and woe. The Dharmakâya of all the Tathâgatas is immortal and pure and free from evil attachments. All the Tathâgatas are possessed of moral discipline, tranquillity, intelligence, and emancipation. They are not hampered by intellectual prejudices and have become the sanctuary of immaculate virtues. They have the ten bâlas (powers), four abhayas (fearlessness), great compassion, and the three smṛtyupasthânas (contemplations). They are omniscient, and their love for suffering beings knows no bounds and brings all creatures back to the path of righteousness, who have gone astray on account of ignorance.”
* * *
In short, the Intelligence-heart or Bodhicitta is awakened in us either when love for suffering creatures (which is innate in us) is called forth, or when our intellect aspires after the highest enlightenment, or when these two psychical activities are set astir under some favorable circumstances. As the Bodhicitta is a manifestation of the Dharmakâya in our limited conscious mind, it constantly longs for a unification with its archetype, in spite of the curse of ignorance heavily weighing upon it. When this unification is not effected for any reason, the heart (citta) shows its dissatisfaction in some way or other. The dissatisfaction may take sometimes a morbid course, and may result in pessimism, or misanthropy, or suicide, or asceticism, or some other kindred eccentric practices. But if properly guided and naturally developed, the more intense the dissatisfaction, the more energetic will be the spiritual activity of a Bodhisattva.
The Bodhisattva’s Pranidhâna.
Having awakened his Bodhicitta from its unconscious slumber, a Bodhisattva will now proceed to make his vows.
Let me remark here, however, that “vow” is not a very appropriate term to express the meaning of the Sanskrit pranidhâna. Pranidhâna is a strong wish, aspiration, prayer, or an inflexible determination to carry out one’s will even through an infinite series of rebirths. Buddhists have such a supreme belief in the power of will or spirit that, whatever material limitations, the will is sure to triumph over them and gain its final aim. So, every Bodhisattva is considered to have his own particular pranidhânas in order to perform his share in the work of universal salvation. His corporeal shadow may vanish as its karma is exhausted, but his pranidhâna survives and takes on a new garment, which procedure being necessary to keep it ever effective. All that is needed for a Bodhisattva to do this is to make himself a perfect incarnation of his own aspirations, putting everything external and foreign under their controlling spiritual power. Buddhists are so thoroughly idealistic and their faith in ideas and ideals is so unshakable that they firmly believe that whatever they aspire to will come out finally as real fact; and, therefore, the more intense and permanent and born of the inmost needs of humanity, the more certain are our yearnings to be satisfied. (This belief, by the way, will help to explain the popular belief among the Buddhists that any strong passion possessed by a man will survive him and take a form, animate or inanimate, which will best achieve its end.)
According to Vasubandhu whom we have quoted several times, the Bodhisattvas generally are supposed to make the following ten pranidhânas, which naturally spring from a great loving heart now awakened in them:[128]
(1) “Would that all the merits I have accumulated in the past as well as in the present be distributed among all sentient beings and make them all aspire after supreme knowledge, and also that this my pranidhâna be constantly growing in strength and sustain me throughout my rebirths.
(2) “Would that, through the merits of my work, I may, wherever I am born, come in the presence of all Buddhas and pay them homage.
(3) “Would that I be allowed all the time to be near Buddhas like shadow following object, and never to be away from them.
(4) “Would that all Buddhas instruct me in religious truths as best suited to my intelligence and let me finally attain the five spiritual powers of the Bodhisattva.
(5) “Would that I be thoroughly conversant with scientific knowledge as well as the first principle of religion and gain an insight into the truth of the Good Law.
(6) “Would that I be able to preach untiringly the truth to all beings, and gladden them, and benefit them, and make them intelligent.
(7) “Would that, through the divine power of the Buddha, I be allowed to travel all over the ten quarters of the world, pay respect to all the Buddhas, listen to their instructions in the Doctrine, and universally benefit all sentient beings.
(8) “Would that, by causing the wheel of immaculate Dharma to revolve, all sentient beings in the ten quarters of the universe who may listen to my teachings or hear my name, be freed from all passions and awaken in them the Bodhicitta.
(9) “Would that I all the time accompany and protect all sentient beings and remove for them things which are not beneficial to them and give them innumerable blessings, and also that through the sacrifice of my body, life, and possessions I embrace all creatures and thereby practise the Right Doctrine.
(10) “Would that, though practising the Doctrine in person, my heart be free from the consciousness of compulsion and unnaturalness, as all the Bodhisattvas practise the Doctrine in such a way as not practising it yet leaving nothing unpractised; for they have made their pranidhânas for the sake of all sentient beings.”
CHAPTER XII.
TEN STAGES OF BODHISATTVAHOOD.
Gradation in our Spiritual Life.
Theoretically speaking, as we have seen above, the Bodhi or Bodhicitta is in every sentient being, and in this sense he is a Bodhisattva. In profane hearts it may be found enveloped in ignorance and egoism, but it can never be altogether annulled. For the Bodhi, when viewed from its absolute aspect, transcends the realm of birth and death (samsâra), is beyond the world of toil and trouble and is not subject to any form of defilement. But when it assumes a relative existence and is only partially manifested under the cover of ignorance, there appear various stages of actualisation or of perfection. In some beings it may attain a more meaningful expression than in others, while there may be even those who apparently fail on account of their accursed karma to show the evidence of its presence. This latter class is usually called “Icchantika,” that is, people who are completely overwhelmed by the passions. They are morally and religiously a mere corpse which even a great spiritual physician finds it almost impossible to resuscitate. But, philosophically considered, the glory of the Bodhi must be admitted to be shining even in these dark, ignorant souls. Such souls, perhaps, will have to go round many a cycle of transmigration, before their karma loses its poignancy and becomes susceptible to a moral influence with which they may come in contact.
This accursed force of karma is not the same in all beings, it admits of all possible degrees of strength, and causes some to suffer more intensely than others. But there is no human heart or soul that is absolutely free from the shackle of karma and ignorance, because this very existence of a phenomenal world is a product of ignorance, though this fact does not prove that this life is evil. The only heart that transcends the influence of karma and ignorance and is all-purity, all-love, and all-intelligence, is the Dharmakâya or the absolute Bodhi itself. The life of a Bodhisattva and indeed the end of our religious aspiration is to unfold, realise, and identify ourselves with the love and intelligence of that ideal and yet real Dharmakâya.
The awakening of the Bodhicitta (or intelligence-heart) marks the first step towards the highest good of human life. This awakening must pass through several stages of religious discipline before it attains perfection. These stages are generally estimated by the Mahâyânists at ten. They appear, however, to our modern sceptical minds to be of no significant consequence, nor can we detect any very practical and well-defined distinction between successive stages. We fail to understand what religious necessity impelled the Hindu Buddhists to establish such apparently unimportant stages one after another in our religious life. We can see, however, that the first awakening of the Bodhicitta does not transform us all at once to Buddhahood; we have yet to overcome with strenuous efforts the baneful influence of karma and ignorance which asserts itself too readily in our practical life. But the marking of stages as in the gradation of the Daçabhûmî in our spiritual progress seems to be altogether too artificial. Nevertheless I here take pains as an historical survey to enumerate the ten stages and to give some features supposed to be most characteristic of each Bhûmî (stage) as expounded in the Avatamsaka Sutra. Probably they will help us to understand what moral conceptions and what religious aspirations were working in the establishment of the doctrine of Daçabhûmî, for it elaborately describes what was considered by the Mahâyânists to be the essential constituents of Bodhisattvahood, and also shows what spiritual routine a Buddhist was expected to pursue.
The ten stages are: (1) Pramuditâ, (2) Vimalâ, (3) Prabhâkarî, (4) Arcismatî, (5) Sudurjayâ, (6) Abhimukhî, (7) Dûrangamâ, (8) Acalâ, (9) Sâdhumatî, (10) Dharmameghâ.
(1) The Pramuditâ.
Pramuditâ means “delight” or “joy” and marks the first stage of Bodhisattvahood, at which the Buddhists emerge from a cold, self-sufficing, and almost nihilistic contemplation of Nirvâna as fostered by the Çrâvakas and Pratyekabuddhas. This spiritual emergence and emancipation is psychologically accompanied by an intense feeling of joy, as that which is experienced by a person when he unexpectedly recognises the most familiar face in a faraway land of strangers. For this reason the first stage is called “joy.”
