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The History of Buddhist Thought c26: Chapter XVIII. The Doctrine of Consciousness Only: The Three Bodies: Tantrism

The History of Buddhist Thought c26

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English

Chapter XVIII. The Doctrine of Consciousness Only: The Three Bodies: Tantrism

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THE *Lankāvatāra-sūtra* is important not only as the chief canonical text for the doctrine of subjective idealism but also on account of its curious literary character as a sūtra. It is essentially the same doctrine as is later found in the Yogāchāra of Asanga and Vasubandhu.¹

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¹ Suzuki refuses to call it Yogāchāra. It is, however, one formulation of the system that held the doctrine of Vijñānavāda, the existence of consciousness only.

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Professor Suzuki (*Studies*, 171) says that it was not written as a philosophical treatise to establish a definite system of thought, but to discourse on a certain kind of religious experience, and that what philosophy or speculation it offers is only incidental as an introduction necessitated by the rational nature of humanity. It may be true that this was the writer's motive, but it is also true, as Professor Suzuki's valuable and important studies show, that the philosophical system was there, and that the author was not slow in attacking rival systems. It is not systematic, but sūtras, as we have seen, were not systematic. They were popular expositions of the instruction given orally in the monasteries. The *Lankāvatāra* evidently belonged to a Mahāyāna school which existed alongside of the Prajñāpāramitā movement. It accepted the doctrine of the Void, the career of the bodhisattva, and the unreality of things perceived by the senses. But while the school of Nāgārjuna started from the standpoint of logic, and showed the impossibility of making any statement free from contradictions, the *Lankāvatāra* started from a psychological standpoint, and found a positive basis in actual experience.

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Nothing definite can be said about the date of the *Lankāvatāra*. It was first translated into Chinese about A.D. 430, and again in A.D. 443, but it was then already a composite work, and it may have existed much earlier.

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in a simpler form.¹ Still it appears to be later than the Prajñāpāramitā group of sūtras. Much of it is in verse, and the polemical matter seems to be further removed from the period when Mahāyāna had to defend itself against the older Buddhist schools. It shows its hostility to the careers of disciples and pratyekabuddhas, but more prominent than these are the tīrthakaras, the “heretics”, who in this sūtra are the representatives of the orthodox schools such as Nyāya and Sānkhya, which are mentioned by name. The full title is *Saddharma-lankāvatāra*, “the entrance of the good doctrine into Lankā.” Lankā usually means Ceylon, but here there is no traceable reference to the Pāli legend of Buddha’s three visits to Ceylon. Lankā is here a city on the peak of Mount Malaya,² and it is the citadel of Rāvaṇa, the rākshasa with ten heads. The literary reference comes rather from the *Rāmāyaṇa*, but the monster of the epic appears here as a good Buddhist layman.

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¹ It contains (88), apparently an allusion to the parable in the *Lotus*, where a man attracts his boys with toy animals, but afterwards gives them real ones, and in refuting the idea of cause (84) it uses two of the arguments used by Nāgārjuna.

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² Malaya is usually a mountain in Malabar, but a district of that name in Ceylon is mentioned in *Mhvs*.

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When the sūtra opens Buddha was just coming out of the palace of the nāgas beneath the ocean, where he had been preaching for a week. He looked at Lankā and smiled, for he remembered that previous Buddha’s had taught the doctrine there. Rāvaṇa, being inspired by the power of Buddha, invited him to come and teach the doctrine of inner perception and the real existence of mind (*citta*). Buddha then went to Lankā in Rāvaṇa’s chariot, and he and his attendant bodhisattvas were adorned by yaksha girls and boys with necklaces of pearls and gems. He created other mountain peaks, on which he himself with Rāvaṇa was seen. Suddenly they all vanished, and Rāvaṇa found himself alone. He had a sudden revulsion of feeling (*parāvṛtti*), and realized that what he perceived was only his own mind. Then through his former roots of goodness he was able to understand all treatises, and with his yoga power he could see things as they really are. He heard a voice from the sky saying, “it is to be known through the inner self,” and Buddha explained to him that thus was the way of training. It is the way of the yogis, the sons of Buddha, i.e. the bodhisattvas, who advance beyond the views and attainments of disciples, pratyekabuddhas, and heretics. This is the realization of the great yogis, who crush the doctrines of others, who destroy evil heresies, who are skilled in rejecting the heresy of a self and in producing a revulsion of mind by means of higher understanding.

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In this way Rāvaṇa was taught the two fundamental truths of this school, the truth that everything external is due to a wrong interpretation of inner experience, and the truth that the apprehension of reality is reached by a sudden revulsion in which the truth bursts upon the yogi (by which is meant the bodhisattva) in his contemplation.

