One quotation from a Mahayana Sutra will convince readers of the difference between Indian and Chinese minds, in regard to their imaginative powers. In the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka the Buddha wishes to impress his disciples as to the length of time passed since his attainment of Supreme Enlightenment; he does not merely state that it is a mistake to think that his Enlightenment took place some countable number of years ago under the Bodhi-tree near the town of Gayā; nor does he say in a general way that it happened ages ago, which is very likely the way with the Chinese, but he describes in a most analytical way in how remote an age it was that he came to Enlightenment.
“But, young men of good family, the truth is that many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of æons ago I have arrived at Supreme, Perfect Enlightenment. By way of example, young men of good family, let there be the atoms of earth of fifty hundred thousand myriads of kotis of worlds; let there exist some man who takes one of these atoms of dust and then goes in an eastern direction fifty hundred thousand myriads of kotis of worlds further on, there to deposit that atom of dust; let the man in this manner carry away from all those worlds the whole mass of earth, and in the same manner, and by the same act as supposed, deposit all those atoms in an eastern direction. Now would you think, young men of good family, that any one should be able to weigh, imagine, count, or determine the number of these worlds? The Lord having thus spoken, the Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Maitreya and the entire host of Bodhisattvas replied: They are incalculable, O Lord, those worlds, countless, beyond the range of thought. Not even all the Śrāvakas and Pratyeka-buddhas, O Lord, with their Ārya-knowledge, will be able to imagine, count, or determine them. For us also, O Lord, who are Bodhisattvas standing on the place from whence there is no turning back, this point lies beyond the sphere of our comprehension; so innumerable, O Lord, are those worlds.
“This said, the Buddha spoke to those Bodhisattvas Mahāsattvas as follows: I announce to you, young men of good family, I declare to you: However numerous be those worlds where that man deposits those atoms of dust and where he does not, there are not, young men of good family, in all those hundred thousands of myriads of kotis of worlds so many dust atoms as there are hundred thousands of myriads of kotis of æons since I have arrived at Supreme, Perfect Enlightenment.”[f46]
Such a conception of number and such a method of description would never have entered the Chinese mind. They are, of course, capable of conceiving long duration, and great achievements, in which they are not behind any nation; but to express their idea of vastness in the manner of the Indian philosophers would be beyond their understanding.
When things are not within the reach of conceptual description and yet when they are to be communicated to others, the ways open to most people will be either to remain silent, or to declare them simply to be beyond words, or to resort to negation saying, “not this,” “not that,” or if one were a philosopher, to write a book explaining how logically impossible it was to discourse on such subjects; but the Indians found quite a novel way of illustrating philosophical truths that cannot be appealed to analytical reasoning. They resorted to miracles or supernatural phenomena for their illustration. Thus they made the Buddha a great magician; not only the Buddha but almost all the chief characters appearing in the Mahayana scriptures became magicians. And in my view this is one of the most charming features of the Mahayana texts—this description of supernatural phenomena in connection with the teaching of abstruse doctrine. Some may think it altogether childish and injuring the dignity of the Buddha as teacher of solemn religious truths. But this is a superficial interpretation of the matter. The Indian idealists knew far better; they had a more penetrating imagination which was always effectively employed by them whenever the intellect was put to a task beyond its power. We must understand that the motive of the Mahayanists who made the Buddha perform all these magical feats was to illustrate through imageries what in the very nature of things could not be done in an ordinary method open to human intellect. When the intellect failed to analyse the essence of Buddhahood, their rich imagination came in to help them out by visualising it. When we try to explain Enlightenment logically, we always find ourselves involved in contradictions. But when an appeal is made to our symbolical imagination—especially if one is liberally endowed with this faculty—the matter is more readily comprehended. At least this seems to have been the Indian way of conceiving the signification of supernaturalism.