Even in the midst of perfect tranquillity of Nirvâna in which all passions are alleged to have died away as declared by ascetics or solitary philosophers, the inmost voice in the heart of the Bodhisattva moans in a sort of dissatisfaction or uneasiness, which, though undefined and seemingly of no significance, yet refuses to be eternally buried in the silent grave of annihilation. He vainly gropes in the darkness; he vainly seeks consolation in the samâdhi of non-resistance or non-activity; he vainly finds eternal peace in the gospel of self-negation; his soul is still troubled, not exactly knowing the reason why. But as soon as the Bodhicitta (intelligence-heart) is awakened from its somnolence, as soon as the warmth of love (mahâkarunâ) penetrates into the coldest cell of asceticism, as soon as the light of supreme enlightenment (mahâprajñâ) dawns upon the darkest recesses of ignorance, the Bodhisattva sees at once that the world is not made for self-seclusion nor for self-negation, that the Dharmakâya is the source of “universal effulgence,” that Nirvâna if relatively viewed in contrast to birth-and-death is nothing but sham and just as unreal as any worldly existence; and these insights finally lead him to feel that he cannot rest quiet until all sentient beings are emancipated from the snarl of ignorance and elevated to the same position as now occupied by himself.
(2) The Vimalâ.
Vimalâ means “freedom from defilement,” or, affirmatively, “purity.” When the Bodhisattva attains, through the spiritual insight gained at the first stage, to rectitude and purity of heart, he reaches the second stage. His heart is now thoroughly spotless, it is filled with tenderness, he fosters no anger, no malice. He is free from all the thoughts of killing any animate beings. Being contented with what belongs to himself, he casts no covetous eyes on things not his own. Faithful to his own betrothed, he does not harbor any evil thoughts on others. His words are always true, faithful, kind, and considerate. He likes truth, honesty, and never flatters.
(3) The Prabhâkarî.
Prabhâkarî means “brightness,” that is, of the intellect. This predominantly characterises the spiritual condition of the Bodhisattva at this stage. Here he gains the most penetrating insight into the nature of things. He recognises that all things that are created are not permanent, are conducive to misery, have no abiding selfhood (âtman), are destitute of purity, and subject to final decay. He recognises also that the real nature of things, however, is neither created nor subject to destruction, it is eternally abiding in the selfsame essence, and transcends the limits of time and space. Ignorant beings not seeing this truth are always worrying over things transient and worthless, and constantly consuming their spiritual energy with the fire of avarice, anger, and infatuation, which in turn accumulates for their future existences the ashes of misery and suffering. This wretched condition of sentient beings further stimulates the loving heart of the Bodhisattva to seek the highest intelligence of Buddha, which, giving him great spiritual energy, enables him to prosecute the gigantic task of universal emancipation. His desire for the Buddha-intelligence and his faith in it are of such immense strength that he would not falter even for a moment, if he is only assured of the attainment of the priceless treasure, to plunge himself into the smeltering fire of a volcano.
(4) The Arciṣmatî.
Arciṣmatî, meaning “inflammation,” is the name given to the fourth stage, at which the Bodhisattva consumes all the sediments of ignorance and evil passions in the fiery crucible of the purifying Bodhi. He practises here most strenuously the thirty-seven virtues called Bodhipâkṣikas which are conducive to the perfection of the Bodhi. These virtues consist of seven categories:
(I) Four Contemplations (smṛtyusthâna): 1. On the impurity of the body; 2. On the evils of sensuality; 3. On the evanescence of the worldly interests; 4. On the non-existence of âtman in things composite.
(II) Four Righteous Efforts (samyakprahâna): 1. To prevent evils from arising; 2. To suppress evils already existing; 3. To produce good not yet in existence; 4. To preserve good already in existence.
(III) Four Forces of the Will (ṛddhipâda): 1. The determination to accomplish what is willed; 2. The energy to concentrate the mind on the object in view; 3. The power of retaining the object in memory; 4. The intelligence that perceives the way to Nirvâna.
(IV) Five Powers (indrya), from which all moral good is produced: 1. Faith; 2. Energy; 3. Circumspection; 4. Equilibrium, or tranquillity of mind; 5 Intelligence.
(V) Five Functions (bala): Same as the above.[129]
(VI) Seven Constituents of the Bodhi (bodhyanga): 1. The retentive power; 2. Discrimination; 3. Energy; 4. Contentment; 5. Modesty; 6. The balanced mind; 7. Large-heartedness.
(VII) The Eightfold Noble Path (âryamârga): 1. Right view; 2. Right resolve; 3. Right speech; 4. Right conduct; 5. Right livelihood; 6. Right recollection; 8. Right tranquilisation, or contemplation.
(5) The Sudurjayâ.
Sudurjayâ means “very difficult to conquer.” The Bodhisattva reaches this stage when he, completely armed with the thirty-seven Bodhipâkṣikas and guided by the beacon-light of Bodhi, undauntedly breaks through the column of evil passions. Provided with the two spiritual provisions, love and wisdom, and being benefitted by the spirits of all the Buddhas of the past, present, and future, the Bodhisattva has developed an intellectual power to penetrate deep into the system of existence. He perceives the Fourfold Noble Truth in its true light; he perceives the highest reality in the Tathâgata; he also perceives that the highest reality, though absolutely one in its essence, manifests itself in a world of particulars, that relative knowledge (samvrtti) and absolute knowledge (paramârtha) are two aspects of one and the same truth, that when subjectivity is disturbed there appears particularity, and that when it is not disturbed there shines only the eternal light of Tathâgatajñâ (Tathâgata-knowledge).
(6) The Abhimukhî.
Abhimukhî means “showing one’s face,” that is, the presentation of intelligence (prajñâ) before the Bodhisattva at this stage.
The Bodhisattva enters upon this stage by reflecting on the essence of all dharmas which are throughout of one nature. When he perceives the truth, his heart is filled with great love, he serenely contemplates on the life of ignorant beings who are constantly going astray yielding themselves to evil temptations, clinging to the false conception of egoism, and thus making themselves the prey of eternal damnation. He then proceeds to contemplate the development of evils generally. There is ignorance, there is karma; and in this fertile soil of blind activity the seeds of consciousness are sown; the moisture of desire thoroughly soaks them, to which the water of egoism or individuation is poured on. The bed for all forms of particularity is well prepared, and the buds of nâmarûpas (name-and-form) most vigorously thrive here. From these we have the flowers of sense-organs, and which come in contact with other existences and produce impressions, feel agreeable sensations, and tenaciously cling to them. From this clinging or the will to live as the principle of individuation or as the principle of bhâva as is called in the Twelve Nidânas, another body consisting of the five skandhas comes into existence, and, passing through all the phases of transformation, dissolves and disappears. All sentient beings are thus kept in a perpetual oscillation of combination and separation, of pleasure and pain, birth and death. But the insight of the Bodhisattva has gone deeply into the inmost essence of things, which forever remains the same and in which there is no production and dissolution.
(7) The Dûrangamâ.
Dûrangamâ means “going far away.” The Bodhisattva enters upon this stage by attaining the so-called Upâyajñâ, i.e. the knowledge that enables him to produce any means or expediency suitable for his work of salvation. He himself abides in the principles of çûnyatâ (transcendentality), animitta (non-individuality), and apranihita (desirelessness), but his lovingkindness keeps him busily engaged among sentient beings. He knows that Buddhas are not creatures radically and essentially different from himself, but he does not stop tendering them due homage. He is always contemplating on the nature of the Absolute, but he does not abandon the practice of accumulating merits. He is no more encumbered with worldly thoughts, yet he does not disdain managing secular affairs. He keeps himself perfectly aloof from the consuming fire of passion, but he plans all possible means for the sake of sentient beings to quench the enraging flames of avarice (lobha), anger (dveṣa), and infatuation (moha). He knows that all individual existences are like dream, mirage, or the reflection of the moon in the water, but he works and toils in the world of particulars and submits himself to the domination of karma. He is well aware of the transcendental nature of Pure Land (sukhâvatî), but he describes it with material colors for the sake of unenlightened masses. He knows that the Dharmakâya of all the Buddhas is not a material existence, but he does not refuse to dignify himself with the thirty-two major and eighty minor excellent features of a great man or god (mahâpuruṣa). He knows that the language of all the Buddhas does not fall within the ken of human comprehension, but he endeavors with all contrivances (upâya) to make it intelligible enough to the understanding of people. He knows that all the Buddhas perceive the past, present, and future in the twinkling of an eye, but he adapts himself to divers conditions of the material world and endeavors to help sentient beings to understand the significance of the Bodhi according to their destinies and dispositions. In short, the Bodhisattva himself lives on a higher plane of spirituality far removed from the defilements of worldliness; but he does not withdraw himself to this serene, unmolested subjectivity; he boldly sets out in the world of particulars and senses; and, placing himself on the level of ignorant beings, he works like them, he toils like them, and suffers like them; and he never fails all these times to practise the gospel of lovingkindness and to turn over (parivarta) all his merits towards the emancipation and spiritual edification of the masses, that is, he never gets tired of practising the ten virtues of perfection (pâramitâ).