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The whole scene then reappeared to Rāvaṇa in all its glory, and Buddha laughed. The whole assembly laughed, but Buddha laughed loudest. The reason was, as Buddha explained, that Rāvaṇa wanted to ask a twofold question. He had already asked it of Buddhas in the past, and he will ask it of the Buddhas to come. Rāvaṇa was then allowed to put his question on the duality of things. It is said that things and non-things are to be abandoned. How can they be abandoned if they do not exist? The answer is that duality is due only to the wrong imagination of the ignorant. Such people look upon the manifestations of mind as external things. They should be looked upon, like the horns of a hare, as belonging neither to reality nor non-reality, and in that consists their abandonment. " He who thus sees, sees rightly. They who see otherwise move in false imagination,¹ and grasp things as twofold, like a reflection of oneself in a mirror or in water, or one's shadow by the light of the moon or in a house, or like hearing an echo. Thus by grasping at their own false imagination they imagine things and non-things; they go on imagining, and never attain tranquillity. The word tranquillity means "having one point" (ekāgra). It is the entrance into the Tathāgatagarbha, the realm of the noble knowledge of the inner self, whereby arises the highest concentration." ²

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¹ Suzuki says "discrimination", but it should at least be called false discrimination. It consists in making a false distinction or positing of things as inner and outer.

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² Lank., 20.

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That is the end of the chapter on the request of Rāvaṇa.³

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³ Nanjio's table shows that the first chapter is not in the earliest extant Chinese translation. It has evidently been added as a popular introduction

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He appears no more, and the rest of the sūtra, except a collection of verses forming the last chapter, consists of an exposition of the doctrine that the world is nothing but mind (*cittamātra*), and that this is to be realized in a state of concentration. The teaching is given in answer to the questions of the bodhisattva Mahāmati, who appears only as a questioner, unlike the bodhisattvas in other sūtras, who through the power of Buddha often expound much of the doctrine themselves.

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The general position is like that of the Mādhyamika school. All is void, all is *māyā*, there is no self either in the individual or in objects, nothing can be asserted or denied about individual things, and there are three yānas, but only for the sake of rousing the ignorant. But while the Mādhyamikas start from the standpoint of logic, and show the impossibility of making any statement free from contradictions, the *Laṅkāvatāra* has a psychological basis. It assumes the psychological analysis of earlier Buddhism, the skandhas, sense organs, and senses. As through each sense a particular kind of consciousness, i.e. state of awareness, arises, we get six consciousnesses, eye-, ear-, nose-, tongue-, touch-, and mind-consciousness. But besides these a seventh is distinguished, *manas*, mind itself. This, says Dr. Masuda, is self-consciousness. That is no doubt one aspect of it, but it seems to have claimed recognition for the same reason that Aristotle distinguished a common sense. Each of the six consciousnesses acts through only one sense, but there is a faculty, the *sensus communis*, which can distinguish and compare the data of each sense. Professor Suzuki says that mind-consciousness is the mind which remembers, judges, imagines, wills, etc., but *manas* is the deeply-seated consciousness in the soul which ignorantly clings to the ego-conception and reality of an external world.

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This would be enough for a psychological theory, but this theory is only part of an ontology. There is an ultimate reality, real beyond anything that can be asserted of what comes within the range of experience. This is thought (*citta*) or mind, not mind as existing in the variety in which it is experienced, but without any differentiation, and called

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to the doctrine that is to follow. This translation also omits the two last chapters, the ninth on spells, and the tenth consisting of a collection of verses. Chapter 8 on meat-eating has also no organic connection with the rest.

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store-consciousness (*ālaya-vijñāna*). When the relation between this and the consciousness of ordinary experience has to be explained, it is done by means of similes. “ Consciousness consisting of the skandhas, dhātus, and āyatanas, which are without a self or of anything of the nature of a self, arises from ignorance, karma, and craving, and it functions through being attached to grasping at things by means of the eye and all the organs, and makes the presentations of its store-mind appear as bodies and vessels, which are manifestations of its own mind (the store-consciousness). Unstable like a river, a seed, a lamp, wind, a cloud, it is subject to destruction from moment to moment.”¹

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¹ *Lank.*, 68. *Vijñāna* “ consciousness ”, *manas* “ mind ”, and *citta* “ thought ”, are often used interchangeably in the older literature. Here they have been differentiated, without always being exactly distinguished. *Citta* is sometimes the *ālayavijñāna*.

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All things having been explained as mind or consciousness, the ultimate reality is then interpreted as the fundamental store-consciousness, and all the other terms which have been applied to this reality are also used here. It is suchness, the Tathāgata, Buddhahood, and mind, but mind stripped of everything transient and phenomenal. Hence it becomes superfluous to ask whether this mind or store-consciousness is universal or individual. It is conceived as the one reality beyond all differentiation, and any plurality would imply differentiation. But it is also spoken of in its state of evolution, in which it includes all differentiation. This is the Tathāgata-garbha, “ the womb of the Tathāgata,” in which all reality and difference is embraced.² Buddha, buddhahood, tathatā are one, but on the plane of relative reality there are differences. Hence it is possible to speak of many Buddhas, and the bodhisattva may exercise his “ skill in means ” by appearing to accept such differences in order to save beings.

