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.