That is to say, (1) the Bodhisattva practises the virtue of charity (dâna) by freely giving away to all sentient creatures all the merits that he has acquired by following the path of Buddhas. (2) He practises the virtue of good conduct (çîla) by destroying all the evil passions that disturb serenity of mind. (3) He practises the virtue of patience (kṣânti), for he never gets irritated or excited over what is done to him by ignorant beings. (4) He practises the virtue of strenuousness (vriya), for he never gets tired of accumulating merits and of promoting good-will among his fellow-creatures. (5) He practises the virtue of calmness (dhyâna), for his mind is never distracted in steadily pursuing his way to supreme knowledge. (6) He practises the virtue of intelligence (prajñâ), for he always restrains his thoughts from wandering away from the path of absolute truth. (7) He practises the virtue of tactfulness (upâya), for he has an inexhaustible mine of expediencies ready at his command for the work of universal salvation. (8) He practises the virtue of will-to-do (pranidhâna) by determinedly following the dictates of the highest intelligence. (9) He practises the virtue of strength (bala), for no evil influences, no heretical thoughts can ever frustrate or slacken his efforts for the general welfare of people. (10) Finally, he practises the virtue of knowledge, (jñâna), by truthfully comprehending and expounding the ultimate nature of beings.
(8) The Acalâ.
Acalâ, “immovable,” is the name for the eighth stage of Bodhisattvahood. When a Bodhisattva, transcending all forms of discursive or deliberate knowledge, acquires the highest, perfect knowledge called anutpattikadharmakṣânti, he is said to have gone beyond the seventh stage. Anutpattikadharmakṣânti literally means “not-created-being-forbearance”; and the Buddhists use the term in the sense of keeping one’s thoughts in conformity to the views that nothing in this world has ever been created, that things are such as they are, i.e. they are Suchness itself. This knowledge is also called non-conscious or non-deliberate knowledge in contradistinction to relative knowledge that constitutes all our logical and demonstrative knowledge. Strictly speaking, this so-called knowledge is not knowledge in its ordinary signification, it is a sort of unconscious or subconscious intelligence, or immediate knowledge as some call it, in which not only willing and acting, but also knowing and willing are one single, undivided exhibition of activity, all logical or natural transition from one to the other being altogether absent. Here indeed knowledge is will and will is action; “Let there be light,” and there is light, and the light is good; it is the state of a divine mind.
At this stage of perfection, the Bodhisattva’s spiritual condition is compared to that of a person who, attempting when in a dreamy state to cross deep waters, musters all his energy, plans all schemes, and, while at last at the point of starting on the journey, suddenly wakes up and finds all his elaborate preparations to no purpose. The Bodhisattva hitherto showed untiring spiritual efforts to attain the highest knowledge, steadily practised all virtues tending to the acquirement of Nirvâna, and heroically endeavored to exterminate all evil passions, and at the culmination of all these exercises, he enters all of a sudden upon the stage of Acalâ and finds the previous elaboration mysteriously vanished from his conscious mind. He cherishes now no desire for Buddhahood, Nirvâna, or Bodhicitta, much less after worldliness, egoism, or the satisfaction of evil passions. The conscious striving that distinguished all his former course has now given way to a state of spontaneous activity, of saintly innocence, and of divine playfulness. He wills and it is done. He aspires and it is actualised. He is nature herself, for there is no trace in his activity that betrays any artificial lucubration, any voluntary or compulsory restraint. This state of perfect ideal freedom may be called esthetical, which characterises the work of a genius. There is here no trace of consciously following some prescribed laws, no pains of elaborately conforming to the formula. To put this poetically, the inner life of the Bodhisattva at this stage is like the lilies of the field whose glory is greater than that of Solomon in all his human magnificence.
Kant’s remarks on this point are very suggestive, and I will quote the following from his Kritik der Urteilskraft (Reclam edition, p. 173):
“Also muss die Zweckmässigkeit im Produkte der schönen Kunst, ob sie zwar absichtlich ist, doch nicht absichtlich scheinen: d.i., schöne Kunst muss als Natur anzusehen sein, ob man sich ihrer zwar als Kunst bewusst ist. Als Natur aber erscheint ein Produkt der Kunst dadurch, dass zwar alle Pünktlichkeit in der Uebereinkunst mit Regeln, nach denen allein das Produkt das werden kann, was es soll sein, angetroffen wird, aber ohne Peinlichkeit, d.i., ohne eine Spur zu zeigen, dass die Regel dem Künstler vor Augen geschwebt und seinen Gemüthskräften Fesseln angelegt haben.”[130]
(9) The Sâdhumatî.
Sâdhumatî, meaning “good intelligence,” is the name given to the ninth stage of Bodhisattvahood. All the Bodhisattvas are said to have reached here, when sentient beings are benefitted by the Bodhisattva’s attainment of the highest perfect knowledge, which is unfathomable by the ordinary human intelligence. The knowledge leads them to the Dharma of the deepest mystery, to the Samâdhi of perfect spirituality, to the Dhâranî of divine spontaneity, to Love of absolute purity, to the Will of utmost freedom.
The Bodhisattva will acquire at this stage the four Pratisamvids (comprehensive knowledge), which are (1) Dharmapratisamvid, (2) Arthapratisamvid, (3) Niruktipratisamvid, (4) Pratibhanapratisamvid. By the Dharmapratisamvid, the Bodhisattvas understand the self-essence (svabhâva) of all beings; by the Arthapratisamvid, their individual attributes; by the Niruktipratisamvid, their indestructibility; by the Pratibhanapratisamvid, their eternal order. Again, by the first intelligence they understand that all individual dharmas have no absolute reality; by the second, that they are all subject to the law of constant becoming; by the third, that they are no more than mere names; by the fourth, that even mere names as such are of some value. Again, by the first intelligence, they comprehend that all dharmas are of one reality which is indestructible; by the second, that this one reality differentiating itself becomes subject to the law of causation; by the third, that by virtue of a superior understanding all Buddhas become the object of admiration and the haven of all sentient beings; by the fourth, that in the one body of truth all Buddhas preach infinite lights of the Dharma.
(10) The Dharmameghâ.
Dharmameghâ, “clouds of dharma,” is the name of the tenth and final stage of Bodhisattvahood. The Bodhisattvas have now practised all virtues of purity, accumulated all the constituents of Bodhi, are fortified with great power and intelligence, universally practise the principle of great love and sympathy, have deeply penetrated into the mystery of individual existences, fathomed the inmost depths of sentiency, followed step by step the walk of all the Tathâgatas. Every thought cherished by the Bodhisattva now dwells in all the Tathâgatas’ abode of eternal tranquillity, and every deed practised by him is directed towards the ten balas (power),[131] four vaiçâradyas (conviction),[132] and eighteen avenikas (unique characteristics),[133] of the Buddha. By these virtues the Bodhisattva has now acquired the knowledge of all things (sarvajñâ), is dwelling in the sanctum sanctorum of all dhâraṇîs and samâdhis, have arrived at the summit of all activities.
The Bodhisattva at this stage is a personification of love and sympathy, which freely issue from the fount of his inner will. He gathers the clouds of virtue and wisdom, in which he manifests himself in manifold figures; he produces the lightnings of Buddhi, Vidyâs, and Vaiçâradyas; and shaking the whole world with the thunder of Dharma he crushes all the evil ones; and pouring forth the showers of Good Law he quenches the burning flames of ignorance and passion in which all sentient creatures are being consumed.
* * *
The above presentation of the Daçabhûmî[134] of Bodhisattvahood allows us to see what ideal life is held out by the Mahâyânists before their own eyes and in what respect it differs from that of the Çrâvakas and Pratyekabuddhas as well as from that of other religious followers. Mahâyânism is not contented to make us mere transmitters or “hearers” of the teachings of the Buddha, it wants to inspire with all the religious and ethical motives that stirred the noblest heart of Çâkyamuni to its inmost depths. It fully recognises the intrinsic worth of the human soul; and, holding up its high ideals and noble aspirations, it endeavors to develop all the possibilities of our soul-life, which by our strenuous efforts and all-defying courage will one day be realised even on this earth of impermanence. We as individual existences are nothing but shadows which will vanish as soon as the conditions disappear that make them possible; we as mortal beings are no more than the thousands of dusty particles that are haphazardly and powerlessly scattered about before the cyclone of karma; but when we are united in the love and intelligence of the Dharmakâya in which we have our being, we are Bodhisattvas, and we can immovably stand against the tempest of birth and death, against the overwhelming blast of ignorance. Then even an apparently insignificant act of lovingkindness will lead finally to the eternal abode of bliss, not the actor alone, but the whole community to which he belongs. Because a stream of love spontaneously flows from the lake of Intelligence-heart (Bodhicitta) which is fed by the inexhaustible spring of the Dharmakâya, while ignorance leads only to egoism, hatred, avarice, disturbance, and universal misery.
CHAPTER XIII.
NIRVÂNA.