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² The Tathāgatagarbha is described as “ naturally bright and pure from the beginning, bearing the thirty-two marks within the body of every being, like a precious jewel wrapped in a dirty garment ”. *Lank.*, 77. Every being is essentially Buddha.

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There is a list of five categories (*dharma*) which elucidate the main features of the system. (1) *Nāma* name, (2) *nimitta* mark, (3) *vikalpa* false imagination or positing (discrimination), (4) *samyagjñāna* right knowledge, (5) *tathatā* suchness, reality. They are brought into relation with the three kinds of self-existence (*svabhāva*). Names and marks are entirely unreal, they lead to attributing reality or self-existence to unrealities, an entirely wrong and wrongly imagined (*parikalpita*) construction of experience. This is *parikalpita svabhāva*. Vikalpa may be of the relatively true, as when a thing is thought of as related to certain conditions, when the self-existence is *paratantra*, dependent on another.¹ Right knowledge, knowledge free from names, marks, and conditions, is knowledge of *tathatā*, suchness, absolute reality. Such existence is *pariniṣpanna*, perfected. Another important term is *vāsanā*, literally "perfuming". It is something which remains like a perfume after an action has been done. One form of it is memory, but it is wider than that. Habits result from it, and Suzuki translates it "habit-energy", which he explains as "a kind of supersensuous energy mysteriously emanating from every thought, every feeling, or every deed one has done or does, which lives latently in the store-house called ālaya-vijñāna".² It is the truth that "what we have been makes us what we are", but it involves another aspect than that crystallized in the doctrine of karma. The escape from it, as all Buddhism asserts, is right knowledge, the attaining of Nirvāṇa, and that, as explained here, is "the getting rid of the mind-consciousness which wrongly imagines", i.e. which makes a false construction of experience and imagines or posits an external world. It is also said to be "the realm of attaining to the inner self by means of noble knowledge, free from the false notions of permanency and annihilation, existence and non-existence".³

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¹ When a rope is imagined to be a snake, the snake is entirely unreal. The rope itself is real, but only in a relative sense, *paratantra*. The rope has no existence in the highest sense.

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² *Studies*, p. 178.

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³ *Lank.*, 99.

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Thus mind-consciousness as the cause of this false construction is to be got rid of. "Mind-consciousness arises through being attached to the distinguishing of external objects, and it nourishes the store-consciousness by its *vāsanās* (the results of its activity). Mind (*manas*) then follows with its attachment to the ideal of me and mine and its reflection thereon. It has no separate body or mark of its own, and it has the store-consciousness as its cause and support. Through its attachment to objects, which are really manifestations of its own thought (*citta*), the whole system of thought-constructions arises mutually conditioned. Like waves of the sea stirred by the wind of objects, which are manifestations of its own thought (these constructions) arise and pass away. Thus when mind-consciousness is got rid of, the seven consciousnesses are got rid of.” This riddance is brought about as in all mysticism by an inner experience, expressly characterized in the *Laṅkāvatāra* as a revulsion (*parāvṛtti*) which results in a sudden reinterpretation of the whole data of experience. We are familiar with it in its moral aspect as conversion.

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The *Laṅkāvatāra*, like all monistic systems, finds its chief difficulty in explaining the relation of the many to the one. It resorts to similes, it explains that words are not the highest reality, and teaches that the truth is to be reached by direct realization. The Mādhyamikas had been able to deny the reality of all sense experience by showing the contradictions which resulted in any attempt to express it verbally. Their success depended on their assumption that the verbal expressions were the accurate and complete representation of the experience. Their tenet of an absolute reality did not really result from their dialectic. It was an unquestioned assumption which had lain there all along. It was so also in the *Laṅkāvatāra*, but there it was a positive conception, and it was asserted to be related in some way to the world of unreality. But it was a conception of an absolute unity, not a unity like the ego of Fichte, in which the difference of ego and non-ego was implicit. Hence every appearance of difference or differentiation had to be explained as being illusion, and reality as being beyond the reach of thought. Such idealism, like other Indian idealistic systems, does not look to find reality in the fullest and most harmonious statement of the facts of experience, but in emphasizing one fact (itself an abstraction), and in brushing away the rest as illusion.

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There is another presentation of this system in Aśvaghosha’s *Awakening of faith in the Mahāyāna*.¹ Stcherbatsky puts the recognition of *ālaya-vijñāna* and *tathatā* by Aśvaghosha in the first century A.D. This implies that he identifies the author of the *Awakening of faith* with the great Buddhist poet of the time of Kanishka. However, there were several Aśvaghoshas, and it is certain that the doctrine of the work as there presented cannot be earlier than the Mādhyamika school. It may be later even than the *Laṅkāvatāra*, for Suzuki says that it seems to be an attempt at systematizing the philosophy of that sūtra. It is a work of the same school, and need not be separately considered.

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¹ *Mahāyāna-śraddhotpāda*. It has been translated from the Chinese by D. T. Suzuki, who is preparing a revised version. The presumed Sanskrit original is not known.

