The History of Buddhist Thought c26.61

c26.61

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.