Nirvâna, according to Mahâyâna Buddhism, is not understood in its nihilistic sense. Even with the Çrâvakas or Hînayânists, Nirvâna in this sense is not so much the object of their religious life as the recognition of the Fourfold Noble Truth, or the practise of the Eightfold Path, or emancipation from the yoke of egoism. It is mostly due, as far as I can see, to non-Buddhist critics that the conception of Nirvâna has been selected among others as one of the most fundamental teachings of Buddha, declaring it at the same time to consist in the annihilation of all human passions and aspirations, noble as well as worthless.
In fact, Nirvâna literally means “extinction” or “dissolution” of the five skandhas, and therefore it may be said that the entering into Nirvâna is tantamount to the annihilation of the material existence and of all the passions. Catholic Buddhists, however, do not understand Nirvâna in the sense of emptiness, for they say that Buddhism is not a religion of death nor for the dead, but that it teaches how to attain eternal life, how to gain an insight into the real nature of things, and how to regulate our conduct in accordance with the highest truth. Therefore, Buddhism, when rightly understood in the spirit of its founder, is something quite different from what it is commonly supposed to be by the general public.
I will endeavor in the following pages to point out that Nirvâna in the sense of a total annihilation of human activities, is by no means the primary and sole object of Buddhists, and then proceed to elucidate in what signification it is understood in the Mahâyâna Buddhism and see what relative position Nirvâna in its Mahâyânistic sense occupies in the body of Buddhism.
Nihilistic Nirvâna not the First Object.
In order to see the true signification of Nirvâna, it is necessary first to observe in what direction Buddha himself ploughed the waves in his religious cruise and upon what shore he finally debarked. This will show us whether or not Nirvâna as nihilistic nothingness is the primary and sole object of Buddhism, to which every spiritual effort of its devotees is directed.
If the attainment of negativistic Nirvâna were the sole aim of Buddhism, we should naturally expect Buddha’s farewell address to be chiefly dealing with that subject. In his last sermon, however, Buddha did not teach his disciples to concentrate all their moral efforts on the attainment of Nirvânic quietude disregarding all the forms of activity that exhibit themselves in life. Far from it. He told them, according to the Mahânibbâna sutta (the Book of the Great decease, S. B. E. Vol. XI. p. 114) that “Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence!” This exhortation of the strenuous life is quite in harmony with the last words of Buddha as recorded in Açvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita (Chinese translation, Chap. XXVI). They were:
“Even if I lived a kalpa longer,
Separation would be an inevitable end.
A body composed of various aggregates,
Its nature is not to abide forever.“Having finished benefiting oneself and others,
Why live I longer to no purpose?
Of gods and men that should be saved,
Each and all had been delivered.“O ye, my disciples!
Without interruption transmit the Good Dharma!
Know ye that things are destined to decay!
Never again abandon yourselves to grief!“But pursue the Way with diligence,
And arrive at the Home of No-separation!
I have lit the Lamp of Intelligence,
That shining dispels the darkness of the world.“Know ye that the world endureth not!
As ye should feel happy [when ye see]
The parents suffering a mortal disease
Are released by a treatment from pain;“So with me, I now give up the vessel of misery,
Transcend[135] the current of birth and death,
And am eternally released from all pain and suffering.
This too must be deemed blest.
“Ye should well guard yourselves!
Never give yourselves up to indulgence!
All that exists finally comes to an end!
I now enter into Nirvâna.”[136]
In this we find Buddha’s characteristic admonition to his disciples not to waste time but to work out their salvation with diligence and rigor, but we fail to find the gospel of annihilation, the supposedly fundamental teaching of Buddhism.
Did then Buddha start in his religious discipline to attain the absolute annihilation of all human aspirations and after a long meditation reach the conclusion that contradicted his premises? Far from it. His first and last ambition was nothing else than the emancipation of all beings from ignorance, misery, and suffering through enlightenment, knowledge, and truth. When Mâra the evil one was exhausting all his evil powers upon the destruction of the Buddha in the beginning of his career, the good gods in the heavens exclaimed to the evil one:[137]
“Take not on thyself, O Mâra, this vain fatigue,—throw aside thy malevolence and retire to thy home. This sage cannot be shaken by thee any more than the mighty mountain Meru by the wind.
“Even fire might lose its hot nature, water its fluidity, earth its steadiness, but never will he abandon his resolution, who has acquired his merit by a long course of actions through unnumbered eons.
“Such is the purpose of his, that heroic effort, that glorious strength, that compassion for all beings,—until he attains the highest wisdom [or suchness, tattva], he will never rise from his seat, just as the sun does not rise without dispelling the darkness.
“Pitying the world lying distressed amidst diseases and passions, he, the great physician, ought not to be hindered, who undergoes all his labors for the sake of the remedy-knowledge.
“He, who, when he beholds the world drowned in the great flood of existence and unable to reach the further shore, strives to bring them safely across,—would any right-minded soul offer him wrong?
“The tree of knowledge, whose roots go deep in firmness, and whose fibres are patience,—whose flowers are moral actions and whose branches are memory and thought,—and which gives out the Dharma as its fruit,—surely when it is growing it should not be cut down.”
These words of the good gods in the heavens truthfully echo the motive that stirred Çâkyamuni to take up his gigantic task of universal salvation, and we are unable here as before to perceive a particle of the nihilistic speculation which is supposed to characterise Nirvâna. The Buddha from the very first of his religious course searched after the light that will illuminate the whole universe and dispel the darkness of nescience.
What enlightenment, then, did the Buddha, pursuing his first object, finally gain? What truth was it that he is said to have discovered under the Bodhi tree after six years’ penance and deep meditation? As is universally recognised, it was no more than the Fourfold Noble Truth and the Twelve Chains of Dependence, which are acknowledged by the Mahâyânists as well as by the Hînayânists as the essentially original teachings of the Buddha. What then was his subjective state when he discovered these truths? How did he feel in his inmost being after this intellectual triumph over egoistic thoughts and passions? According to the Southern tradition, the famous Hymn of Victory is said to be his utterance on this occasion. It reads (The Dharmapada, 153):
“Many a life to transmigrate,
Long quest, no rest, hath been my fate,
Tent-designer inquisitive for;
Painful birth from state to state.“Tent-designer, I know thee now;
Never again to build art thou;
Quite out are all thy joyful fires,
Rafter broken and roof-tree gone;
Into the vast my heart goes on,
Gains Eternity—dead desires.”[138]
In this Hymn of Victory, the “tent-designer” means the ego that is supposed to be a subtle existence behind our mental experiences. As was pointed out elsewhere the negative phase of Buddhism consists in the eradication of this ego-substratum or the “designer” of eternal transmigration. The Buddha now finds out that this ego-soul is a fantasmagoria and has no final existence; and with this insight his ego-centric desires that troubled him so long are eternally dead; he feels the breaking up of their limitations; he is absorbed in the Eternal Vast, in which we all live and move and have our being. No shadow is perceptible here that suggests anything of an absolute nothingness supposed to be the attribute of Nirvâna.
Before proceeding further, let us see what the Mahâyâna tradition says concerning this point. The tradition varies in this case as in many others. According to Beal’s Romantic History of Buddha, which is a translation of a Chinese version of the Buddhacarita (Fo pen hing ching),[139] Buddha is reported to have exclaimed this:
“Through ages past have I acquired continual merit,
That which my heart desired have I now attained,
How quickly have I arrived at the ever-constant condition,
And landed on the very shore of Nirvâna.
The sorrows and opposition of the world,
The Lord of the Kâmalokas, Mâra Pisuna,
These are unable now to affect, they are wholly destroyed;
By the power of religious merit and of wisdom are they cast away.
Let a man but persevere with unflinching resolution,
And seek Supreme Wisdom, it will not be hard to acquire it;
When once obtained, then farewell to all sorrows,
All sin and guilt are forever done away.”[140]
Viewing the significance of Buddhism in this light, it is evident that Buddha did not emphasise so much the doctrine of Nirvâna in the sense of a total abnegation of human aspirations as the abandonment of egoism and the practical regulation of our daily life in accordance with this view. Nirvâna in which all the passions noble and base are supposed to have been “blown out like a lamp” was not the most coveted object of Buddhist life. On the contrary, Buddhism advises all its followers to exercise most strenuously all their spiritual energy to attain perfect freedom from the bondage of ignorance and egoism; because that is the only way in which we can conquer the vanity of worldliness and enjoy the bliss of eternal life. The following verse from the Visuddhi Magga (XXI) practically sums up the teaching of Buddhism as far as its negative and individual phase is concerned:
“Behold how empty is the world,
Mogharâja! In thoughtfulness
Let one remove belief in self,
And pass beyond the realm of death.
The king of death will never find
The man who thus the world beholds.”[141]
Nirvâna is Positive.