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The brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu are said to be the founders of the Yogāchāra school. They were the founders in the same sense as Nāgārjuna was the founder of the Mādhyamikas. In both cases there was a school in existence and popular expositions of the doctrine in sūtras. The genius of one or two men in each case resulted in a systematic exposition of the doctrines of an already existing school. The connection of Asanga and Vasubandhu does not seem to have been so close to the *Laṅkāvatāra* as was that of Nāgārjuna to the Prajñāpāramitā works, but it was essentially the system of that work which they expounded and elaborated. It is not necessary to hold that they were of exactly the same school, and naturally they applied their own methods of persuasion. When a doctrine was taught orally in separate monasteries, it would be inevitable that the originality of individual teachers would lead to new lines of thought. In this sense there may have been far more schools than we are aware of, but there were two definite Mahāyāna systems, the Mādhyamika and the Yogāchāra, and to one or the other of these all Mahāyāna schools belonged in essentials.

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The home of Asanga and Vasubandhu was Peshawar in Gandhāra, and they are said to have lived in the second half of the fifth century A.D.¹ They wrote a number of works which are now the foundation of *vijñānavāda*, the doctrine of consciousness only. As is shown by the title of the school, *Yogācāra*, “the practice of yoga,” there was a strong mystical side. The list of their works as given by the Tibetan author Bu-ston (cf. *Muséon*, 1905, p. 144) includes five by a teacher called Maitreya, on which Asanga wrote commentaries. The view that there really was such a teacher can now be accepted as correct. It is not philosophically important, but it shows that there was a well established Vijñānavāda doctrine before Asanga.

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¹ The life of Vasubandhu was written in the sixth century by Paramārtha. It has been translated by Takakusu in *T'oung-pao*, 1904. There were three brothers of Peshawar, all called Vasubandhu, who became Sarvāstivāda monks. We are concerned only with the first two. The eldest studied the doctrine of the Void, but could not grasp it. When in despair he was about to destroy himself, the arhat Piṇḍola came from the mythical island, Pūrvavideha, and taught him the Hinayāna doctrine. But still unsatisfied, he went by his magic power to the Tushita heaven and learnt the doctrine of the Void from the future Buddha Maitreya. Thenceforth he was known as Asanga (he who is without attachment), but he was unable to convince people of the doctrine, so at his request Maitreya came down and in the course of four months recited the Yogācārabhūmi. He also taught Asanga a form of concentration through which he could understand all things, even the most abstruse Mahāyāna sūtras, and on these he wrote commentaries. Many more details are told about him, the most credible of which is that he converted his next younger brother Vasubandhu, who had already written important Sarvāstivāda works. It had been usual to assume that this story of Maitreya was sheer invention intended to give authority to what was really Asanga’s work. But Professor H. Ui has shown that the explanation is rather that Maitreya was a historical personage and the instructor of Asanga, and that in the legends he has been confused with Maitreya the bodhisattva. See H. Ui in *Indian Studies in Honor of C. R. Lanman*, 1929; G. Tucci, *Doctrines of Maitreya[nātha] and Asanga*, Calcutta, 1930.

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The most important of the works of the brothers, owing to the fact that it was commented on by ten commentators, is Vasubandhu’s *Triṃśakakārikā* or *Triṃśikā* (thirty verses). What we possess now is the Sanskrit text of the verses with a large work by Hiuen Tsiang, compiled from these commentaries, the *Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi*.¹ It is arranged much like the *Abhidharmakośa*, the exposition of Sarvāstivāda doctrine, which Vasubandhu wrote before his conversion. Much of it is occupied with the refutation of the views of other teachers.

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¹ Translated from the Chinese as *La Siddhi de Hiuen Tsang*, by L. de la Vallée Poussin, Paris, 1928–9. Sthiramati’s commentary in Sanskrit has also been published.

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The term *vijñaptimātra* is used like the term *vijñānamātra*, “consciousness only,” but *vijñapti* means “information, indication”, and it has been explained as “thought”, as being that which is expressed by indication. Vasubandhu and his commentators are much more interested than the *Laṅkāvatāra* in explaining the nature of existence as it appears, the different kinds of causes, and their relation to the store-consciousness. Dr. Masuda, in his important study, says that in the Yogācāra philosophy the store-consciousness (unlike the *Laṅkāvatāra*) is still throughout an individual consciousness.² This is so because the exposition starts from phenomena, and explains them as they appear in each individual. Yet, as he says (p. 40), their theory led to the conclusion that nothing but consciousness exists, and the substance of phenomena, or in their terminology "the true nature", is the absolute or suchness (*tathatā*). For Nāgārjuna also it was suchness, but he gave no positive explanation of the relation between phenomena and the absolute. Dr. Masuda holds that for Yogāchāra it consists in the two being "neither different nor non-different" (p. 43). Thus so far as the store-consciousness is non-different from the absolute it is entirely universal and undifferentiated, and the positive explanation involves a contradiction to be surmounted by the methods of the mystic.

