Elements of Buddhist Iconography c5.6

c5.6

Beneath the Bodhi-tree, within the Bodhimaṇḍa, Gautama is said to have accomplished the Great Awakening, Mahāsambodhi, becoming Buddha, "Comprehensor"; that was an attainment of Nirvāṇa, though other terms for this condition attainable by a still existent being, particularly the term Arahatta, "Perfection," are more frequently employed in the canonical Pali texts. What was then this "Full Attainment" (samāpatti)? Nirvāṇa is literally "despiration," but in Buddhist usage more specifically "Extinction," viz. extinction of the flame of Will. Most significant for us is the distinction of Nibbāṇa as sa-upādi-sesa, "having a residual existential ground," from Parinibbāṇa as an- or nir-upādi-sesa, "without any residual ground of existence"; 87 for these interpretations coincide with the doctrine of the Saddharma Puṇḍarīka that the Buddha, though omniscient, though "extinguished," is not yet "absolutely extinguished" (aparinirvāyamāṇa, see p. 47). The Mahāsambodhi, Great Awakening, displayed at Bodhgayā was not then a "Drowning" in the utterly Unknowing and Unknown,88 but the realization of a paradisiac, super-individual state of pure Being, realization of sovereign personality as Cakravartin and Dharmarājā. A transformation (Pali *vikubbana*, Skr. *parāvṛtti*, *abhisambhava*) is necessarily involved, which can only be described in terms of Paradise and Vision, Buddha-saukhya-vihāra (*Mahāyāna Sūtrālaṃkāra*, IX, 46). So according to the *Nidānakathā*, J., I, 75–76, “. . . throughout the universe flowering trees put forth their blossoms, and fruit-bearing trees were loaded with clusters of fruit . . . hells, whose gloom the rays of the seven suns had never dispelled, were filled with light ⁸⁹ . . . the blind from birth received their sight. . . .” But this experience was not an effected miracle (*pāṭihāriya*, *inda-jāla*) made visible to any spectator: “the Great Person (*mahāpurisa*) sat there alone,” J., I, 72, and if he beheld the ten thousand world-systems, the “World-picture” (*jagac-citra*, *Svātmanirūpaṇa*, 96),⁹⁰ none therein beheld him, unless it were in a likeness, *pratibimbavat*. Paradise is ever present to the transcendental Buddha, but naturally it was not supposed that the vision remained or could have remained present to the empirical Buddha in subsequent daily life, and indeed it is made to say that were he to repeat elsewhere the Full Attainment reached in the Bodhimaṇḍa, “Wisdom-circle,” earth could not sustain him (J., IV, 229).⁹¹