It is not my intention here to investigate the historical side of this question; we are not concerned with the problem of how the followers of Buddha gradually developed the positive aspect of Nirvâna in connection with the practical application of his moral and religious teachings; nor are we engaged in tracing the process of evolution through which Buddha’s noble resolution to save all sentient beings from ignorance and misery was brought out most conspicuously by his later devotees. What I wish to state here about the positive conception of Nirvâna and its development is this: The Mahâyâna Buddhism was the first religious teaching in India that contradicted the doctrine of Nirvâna as conceived by other Hindu thinkers who saw in it a complete annihilation of being, for they thought that existence is evil, and evil is misery, and the only way to escape misery is to destroy the root of existence, which is nothing less than the total cessation of human desires and activities in Nirvânic unconsciousness. The Yoga taught self-forgetfulness in deep meditation; the Samkhya, the absolute separation of Puruṣa from Prakṛti, which means undisturbed self-contemplation; the Vedânta, absorption in the Brahma, which is the total suppression of all particulars; and thus all of them considered emancipation from human desires and aspirations a heavenly bliss, that is, Nirvâna. Metaphysically speaking, they might have been correct each in its own way, but, ethically considered, their views had little significance in our practical life and showed a sad deficiency in dealing with problems of morality.
The Buddha was keenly aware of this flaw in their doctrines. He taught, therefore, that Nirvâna does not consist in the complete stoppage of existence, but in the practise of the Eightfold Path. This moral practise leads to the unalloyed joy of Nirvâna, not as the tranquillisation of human aspirations, but as the fulfilment or unfolding of human life. The word Nirvâna in the sense of annihilation was in existence prior to Buddha, but it was he who gave a new significance to it and made it worthy of attainment by men of moral character. All the doctrinal aspects of Nirvâna are later additions or rather development made by Buddhist scholars, according to whom their arguments are solidly based on some canonical passages. Whatever the case may be, my conviction is that those who developed the positive significance of Nirvâna are more consistent with the spirit of the founder than those who emphasised another aspect of it. In the Udâna we read (IV., 9):
“He whom life torments not,
Who sorrows not at the approach of death,
If such a one is resolute and has seen Nirvâna,
In the midst of grief, he is griefless.
The tranquil-minded Bhikkhu, who has uprooted the thirst for existence,
By him the succession of births is ended,
He is born no more.”[142]
According to the Mahâyânistic conception Nirvâna is not the annihilation of the world and the putting an end to life; but it is to live in the whirlpool of birth and death and yet to be above it. It is affirmation and fulfilment, and this is done not blindly and egoistically, for Nirvâna is enlightenment. Let us see how this is.
The Mahâyânistic Conception of Nirvâna.
While the conception of Nirvâna seems to have remained indefinite and confused as far as Hînayânism goes, the Mahâyâna Buddhists have attached several definite shades of meaning to Nirvâna and tried to give each of them some special, distinctive character. When it is used in its most comprehensive metaphysical sense, it becomes synonymous with Suchness (tattva) or with the Dharmakâya. When we speak of Buddha’s entrance into Nirvâna, it means the end of material existence, i.e., death. When it is used in contrast to birth and death (samsâra) or to passion and sin (kleça), it signifies in the former case an eternal life or a state of immortality, and in the latter case a state of consciousness that follows from the recognition of the presence of the Dharmakâya in individual existences. Nirvâna has thus become a very comprehensive term, and this fact adds much to the confusion and misunderstanding with which it has been treated ever since Buddhism became known to the Occident. The so-called “primitive Buddhism” is not altogether unfamiliar with all these meanings given to Nirvâna, though in some cases they might have been but faintly foreshadowed. Most of European missionaries and scholars have ignored this fact and wanted to see in Nirvâna but one definite, stereotyped sense which will loosen or untie all the difficult knots connected with its use. One scholar would select a certain passage in a certain sûtra, where the meaning is tolerably distinct, and taking this as the key endeavor to solve all the rest; while another scholar would do the same thing with another passage from the scriptures and refute other fellow-workers. The majority of them, however, have found for missionary purposes to be advantageous to hold one meaning prominently above all the others that may be considered possibly the meaning of Nirvâna. This one meaning that has been made specially conspicuous is its negativistic interpretation.
According to the Vijñânamâtra çâstra (Chinese version Vol. X.), the Mahâyâna Buddhists distinguish four forms of Nirvâna. They are:
(1) Absolute Nirvâna, as a synonym of the Dharmakâya. It is eternally immaculate in its essence and constitutes the truth and reality of all existences. Though it manifests itself in the world of defilement and relativity, its essence forever remains undefiled. While it embraces in itself innumerable incomprehensible spiritual virtues, it is absolutely simple and immortal; its perfect tranquillity may be likened unto space in which every conceivable motion is possible, but which remains in itself the same. It is universally present in all beings whether animate or inanimate[143] and makes their existence real. In one respect it can be identified with them, that is, it can be pantheistically viewed; but in the other respect it is transcendental, for every being as it is is not Nirvâna. This spiritual significance is, however, beyond the ken of ordinary human understanding and can be grasped only by the highest intelligence of Buddha.
(2) Upadhiçeṣa Nirvâna, or Nirvâna that has some residue. This is a state of enlightenment which can be attained by Buddhists in their lifetime. The Dharmakâya which was dormant in them is now awakened and freed from the “affective obstacles,”[144] but they are yet under the bondage of birth and death; and thus they are not yet absolutely free from the misery of life: something still remains in them that makes them suffer pain.
(3) Anupadhiçeṣa Nirvâna, or Nirvâna that has no residue. This is attained when the Tathâgata-essence (the Dharmakâya) is released from the pain of birth and death as well as from the curse of passion and sin. This form of Nirvâna seems to be what is generally understood by Occidental missionary-scholars as the Nirvâna of Buddhists. While in lifetime, they have been emancipated from the egoistic conception of the soul, they have practised the Eightfold Path, and they have destroyed all the roots of karma that makes possible their metempsychosis in the world of birth and death (samsâra), though as the inevitable sequence of their previous karma they have yet to suffer all the evils inherent in the material existence. But at last they have had even this mortal coil dissolved away, and have returned to the original Absolute from which by virtue of ignorance they had come out and gone through a cycle of births and deaths. This state of supramundane bliss in the realm of the Absolute is Anupadiçeṣa Nirvâna, that is, Nirvâna that has no residue.
(4) The Nirvâna that has no abode. In this, the Buddha-essence has not only been freed from the curse of passion and sin (kleça), but from the intellectual prejudice, which most tenaciously clings to the mind. The Buddha-essence or the Dharmakâya is revealed here in its perfect purity. All-embracing love and all-knowing intelligence illuminate the path. He who has attained to this state of subjective enlightenment is said to have no abode, no dwelling place, that is to say, he is no more subject to the transmigration of birth and death (samsâra), nor does he cling to Nirvâna as the abode of complete rest; in short, he is above Samsâra and Nirvâna. His sole object in life is to benefit all sentient beings to the end of time; but this he proposes to do not by his human conscious elaboration and striving. Simply actuated by his all-embracing love which is of the Dharmakâya, he wishes to deliver all his fellow-creatures from misery, he does not seek his own emancipation from the turmoil of life. He is fully aware of the transitoriness of worldly interests, but on this account he desires not to shun them. With his all-knowing intelligence he gains a spiritual insight into the ultimate nature of things and the final course of existence. He is one of those religious men “that weep, as though they wept not; that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; that buy, as though they possessed not; that use this world, as not abusing it; for the fashion of this world passes away.” Nay, he is in one sense more than this; his life is full of positive activity, because his heart and soul are devoted to the leading of all beings to final emancipation and supreme bliss. When a man attains to this stage of spiritual life, he is said to be in the Nirvâna that has no abode.
A commentator on the Vijñânamâtra Çâstra adds that of these four forms of Nirvâna the first is possessed by every sentient being, whether it is actualised in its human perfection or lying dormant in posse and miserably obscured by ignorance; that the second and third are attained by all the Çrâvakas and Pratyekabuddhas, while it is a Buddha alone that is in possession of all the four forms of Nirvâna.
Nirvâna as the Dharmakâya.
It is manifest from the above statement that in Mahâyânism Nirvâna has acquired several shades of meaning psychological and ontological. This apparent confusion, however, is due to the purely idealistic tendency of Mahâyânism, which ignores the distinction usually made between being and thought, object and subject, the perceived and the perceiving. Nirvâna is not only a subjective state of enlightenment but an objective power through whose operation this beatific state becomes attainable. It does not simply mean a total absorption in the Absolute or of emancipation from earthly desires in lifetime as exemplified in the life of the Arhat. Mahâyânists perceive in Nirvâna not only this, but also its identity with the Dharmakâya, or Suchness, and recognise its universal spiritual presence in all sentient beings.
