Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c7.s2.t6.1

c7.s2.t6.1

We may now consider the writings of Vasubandhu, the great exponent of the Sarvāstivāda school. In his Abhidharmakośa he imported a new meaning into the words Dharmakāya and Rūpakāya. In examining the three Śaraṇas, he tried to bring out the real sense of Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha in which a devotee takes refuge. He said that those who take refuge in Buddha do, in fact, take refuge in the dharmas (qualities) which constitute a Buddha (buddha-kāraka), i.e., the dharmas by the acquisition of which a certain person is called a Buddha, or in other words, the dharmas by the acquisition of which a person understands all things. These dharmas are kṣayajñāna (knowledge of the destruction of misery), anutpādajñāna¹ (knowledge of the further non-origination of misery), and samyagdṛṣṭi (right view) of the Aśaikṣas together with the dharmas attendant on the jñāna, viz., the five pure skandhas. A dharmakāya is formed of these dharmas. In another place, while showing the sameness of the Dharmakāyas of all Buddhas, he explained the Dharmakāya as a series of pure dharmas, or rather a renewal of the psycho-physical organism of the substratum (anāsravadharmasaṃtāna, āśrayaparāvṛtti).² The Dharmakāya then signifies a new purified personality or substratum (āśraya), but it is pointed out that such a dharmakāya is possessed also by an arhat.³ In the Sūtrālaṃkāra⁴ such a dharmakāya is attributed to the mother of Śākyamuni or to an advanced upāsaka. Thus we see that the Kośa has two interpretations of the Dharmakāya, one being the qualities adhering to a Buddha and the other the purified personality (āśraya) possessed by him. The Kośa, in fact, replaces the concrete conceptions of the Dharmakāya found in the Nikāyas and the Divyāvadāna by an abstract one. In the last two works the Dharmakāya signified only the doctrines, viz., the Bodhipakkhiya dharmas or Anicca, Dukkha and Anatta, together with the Vinaya rules contained in the Pātimokkha, while to Vasubandhu it meant the qualities adhering to a Buddha as well as the purified personality (āśraya).