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² *Der individualistische Idealismus der Yogācāra-Schule*, p. 43; cf. *Siddhi*, p. 447; one does not experience the *bījas* of another, and the eighth consciousness of one person does not develop into the *bījas* of another. But why the *bījas* should be thus grouped into individuals no form of Buddhism has ever explained.

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But before the final conclusion is reached an elaborate system of epistemology and ontology is set out. We find the same general concepts as in the *Laṅkāvatāra*, the eight consciousnesses, the three forms of self-existence, and the *vāsanās*. The *vāsanās* (results of actions) are called seeds (*bīja*). These exist in the store-consciousness, and always in time bear fruit. What we have here is a theory which rests on the same data as the doctrine of karma. But while karma is only a theory of the moral consequences of willed action, the *vāsanā* theory is wider, and it is applied chiefly to explain the error of thought which posits an external world. Different views were held as to why the seeds should exist in the store-consciousness at all. One view was that they were natural and had always been there, another that they had all been produced by "perfuming". Dharmapāla’s view was that there were some of both kinds.¹ This view of "natural" seeds shows that we have a theory which cannot be entirely identified with the karma theory. The question as to how the process began does not arise, for the question of an absolute beginning always remained an excluded question.

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¹ *Siddhi*, pp. 102 ff.; Masuda, loc. cit., p. 38. There is no reason to identify the Dharmapāla, who taught at Nālandā in the seventh century, with the Pāli commentator Dhammapāla. E. Hardy, *ZDMG*., 1898, p. 105.

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Like the Mādhyamikas the Yogāchāras spoke of the non-selfness of individuals as well as of things. The two beliefs, the belief in the real existence of self and of things were the two obstructions, the obstruction of the depravities, passion, etc. (*kleśāvaraṇa*), and the obstruction to attaining full knowledge (*jñeyāvaraṇa*). The store-consciousness, it has been said, covers all that we now refer to as the subconscious and the unconscious. It is probable that the psychological facts of the subconscious gave rise to the concept of the store-consciousness, but it is not, as in modern psychology, a mere extension of the group of facts that are included in the conscious. It is a metaphysical concept of a different order of being, an ultimate reality at the base of all phenomena. The store-consciousness is already differentiated by the vāsanās, which as seeds ripen and produce their fruit. When it evolves it develops touch, mental activity (manaskāra), feeling, perception, and will (cetanā).¹ These five correspond to the five factors of the individual, the skandhas, but the skandha theory has had to be modified according to the mind-alone theory. The first skandha, body (rūpa) implies the heresy of externality and is replaced by its subjective element, touch. Manaskāra includes the saṃskāras, all the ideas or states of mental activity. Feeling (vit, vedanā) and perception (saṃjñā) remain the same, and the place of consciousness (vijñāna) is taken by cetanā. This is a difference of terminology, as the term vijñāna, used in other special senses in this system, is here avoided. Cetanā is mind in action, i.e. will, and includes consciousness. It is “the activity of mind” (manaśceṣṭā) according to the commentary.

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¹ The following exposition is according to Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā.

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This is the first transformation, the evolution of the seeds that have ripened in the store-consciousness. The second transformation is the evolution of manas, the seventh consciousness. “Depending upon the store-consciousness, and having that as its support, the consciousness called manas, which has the nature of cogitation, functions.” This is the second transformation, in which the manas is accompanied by the heresy of a self. The third transformation is the perception of the sixfold object, body, sound, scent, taste, touch, and ideas (objects of thought). The idea of a self consisting of the skandhas thus becomes concrete. The seventh consciousness (manas) is associated with all the modes of sense and thought and the other non-material activities of the individual. These are the saṃskāras, all the possible non-material states of the individual, and they are given according to the Sarvāstivāda analysis which has been discussed above (p. 162).

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The five sense-consciousnesses, sight, etc., arise in the store-consciousness, and they are always accompanied by mind-consciousness, except in the world of the unconscious gods (*asaṃjñisattvas*), in the two highest Attainments (p. 52), and in torpor and fainting.

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The theory of knowledge is the same as that which we find in the *Laṅkāvatāra*. The transformation of consciousness itself results in false imagination (*vikalpa*). Everything thus imagined is in general *parikalpita*, falsely imagined, and has no self-existence. But things may be thought in a certain regular order as being due to causes or conditions. Such thought has a relative self-existence (*paratantra*), and it expresses the relative truth of things as perceived; but it becomes as false as the rest when the great revulsion takes place, when the non-self-existence of all things is realized, and everything is known to be only store-consciousness. This is perfected knowledge (*pariniṣpanna*).

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It is not enough to be convinced of the truth that all is only consciousness. He who grasps an object and says, “this is *vijñaptimātra*,” has not reached *vijñaptimātra*. If he had, there would be no object to grasp nor grasper.

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When consciousness does not apprehend an object, then it is established in *vijñaptimātratā*; for when there is nothing to grasp there is no grasping.