When Nâgârjuna says in his Mâdhyamika Çâstra[145] that: “That is called Nirvâna which is not wanting, is not acquired, is not intermittent, is not non-intermittent, is not subject to destruction, and is not created;” he evidently speaks of Nirvâna as a synonym of Dharmakâya, that is, in its first sense as above described. Chandra Kîrti, therefore, rightly comments that Nirvâna is sarva-kalpanâ-kṣaya-rûpam,[146] i.e., that which transcends all the forms of determination. Nirvâna is an absolute, it is above the relativity of existence (bhâva) and non-existence (abhâva).[147]
Nirvâna is sometimes spoken of as possessing four attributes; (1) eternal (nitya), (2) blissful (sukha), (3) self-acting (âtman), and (4) pure (çuçi). Judging from these qualities thus ascribed to Nirvâna as its essential features, Nirvâna is here again identified with the highest reality of Buddhism, that is, with the Dharmakâya. It is eternal because it is immaterial; it is blissful because it is above all sufferings; it is self-acting because it knows no compulsion; it is pure because it is not defiled by passion and error.[148]
Nirvâna in its Fourth Sense.
No further elucidation is needed for the first signification of Nirvâna, for we have treated it already when explaining the nature of the Dharmakâya. Nor is it necessary for us to dwell upon the second and the third phases of it. The Occidental missionary-scholars and Orientalists, however one-sided and often biased, have almost exhaustively investigated these points from the Pâli sources. What remains for us now is to analyse the Mahâyânistic conception of Nirvâna which was stated above as its fourth signification.
Nirvâna, briefly speaking, is a realisation in this life of the all-embracing love and all-knowing intelligence of Dharmakâya. It is the unfolding of the reason of existence, which in the ordinary human life remains more or less eclipsed by the shadow of ignorance and egoism. It does not consist in the mere observance of the moral precepts laid down by Buddha, nor in the blind following of the Eightfold Path, nor in retirement from the world and absorption in abstract meditation. The Mahâyânistic Nirvâna is full of energy and activity which issues from the all-embracing love of the Dharmakâya. There is no passivity in it, nor a keeping aloof from the hurly-burly of worldliness. He who is in this Nirvâna does not seek a rest in the annihilation of human aspirations, does not flinch in the face of endless transmigration. On the contrary, he plunges himself into the ever-rushing current of Samsâra and sacrifices himself to save his fellow-creatures from being eternally drowned in it.
Though thus the Mahâyâna Nirvâna is realised only in the mire of passions and errors, it is never contaminated by the filth of ignorance. Therefore, he that is abiding in Nirvâna, even in the whirlpool of egoism and in the darkness of sin, does not lose his all-seeing insight that penetrates deep into the ultimate nature of being. He is aware of the transitoriness of things. He knows that this life is a mere passing moment in the eternal manifestation of the Dharmakâya, whose work can be realised only in boundless space and endless time. As he is fully awake to this knowledge, he never gets engrossed in the world of sin. He lives in the world like unto the lotus-flower, the emblem of immaculacy, which grows out of the mire and yet shares not its defilement. He is also like unto a bird flying in the air that does not leave any trace behind it. He may again be likened unto the clouds that spontaneously gather around the mountain peak, and, soaring high as the wind blows, vanish away to the region where nobody knows. In short, he is living in, and yet beyond, the realm of Samsâra and Nirvâna.
We read in the Vimalakirti Sûtra (chap. VIII.):
“Vimalakirti asks Mañjuçri: ‘How is it that you declare all [human] passions and errors are the seeds of Buddhahood?’
“Mañjuçri replies: ‘O son of good family! Those who cling to the view of non-activity [asamskrita] and dwell in a state of eternal annihilation do not awaken in them supremely perfect knowledge [anuttara-samyak-sambodhi]. Only the Bodhisattvas, who dwell in the midst of passions and errors, and who, passing through the [ten] stages, rightly contemplate the ultimate nature of things, are able to awaken and attain intelligence [prajñâ].
“ ‘Just as the lotus-flowers do not grow in the dry land, but in the dark-colored, waterly mire, O son of good family, it is even so [with intelligence (prajñâ or bodhi)] In non-activity and eternal annihilation which are cherished by the Çrâvakas and the Pratyekabuddhas, there is no opportunity for the seeds and sprouts of Buddhahood to grow. Intelligence can grow only in the mire and dirt of passion and sin. It is by virtue of passion and sin that the seeds and sprouts of Buddhahood are able to grow.
“ ‘O son of good family! Just as no seeds can grow in the air, but in the filthy, muddy soil,—and there even luxuriously,—O son of good family, it is even so [with the Bodhi]. It does not grow out of non-activity and eternal annihilation. It is only out of the mountainous masses of egoistic, selfish thoughts that Intelligence is awakened and grows to the incomprehensible wisdom of Buddha-seeds.
“ ‘O son of good family! Just as we cannot obtain priceless pearls unless we dive into the depths of the four great oceans, O son of good family, it is even so [with Intelligence]. If we do not dive deep into the mighty ocean of passion and sin, how could we get hold of the precious gem of Buddha-essence? Let it therefore be understood that the primordial seeds of Intelligence draw their vitality from the midst of passion and sin.’ ” In a Pauline epistle we read, “From the foulness of the soil, the beauty of new life grows.” And Emerson sings:
“Let me go where’er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still.
’Tis not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast’s mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things.
There always, always, something sings.”
Do we not see here a most explicit statement of the Mahâyânistic sentiment?
Nirvâna and Samsâra are One.
The most remarkable feature in the Mahâyânistic conception of Nirvâna is expressed in this formula: “Yas kleças so bodhi, yas samsâras tat nirvânam.” What is sin or passion, that is Intelligence, what is birth and death (or transmigration), that is Nirvâna. This is a rather bold and revolutionising proposition in the dogmatic history of Buddhism. But it is no more than the natural development of the spirit that was breathed by its founder.
In the Viçeṣacinta-brahma-paripṛccha Sûtra,[149] it is said that (chap. II):
“Samsâra is Nirvâna, because there is, when viewed from the ultimate nature of the Dharmakâya, nothing going out of, nor coming into, existence, [samsâra being only apparent]: Nirvâna is samsâra, when it is coveted and adhered to.”
In another place (op. cit.) the idea is expressed in much plainer terms: “The essence of all things is in truth free from attachment, attributes, and desires; therefore, they are pure, and, as they are pure, we know that what is the essence of birth and death that is the essence of Nirvâna, and that what is the essence of Nirvâna that is the essence of birth and death (samsâra). In other words, Nirvâna is not to be sought outside of this world, which, though transient, is in reality no more than Nirvâna itself. Because it is contrary to our reason to imagine that there is Nirvâna and there is birth and death (samsâra), and that the one lies outside the pale of the other, and, therefore, that we can attain Nirvâna only after we have annihilated or escaped the world of birth and death. If we are not hampered by our confused subjectivity, this our worldly life is an activity of Nirvâna itself.”
Nâgârjuna repeats the same sentiment in his Mâdhyamika Çâstra, when he says:
“Samsâra is in no way to be distinguished from Nirvâna:
Nirvâna is in no way to be distinguished from Samsâra.”[150]
Or,
“The sphere of Nirvâna is the sphere of Samsâra:
Not the slightest distinction exists between them.”[151]
Asanga goes a step further and boldly declares that all the Buddha-dharmas, of which Nirvâna or Dharmakâya forms the foundation, are characterised with the passions, errors, and sins of vulgar minds. He says in Mahâyâna-Sangraha Çâstra (the Chinese Tripitaka, Japanese edition of 1881, wang VIII., p. 84):
“(1) All Buddha-dharmas are characterised with eternality, for the Dharmakâya is eternal.
“(2) All Buddha-dharmas are characterised with an extinguishing power, for they extinguish all the obstacles for final emancipation.
“(3) All Buddha-dharmas are characterised with regeneration, for the Nirmânakâya [Body of Transformation] constantly regenerates.
“(4) All Buddha-dharmas are characterised with the power of attainment, for by the attainment [of truth] they subjugate innumerable evil passions as cherished by ignorant beings.
“(5) All Buddha-dharmas are characterised with the desire to gain, ill humor, folly, and all the other passions of vulgar minds, for it is through the Buddha’s love that those depraved souls are saved.
“(6) All Buddha-dharmas are characterised with non-attachment and non-defilement, for Suchness which is made perfect by these virtues cannot be defiled by any evil powers.
“(7) All Buddha-dharmas are above attachment and defilement, for though all Buddhas reveal themselves in the world, worldliness cannot defile them.”[152]
Buddha-dharma means any thing, or any virtue, or any faculty, that belongs to Buddhahood. Non-attachment is a Buddha-dharma, love is a Buddha-dharma, wisdom is a Buddha-dharma. and in fact anything is a Buddha-dharma which is an attribute of the Perfect One, not to mention the Dharmakâya or Nirvâna which constitutes the very essence of Buddhahood. Therefore, the conclusion which is to be drawn from those seven propositions of Asanga as above quoted is this: Not only is this world of constant transformation as a whole Nirvâna, but its apparent errors and sins and evils are also the various phases of the manifestation of Nirvâna.