When Vimalakīrti was asked by Śāriputra how such a small room as his with just one seat for himself could accommodate all the hosts of Bodhisattvas and Arhats and Devas numbering many thousands, who were coming there with Mañjuśrī to visit the sick philosopher, replied Vimalakīrti, “Are you here to seek chairs or the Dharma?... One who seeks the Dharma finds it in seeking it in nothing.” Then learning from Mañjuśrī where to obtain seats, he asks a Buddha called Sumerudīparāja to supply him with 32,000 lion-seats, majestically decorated and as high as 84,000 yojanas. When they were brought in, his room, formerly large enough for one seat, now miraculously accommodated all the retinue of Mañjuśrī, each one of whom was comfortably seated in a celestial chair, and yet the whole town of Vaiśāli and the rest of the world did not appear on this account crammed to overflowing. Śāriputra was surprised beyond measure to witness this supernatural event, but Vimalakīrti explained that for those who understand the doctrine of spiritual emancipation, even the Mount of Sumeru could be sealed up in a seed of mustard, and the waves of the four great oceans could be made to flow into one pore of the skin (romakūpa), without even giving any sense of inconvenience to any of the fishes, crocodiles, tortoises, and other living beings in them; the spiritual kingdom was not bound in space and time.
To quote another instance from the first chapter of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, which does not appear in the oldest Chinese translation. When King Rāvaṇa was requesting the Buddha through the Bodhisattva Mahāmati to disclose the content of his inner experience, the king unexpectedly noticed his mountain-residence turned into numberless mountains of precious stones and most ornately decorated with celestial grandeur, and on each of these mountains he saw the Buddha manifested. And before each Buddha there stood King Rāvaṇa himself with all his assemblage as well as all the countries in the ten quarters of the world, and in each of those countries there appeared the Tathagata, before whom again there were King Rāvaṇa, his families, his palaces, his gardens, all decorated exactly in the same style as his own. There was also the Bodhisattva Mahāmati in each of these innumerable assemblies asking the Buddha to declare the content of his inner spiritual experience; and when the Buddha finished his discourse on the subject with hundreds of thousands of exquisite voices, the whole scene suddenly vanished, and the Buddha with all his Bodhisattvas and his followers were no more; then King Rāvaṇa found himself all alone in his old palace. He now reflected: “Who was he that asked the question? Who was he that listened? What were those objects that appeared before me? Was it a dream? or a magical phenomenon?” He again reflected: “Things are all like this, they are all creations of one’s own mind. When mind discriminates, there is manifoldness of things; but when it does not, it looks into the true state of things.” When he thus reflected, he heard voices in the air and in his own palace, saying: “Well you have reflected, O King! You should conduct yourself according to this view.”
The Mahayana literature is not the only recorder of the miraculous power of the Buddha, which transcends all the relative conditions of space and time as well as of human activities mental and physical. The Pali scriptures are by no means behind the Mahayana in this respect. Not to speak of the Buddha’s threefold knowledge which consists in the knowledge of the past, the future, and of his own emancipation, he can also practise what is known as the three wonders which are the mystic wonder, the wonder of education, and the wonder of manifestation. But when we carefully examine the miracles described in the Nikayas, we see that they have no other objects in view than the magnification and deification of the personality of the Buddha. The recorders of these miracles must have thought that they could thus make their master greater and far above ordinary mortals in the estimate of their rivals. From our modern point of view it was quite childish for them to imagine that any unusual deeds performed by their master would attract, as we read in the Kevaddha Sutta, people’s attention to Buddhism and recognise its superior value on that very account; but in those ancient days in India, the masses, nay even learned scholars, thought a great deal of supernaturalism, and naturally the Buddhists made the best possible use of this belief. But when we come to the Mahayana Sutras we at once perceive that the miracles described here on a much grander scale have nothing to do with supernaturalism as such or with any ulterior motives such as propagandism or self-aggrandisement, but that they are essentially and intimately connected with the doctrine itself which is expounded in the texts. For instance, in the Prajñā-pāramitā Sūtra every part of the body of the Buddha simultaneously emits innumerable rays illuminating at once the furthest ends of the worlds, whereas in the Avataṁsaka Sūtra the different parts of his body shoot out beams of light on different occasions. In the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka Sūtra, a ray of light issues from within the circle of hair between the eyebrows of the Buddha which illuminates over eighteen hundred thousand Buddha-countries in the eastern quarter, revealing every being in them, even the inhabitants of the deepest hell called Avici. It is evident that the Mahayana writers of these Sutras had in their minds something much different from the Hinayana compilers of the Nikayas in their narratives of the miraculous power of the Buddha. What that something was I have here pointed out in a most general way. A systematic study in detail of the Mahayana supernaturalism will no doubt be an interesting one.