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(When) he is without mind, without apprehending, his knowledge is supramundane. There is revulsion from the object, through the abandonment of the two kinds of weakness.¹

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¹ i.e. the two obstructions, belief in a real self and belief in the reality of things, p. 239.

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That is the realm without *āsravas*, inconceivable, good, fixed, happy, with body released; this is what is called the dharma-body of the great Sage.²

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² *Trimśikā*, 28-30.

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This is the state attained by the bodhisattva when he reaches omniscience. The attaining of it is no mere theoretical study of the doctrine of the Void or of mind-only. It involves the practice of the career of the bodhisattva pursued for countless ages through higher and higher stages, with the perfect attainment of the six virtues and the acquiring of omniscience in every possible form (*sarvākārajñatā*), such as we have seen in the sūtras that describe the career. This state is buddhahood, “the dharma-body of the great Sage.” The bodhisattva becomes not merely a Buddha, but Buddha, the ultimate undifferentiated reality, suchness.

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As Asanga (or rather Maitreya) says, “ on the pure stage (free from the āsravas) there is neither oneness nor plurality of Buddhas; not oneness owing to their formerly having had bodies, not plurality because like space they have no bodies.”¹ Here we have the usual explanation of the absolute unity posited by the system. There is thus also an infinity of Buddhas. They are beings who have completed the career and have taught the doctrine; they exist now in a state of bliss, but behind all illusion and relative truth they are the one universal reality.

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¹ Mahāyānā lank., ix, 26.

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From this threefold Mahāyāna conception has resulted the doctrine of the three bodies of a Buddha (trikāya). Many dogmatic views about the nature of a Buddha had already been established, and in some of them we can perceive principles which anticipated the later theory. But it was the application of an ontological theory to all forms of existence that led to their being organized in the Trikāya theory. All the elements of the doctrine are found, as Suzuki points out, in the Lankāvatāra, but it will conduce to clearness if the explicit theory of Asanga is first stated.²

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² Ibid., ix, 59 ff.; cf. Bu-ston, p. 127. Asanga expressly speaks of three bodies, the dharma-body being the essential body and the true form of all. But a fourth was made by treating the essential body separately. La Vallée Poussin, “The three bodies of a Buddha,” JRAS., 1906, 943; Masson-Oursel, J.A., 1913, 581.

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The body of Buddhas is threefold. The essential body is the dharma-body (dharma-kāya), and it is distinguished by revulsion of the support, i.e. the revulsion which has turned from everything illusory to ultimate reality. It is the same for all Buddhas. It is said to be the “ support ” of the two others, for ultimately only it exists, and is hence called essential (svābhāvika). The second, the body of enjoyment (sambhoga-kāya), is “ that through which Buddha affords enjoyment of the doctrine in assemblies ”. As Buddhas are described in the sūtras as existing in all universes and preaching to great assemblies of bodhisattvas and gods, this body of enjoyment was a concept which made it possible to harmonize the doctrine of these sūtras with the apparently contradictory teaching about his Nirvāna. This body is said to be different in all Buddha-fields and assemblies. Buddhas reveal themselves to bodhisattvas in this body in the Akanishtha heaven, the highest of the heavens of form. The transformation-body (*nirmāṇa-kāya*) is “that by which he works the good of all creatures”, i.e. the person of the historical Buddha, who passed through all the stages of his existence, taught the doctrine, and attained Nirvāṇa. The doctrine that Buddha could appear with a mind-formed body is very old, and the Mahāsaṅghikas converted it into the doctrine that his earthly appearance was never anything else. Here it appears to harmonize the teaching of works like the *Lotus* and the *Suvarṇaprabhāsa*, that the Tathāgata has always existed, with the historical facts about Śākyamuni.

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As the trikāya doctrine is based upon a body of dogmatic teaching about the nature of a Buddha, it is natural that earlier doctrines should be included in it. But these are not necessarily anticipations of it. When *dhammakāya* occurs occasionally in the Pāli, it is merely the body of doctrine.¹ The *Milinda-pañha* says that Buddha now exists in the body of the doctrine, that is, in the spoken word, and the statement is only the utterance of the rationalist, who took a negative view of the nature of Nirvāṇa but preferred not to put it in its boldest form.²

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¹ Dutt, *Aspects*, pp. 98 ff. ; La Vallée Poussin, “The three bodies of a Buddha,” *JRAS*., 1906, 947 ; Bu-ston, *History of Buddhism*, tr. Obermiller, p. 131 ; Suzuki, *Studies*, p. 308.

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² The *Milinda-pañha*, “Questions of Milinda,” is a work now existing in Pāli (transl. Rhys Davids, 1890–4). It consists of dialogues between king Milinda and a Buddhist sage Nāgasena discussing many points of Buddhist doctrine. The Milinda of the legendary setting is a reminiscence of the Bactrian king Menander of the second century B.C. To what school it belonged is unknown, and it is unlikely that its original language was Pāli. The date may be the first or second century A.D. Its rationalistic tone once made it a convenient means of reading into the Pāli Canon the view that original Buddhism was “agnostic atheism”. It has not been used here, as it is quite impossible to treat its doctrines as authoritative for Theravāda, or as anything more than the individual views of a member of an unknown Hīnayāna sect. Mrs. Rhys Davids thinks that the author (or authors) was not even a Buddhist. See *Milinda Questions*, p. 18.