The above being the Mahâyânistic view of Nirvâna, it is evident that Nirvâna is not something transcendental or that which stands above this world of birth and death, joy and sorrow, love and hate, peace and struggle. Nirvâna is not to be sought in the heavens nor after a departure from this earthly life nor in the annihilation of human passions and aspirations. On the contrary, it must be sought in the midst of worldliness, as life with all its thrills of pain and pleasure is no more than Nirvâna itself. Extinguish your life and seek Nirvâna in anchoretism, and your Nirvâna is forever lost. Consign your aspirations, hopes, pleasures, and woes, and everything that makes up a life to the eternal silence of the grave, and you bury Nirvâna never to be recovered. In asceticism, or in meditation, or in ritualism, or even in metaphysics, the more impetuously you pursue Nirvâna, the further away it flies from you. It was the most serious mistake ever committed by any religious thinkers to imagine that Nirvâna which is the complete satisfaction of our religious feeling could be gained by laying aside all human desires, ambitions, hopes, pains, and pleasures. Have your own Bodhi (intelligence) thoroughly enlightened through love and knowledge, and everything that was thought sinful and filthy turns out to be of divine purity. It is the same human heart, formerly the fount of ignorance and egoism, now the abode of eternal beatitude—Nirvâna shining in its intrinsic magnificence.
Suppose a torch light is taken into a dark cell, which people had hitherto imagined to be the abode of hideous, uncanny goblins, and which on that account they wanted to have completely destroyed to the ground. The bright light now ushered in at once disperses the darkness, and every nook and corner therein is perfectly illumined. Everything in it now assumes its proper aspect. And to their surprise people find that those figures which they formerly considered to be uncanny and horrible are nothing but huge precious stones, and they further learn that every one of those stones can be used in some way for the great benefit of their fellow-creatures. The dark cell is the human heart before the enlightenment of Nirvâna, the torch light is love and intelligence. When love warms and intelligence brightens, the heart finds every passion and sinful desire that was the cause of unbearable anguish now turned into a divine aspiration. The heart itself, however, remains the same just as much as the cell, whose identity was never affected either by darkness or by brightness. This parable nicely illustrates the Mahâyânistic doctrine of the identity of Nirvâna and Samsâra, and of the Bodhi and Kleça, that is, of intelligence and passion.
Therefore, it is said:
“All sins transformed into the constituents of enlightenment!
The vicissitudes of Samsâra transformed into the beatitude of Nirvâna!
All these come from the exercise of the great religious discipline (upâya);
Beyond our understanding, indeed, is the mystery of all Buddhas.”[153]
The Middle Course.
In one sense the Buddha always showed an eclectic, conciliatory, synthetic spirit in his teachings. He refused to listen to any extreme doctrine which elevates one end too high at the expense of the other and culminates in the collapse of the whole edifice. When the Buddha left his seat of enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he made it his mission to avoid both extremes, asceticism and hedonism. He proved throughout his life to be a calm, dignified, thoughtful, well-disciplined person, and at no time irritable in character,—in this latter respect being so different from the sage of Nazareth, who in anger cast out all the tradesmen in the temple and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and who cursed the fig tree on which he could not find any fruit but leaves unfit to appease his hunger. The doctrine of the Middle Path (Mâdhyamârga), whatever it may mean morally and intellectually, always characterised the life and doctrine of Buddha as well as the later development of his teachings. His followers, however different in their individual views, professed as a rule to pursue steadily the Middle Path as paved by the Master. Even when Nâgârjuna proclaimed his celebrated doctrine of Eight No’s which seems to superficial critics nothing but an absolute nihilism, he said that the Middle Path could be found only in those eight no’s.[154]
Mahâyânism has certainly applied this synthetic method of Buddha to its theory of Nirvâna and ennobled it by fully developing its immanent signification. In the Discourse on Buddha-essence, Vasubandhu quotes the following passage from the Çrimala Sûtra, which plainly shows the path along which the Mahâyânists traveled before they reached their final conclusion: “Those who see only the transitoriness of existence are called nihilists, and those who see only the eternality of Nirvâna are called eternalists. Both views are incorrect.” Vasubandhu then proceeds to say: “Therefore, the Dharmakâya of the Tathâgata is free from both extremes, and on that account it is called the Great Eternal Perfection. When viewed from this absolute standpoint of Suchness, the logical distinction between Nirvâna and Samsâra cannot in reality be maintained, and hereby we enter upon the realm of non-duality.” And this realm of non-duality is the Middle Path of Nirvâna, not in its nihilistic, but in its Mahâyânistic, significance.
How to Realise Nirvâna.
How can we attain the Middle Path of Nirvâna? How can we realise a life that is neither pessimistic asceticism nor materialistic hedonism? How can we steer through the whirlpools of Samsâra without being swallowed up and yet braving their turbulent gyration? The answer to this can readily be given, when we understand, as repeatedly stated above, that this life is the manifestation of the Dharmakâya, and that the ideal of human existence is to realise within the possibilities of his mind and body all that he can conceive of the Dharmakâya. And this we have found to be all-embracing love and all-seeing intelligence. Destroy then your ignorance at one blow and be done with your egoism, and there springs forth an eternal stream of love and wisdom.
Says Vasubandhu: “By virtue of Prajñâ [intelligence or wisdom], our egoistic thoughts are destroyed: by virtue of Karuṇâ [love], altruistic thoughts are cherished. By virtue of Prajñâ, the [affective] attachment inherent in vulgar minds is abolished; by virtue of Karuṇâ, the [intellectual] attachment as possessed by the Çrâvakas and Pratyekabuddhas is abolished. By virtue of Prajñâ, Nirvâna [in its transcendental sense] is not rejected; by virtue of Karuṇâ, Samsâra [with its changes and transmigrations] is not rejected. By virtue of Prajñâ the truth of Buddhism is attained; by virtue of Karuṇâ, all sentient beings are matured [for salvation].”
The practical life of a Buddhist runs in two opposite, though not antagonistic, directions, one upward and the other downward, and the two are synthesised in the Middle Path of Nirvâna. The upward direction points to the intellectual comprehension of the truth, while the downward one to a realisation of all-embracing love among his fellow-creatures. One is complemented by the other. When the intellectual side is too much emphasised at the expense of the emotional, we have a Pratyekabuddha, a solitary thinker, whose fountain of tears is dry and does not flow over the sufferings of his fellow-beings. When the emotional side alone is asserted to the extreme, love acquires the egoistic tint that colors everything coming in contact with it. Because it does not discriminate and takes sensuality for spirituality. If it does not turn out sentimentalism, it will assume a hedonistic form. How many superstitious, or foul, or even atrocious deeds in the history of religion have been committed under the beautiful name of religion, or love of God and mankind! It makes the blood run cold when we think how religious fanatics burned alive their rivals or opponents at the stake, cruelly butchered thousands of human lives within a day, brought desolation and ruin throughout the land of their enemies,—and all these works of the Devil executed for sheer love of God! Therefore, says Devala, the author of the Discourse on the Mahâpuruṣa (Great Man): “The wise do not approve lovingkindness without intelligence, nor do they approve intelligence without lovingkindness; because one without the other prevents us from reaching the highest path.” Knowledge is the eye, love is the limb. Directed by the eye, the limb knows how to move; furnished with the limb, the eye can attain what it perceives. Love alone is blind, knowledge alone is lame. It is only when one is supplemented by the other that we have a perfect, complete man.
In Buddha as the ideal human being we recognise the perfection of love and intelligence; for it was in him that the Dharmakâya found its perfect realisation in the flesh. But as far as the Bodhisattvas are concerned, their natural endowments are so diversified and their temperament is so uneven that in some the intellectual elements are more predominant while in others the emotional side is more pronounced, that while some are more prone to practicality others preferably look toward intellectualism. Thus, as a matter of course, some Bodhisattvas will be more of philosophers than of religious seers. They may tend in some cases to emphasise the intellectual side of religion more than its emotional side and uphold the importance of prajñâ (intelligence) above that of karuṇâ (love). But the Middle Path of Nirvâna lies in the true harmonisation of prajñâ and karuṇâ, of bodhi and upâya, of knowledge and love, of intellect and feeling.
Love Awakens Intelligence.
But if we have to choose between the two, let us first have all-embracing love, the Buddhists would say; for it is love that awakens in us an intense desire to find the way of emancipating the masses from perpetual sufferings and eternal transmigration. The intellect will now endeavor to realise its highest possibilities; the Bodhi will exhibit its fullest strength. When it is found out that this life is an expression of the Dharmakâya which is one and eternal, that individual existences have no selfhood (âtman or svabhâva) as far as they are due to the particularisation of subjective ignorance, and, therefore, that we are true and real only when we are conceived as one in the absolute Dharmakâya, the Bodhisattva’s love which caused him to search after the highest truth will now unfold its fullest significance.
