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.