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Such references in the Pāli to the “body of the doctrine” have been called hints or foreshadowings of the Mahāyāna theory of dharmakāya. It is true that Mahāyāna adopted the phrase, and in the *Aṣṭasāhasrika* (94) even used it in the same sense, where it is said that the Buddhas are dharmakāyas, but that the monks are not to think of Buddha’s physical body; they will look upon him as the perfected dharmakāya, namely, the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra. The change of meaning was due to a deliberate substitution of another meaning of *dharma*, in the sense of real nature, or ultimate truth, which in the first place is enlightenment. The commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra (ix, 38) defines enlightenment (bodhi) as “ buddhahood, existence in the highest sense, free from self-existence whether single or multiple, neither originated nor ceased, neither annihilated nor eternal, liberated from all contingent existence, like space, and named dharmakāya ”. Here dharmakāya is an entity, the most real of entities, and to become a true ontological conception it only needed the Yogāchāra theory, which identified Buddha with the suchness of absolute reality.

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It was this theory which made it possible to combine the dharmakāya with the two other bodies into a theory of the triple body. In popular buddhology the Buddhas continue to exist in a state of bliss. They attain even as bodhisattvas a glorious body. This is the body of enjoyment, even before it was called so. For the transformation body the Yogāchāras already had before them the doctrine of a mind-formed body, and the Mahāsanghika doctrine that Buddha’s whole earthly existence was nothing more than this. The trikāya theory was only a systematizing of the already existing doctrines. As Suzuki says, it was probably not until the Yogāchāra philosophy began to be crystallized into a system by Asanga and his predecessors that the conception of the triple body came to form a part of their programme.

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The most instructive piece of evidence is the Suvarṇaprabhāsa. This belongs to the Prajñāpāramitā class of sūtras. Like these sūtras it contains in the Sanskrit version no doctrine of the triple body, but later forms of the sūtra as preserved in translations contain an additional chapter on the subject. This means that the doctrine in its developed form has been adopted and inserted. The Yogāchāra school is the most probable source, but even in this school its formulation must be later than the Laṅkāvatāra.

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There were two further developments of Buddhist thought, but neither can be said to be developments of the doctrine. The first was the rise of a school of logic. Logic for the Buddhists and the Indian schools generally was always more than the rules of formal thought, and it never became separated from questions of epistemology. These had been raised by the Yogāchāras in their extremest form, and it is not surprising that Buddhist logic and a theory of knowledge should be elaborated in this school. The subject belongs rather to the general history of Indian logic, and the sources have not yet been fully investigated or even published. Stcherbatsky has done important work at it,¹ and Tucci is still discovering and editing logical works which must be examined before the history can be written.

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¹ *Buddhist Logic* (with a translation of Dharmakīrti’s *Nyāyabindu* and its commentary by Dharmottara), Leningrad, 1931-2.

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The discussions in the *Kathāvatthu* show that the Pāli school had developed a logical method, and Stcherbatsky thinks that manuals of logic must have then existed. But nothing more than a method was then wanted, for epistemological questions had not then arisen.

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There are two small treatises in Tibetan by Nāgārjuna, which contain references to the logical method of Nyāya. This, even if not the beginning of Buddhist logic, allows us to see what were the influences on its development.² It was the school of Asanga which gave the great impulse to its growth. Asanga, says Stcherbatsky, established a body of rules on the art of debate not materially different from the rules prescribed in the Nyāya school, and Vasubandhu is recorded to have composed three logical treatises. With Asanga’s pupil Dignāga (early sixth century) and Dharmakīrti, the pupil of Īśvarasena, Dignāga’s own pupil, Buddhist logic became a widely famous system. Several schools of commentators followed, and then, says Stcherbatsky, “the popular masses began to turn their face from that philosophic, critical, and pessimistic religion, and reverted to the worship of the great brahmin gods. Buddhism was beginning its migration to the north, where it found a new home in Tibet, Mongolia, and other countries.”

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² Stcherbatsky, loc. cit., i, 28.