This love, or faith in the Mahâyâna, as it is sometimes called, is felt rather vaguely at the first awakening of the religious consciousness, and agitates the mind of the aspirant, whose life has hitherto been engrossed in every form of egocentric thought and desire. He no more finds an unalloyed satisfaction, as the Çrâvakas or the Pratyekabuddhas do, in his individual emancipation from the curse of Samsâra. However sweet the taste of release from the bond of ignorance, it is lacking something that makes the freedom perfectly agreeable to the Bodhisattva who thinks more of others than of himself; to be sweet as well as acceptable, it must be highly savored with lovingkindness which embraces all his fellow-beings as his own children. The emancipation of the Çrâvaka or of the Pratyekabuddha is like a delicious food which is wanting in saline taste, for it is no more than a dry, formal philosophical emancipation. Love is that which stimulates a man to go beyond his own interests. It is the mother of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The sacred motive that induces them to renounce a life of Nirvânic self-complacency, is nothing but their boundless love for all beings. They do not wish to rest in their individual emancipation, they want to have all sentient creatures without a single exception emancipated and blest in paradisiacal happiness. Love, therefore, bestows on us two spiritual benefits: (1) It saves all beings from misery and (2) awakens in us the Buddha-intelligence.
The following passages quoted at random from Devala’s Mahâpuruṣa will help our readers to understand the true signification of Nirvâna and the value of love (karuṇâ) as estimated by the Mahâyânists.
“Those who are afraid of transmigration and seek their own benefits and happiness in final emancipation, are not at all comparable to those Bodhisattvas, who rejoice when they come to assume a material existence once again, for it affords them another opportunity to benefit others. Those who are only capable of feeling their own selfish sufferings may enter into Nirvâna [and not trouble themselves with the sufferings of other creatures like themselves]; but the Bodhisattva who feels in himself all the sufferings of his fellow-beings as his own, how can he bear the thought of leaving others behind while he is on his way to final emancipation, and when he himself is resting in Nirvânic quietude?..... Nirvâna in truth consists in rejoicing at other’s being made happy, and Samsâra in not so feeling. He who feels a universal love for his fellow-creatures will rejoice in distributing blessings among them and find his Nirvâna in so doing.[155]
“Suffering really consists in pursuing one’s egotistic happiness, while Nirvâna is found in sacrificing one’s welfare for the sake of others. People generally think that it is an emancipation when they are released from their own pain, but a man with loving heart finds it in rescuing others from misery.
“With people who are not kindhearted, there is no sin that will not be committed by them. They are called the most wicked whose hearts are not softened at the sight of others’ misfortune and suffering.
“When all beings are tortured by avarice, passion, ill humor, infatuation, and folly, and are constantly threatened by the misery of birth and death, disease and decay..... how can the Bodhisattva live among them and not feel pity for them?
“Of all good virtues, lovingkindness stands foremost.... It is the source of all merit.... It is the mother of all Buddhas.... It induces others to take refuge in the incomparable Bodhi.
“The loving heart of a Bodhisattva is annoyed by one thing, that all beings are constantly tortured and threatened by all sorts of pain.”
Let us quote another interesting passage from a Mahâyâna sûtra.
When Vimalakirti was asked why he did not feel well, he made the following reply, which is full of religious significance: “From ignorance there arises desire and that is the cause of my illness. As all sentient beings are ill, so am I ill. When all sentient beings are healed of their illness, I shall be healed of my illness, too. Why? The Bodhisattva suffers birth and death because of sentient beings. As there is birth and death, so there is illness. When sentient beings are delivered from illness, the Bodhisattvas will suffer no more illness. When an only son in a good family is sick, the parents feel sick too: when he is recovered they are well again. So it is with the Bodhisattva. He loves all sentient beings as his own children. When they are sick, he is sick too. When they are recovered, he is well again. Do you wish to know whence this [sympathetic] illness is? The illness of the Bodhisattva comes from his all-embracing love (mahâkarunâ).”
This gospel of universal love is the consummation of all religious emotions whatever their origin. Without this, there is no religion—that is, no religion that is animated with life and spirit. For it is in the fact and nature of things that we are not moved by mere contemplation or mere philosophising. Every religion may have its own way of intellectually interpreting this fact, but the practical result remains the same everywhere, viz. that it cannot survive without the animating energy of love. Whatever sound and fine reasoning there may be in the doctrine of the Çrâvaka and the Pratyekabuddha, the force that is destined to conquer the world and to deliver us from misery is not intellection, but the will, i.e. the pûrvapranidhâna of the Dharmakâya.
Conclusion.
We now conclude. What is most evident from what we have seen above is that the Mahâyâna Nirvâna is not the annihilation of life but its enlightenment, that it is not the nullification of human passions and aspirations but their purification and ennoblement. This world of eternal transmigration is not a place which should be shunned as the playground of evils, but should be regarded as the place of ever-present opportunities given to us for the purpose of unfolding all our spiritual possibilities and powers for the sake of the universal welfare. There is no need for us to shrink, like the snail into his cozy shelter, before the duties and burdens of life. The Bodhisattva, on the contrary, finds Nirvâna in a concatenation of births and deaths and boldly faces the problem of evil and solves it by purifying the Bodhi from subjective ignorance.
His rule of conduct is:
“Sabba pâpassa akaranam,
Kusalassa upasampada,
Sacitta pariyodapanam;
Etam buddhânu sâsanam.”[156]
His aspirations are solemnly expressed in this, which we hear daily recited in the Mahâyâna Buddhist temples and monasteries and seminaries:
“Sentient beings, however innumerable, I take vow to save;
Evil passions, however inextinguishable, I take vow to destroy;
The avenues of truth, however numberless, I take vow to study;
The way of the Enlightened, however unsurpassable, I take vow to attain.”
And an indefatigable pursuit of these noble aims will finally lead to the heaven of the Buddhists, Nirvâna, which is not a state of eternal quietude, but the source of energy and intelligence.
By way of summary, and to avoid all misconceptions, let me repeat once more that Nirvâna is thus no negation of life, nor is it an idle contemplation on the misery of existence. The life of a Buddhist consists by no means in the monotonous repetition of reciting the sûtras and going his rounds for meals. Far from that. He enters into all the forms of life-activity, for he does not believe that universal emancipation is achieved by imprisoning himself in the cloister.
Theoretically speaking, Nirvâna is the dispersion of the clouds of ignorance hovering around the light of Bodhi. Morally, it is the suppression of egoism and the awakening of love (karunâ). Religiously, it is the absolute surrender of the self to the will of the Dharmakâya. When the clouds of ignorance are dispersing, our intellectual horizon gets clearer and wider; we perceive that our individual existences are like bubbles and lightnings, but that they obtain reality in their oneness with the Body of Dharma. This conviction compels us to eternally abandon our old egoistic conception of life. The ego finds its significance only when it is conceived in relation to the not-ego, that is, to the alter; in other words, self-love has no meaning whatever unless it is purified by love for others. But this love for others must not remain blind and unenlightened, it must be in harmony with the will of the Dharmakâya which is the norm of existence and the reason of being. The mission of love is ennobled and fulfilled in its true sense when we come to the faith that says “thy will be done.” Love without this resignation to the divine ordinance is merely another form of egoism: the root is already rotten, how can its trunk, stems, leaves, and flowers make a veritable growth?
Let us then conclude with the following reflections of the Bodhisattva, in which we read the whole signification of Buddhism.
“Having practised all the six virtues of perfection (pâramitâ) and innumerable other meritorious deeds, the Bodhisattva reflects in this wise:
“ ‘All the good deeds practised by me are for the benefit of all sentient beings, for their ultimate purification [from sin]. By the merit of these good deeds I pray that all sentient beings be released from the innumerable sufferings suffered by them in their various abodes of existence. By the turning over (parivarta) of these deeds I would be a haven for all beings and deliver them from their miserable existences; I would be a great beacon-light to all beings and dispel the darkness of ignorance and make the light of intelligence shine.’
“He reflects again in this wise:
“ ‘All sentient beings are creating evil karma in innumerable ways, and by reason of this karma they suffer innumerable sufferings. They do not recognise the Tathâgata, do not listen to the Good Law, do not pay homage to the congregation of holy men. All these beings carry an innumerable amount of great evil karma and are destined to suffer in innumerable ways. For their sake I will in the midst of the three evil creations suffer all their sufferings and deliver every one of them. Painful as these sufferings are, I will not retreat, I will not be frightened, I will not be negligent, I will not forsake my fellow-beings. Why? Because it is the will [of the Dharmakâya] that all sentient beings should be universally emancipated.’
“He reflects again in this wise:
“ ‘My conduct will be like the sun-god who with his universal illumination seeks not any reward, who ceases not on account of one unrighteous person to make a great display of his magnificent glory, who on account of one unrighteous person abandons not the salvation of all beings. Through the dedication (parivarta) of all my merits I would make every one of my fellow-creatures happy and joyous.’ ” (The Avatamsaka Sûtra, fas XIV).