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Why Buddhism declined and almost disappeared in the land of its birth is still a matter of discussion, but there is one other development still to be mentioned, tantric Buddhism. This was certainly flourishing in the tenth century. It is not properly speaking a development of Buddhism, but an amalgamation with a form of religion called Tantrism, which affected certain branches both of Buddhism and Hinduism. Tantrism as a form of religion is of unknown origin, and may possibly have arisen among some indigenous and non-Aryan people. It consists in giving a religious significance to the facts of sex. Such a development, at least in a certain stage of society, is not necessarily immoral. Its discussion, however, belongs to medical psychology. The unpleasantness of the subject has sometimes led writers to speak of it as mere debauchery, but a proper examination of the facts would probably show that it belongs to an exceptional but not abnormal social development. When introduced into a quite different state of society it must appear both abnormal and immoral. In any case a proper discussion of the subject could only be made by including and treating of the facts as they have existed in all the various forms of Hinduism and as they exist now. One peculiar feature of Buddhist Tantrism is that it adopted religious technical terms and applied them in new senses, so that what appear as quite ordinary expressions may bear a surprisingly different meaning, and a tantric sense may be lurking where least expected. It is usually found combined with two other factors, the use of magic formulas, and yoga-practice. All the three have this in common that they represent attempts to get beyond the hard world of facts and achieve the marvellous results imagined by the mystic.

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The use of magic formulas and practices, as we have seen, is very old in Buddhism. It was discouraged, and it was forbidden to the monk, but it was never doubted that such practices might be effective. In Mahāyāna they were not only held to be effective, but were regularly taught in the sūtras. Yoga is also very old, and among yoga-practices were many which might be performed for worldly purposes. These practices, too, increased and were elaborated by Mahāyāna, and there is little doubt that they opened the way to Tantrism. It was among the Yogāchāras that Tantrism developed. The yogi practises his methods, and expects a wonderful result. But all his striving, if he is not of the mystic temperament, may leave him disappointed. Tantrism makes readier promises, and the subject can be studied in the works mentioned in the bibliography.

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There is no reason to think that the decline of Buddhism was due to persecution. C. Bendall suggested that it was perhaps owing to Tantrism that Buddhism came to be discredited in India and disappeared. This explanation will scarcely hold, for Tantrism only affected certain schools, and the Tantrism of the Hindus still flourishes. In the absence of historical facts, the causes of the disappearance of Buddhism in India must remain hypothetical. The great difference of organization between Hinduism and Buddhism lay in the fact that the brahmin priests were not an ascetic body apart from the laity. They were a part of the social structure and an essential part in carrying out the rites and sacraments for the laity. In this function they were essential even for the Buddhist laity. While the Order continued there was a body in existence in open opposition to brahminism, and the disappearance of the Order meant the end of Buddhism. The Buddhist layman, who was all along a member of a Hindu caste, worshipped deities differing little from the Hindu gods. If the educated monk and his community disappeared, there was no essential principle to distinguish the Buddhist layman from the Hindu. Mr. Nagendranath Vasu has shown how in Orissa a form of Buddhism survived which became disguised as a form of Hinduism.¹ With the disappearance of the monks and the absence of any definite teaching the god Dharma became another of the numberless gods of India.

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¹ The Modern Buddhism and its followers in Orissa.

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It is easy to see how the Buddhist Order may have disappeared. It depended for its existence on the generosity of the layman, and if his sense of duty to give alms became dulled, as it well might be with the corruption of the monasteries, the most distinctive feature of the Buddhist organization would be lost. There is plenty of evidence in the Buddhist books of corruption quite apart from the question of Tantrism. It is also likely enough that the Muhammadan invasion contributed to the destruction of the monasteries.²

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² The survival of Jainism is another interesting problem. It may be said that it survived because it preserved its monastic system. It was “ the creed of a cultivated class, from which the masses are excluded ”. Buddhism dissolved in popular bodhisattva worship.

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The one place where Buddhism has remained is Nepal, Buddha’s native land. When Hodgson during his residence in Nepal (1833–1843) was sending manuscripts to Burnouf, he also tried to obtain information about the doctrine from the Buddhists of the country. He set a questionnaire, arranged according to his own ideas of theology, often with leading questions, such as “ how many avatāras of Buddha have there been?" (It was thus that he got the answer that the last seven Buddhas were avatāras.) "What is the motive of your good acts—the love of God—the fear of God—or the desire of prospering in the world?" It was no wonder that the answers he obtained seemed to him "a sad jumble of cloudy metaphysics", and that Burnouf was surprised that he could not discover in his manuscripts anything like the "Bauddha system" as described by Hodgson. Yet scholars continue to use his terms, some of which, like *dhyāni-buddha*, have never been found outside his writings.

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Hodgson found four systems. The best known is that of Ādibuddha, which L. de la Vallée Poussin describes as "Buddhist in fact only in name and in so far as it employs Buddhist terminology". Even the Hinduism on which it rests is of a degraded type. "It is well known," says the same scholar, "that Hodgson had recourse for his information to native scholars, whom he ceremoniously styles 'living oracles', and who, in support of their statements supplied him with fragments of texts, which were not all authentic." When Hodgson's statements were challenged by Rémusat, he disclaimed any purpose "to meddle with the interminable sheer absurdities of the Bauddha philosophy or religion". It may be possible some day to give an accurate description of the Nepalese religion, as has been partially done by La Vallée Poussin,¹ but it will scarcely add another chapter to the history of Buddhism.

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¹ See his article "Ādibuddha", in *ERE*.

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