The Profound Yogācāra Meaning of the Diamond Sutra (36)

True Vision of Reality, Five

This chapter, following the refutation of the four marks, goes a step deeper in refuting all marks, including the Buddha's physical form, in order to highlight the Tathāgata's Dharmakāya and to highlight the dharma of true reality.

Original text: 须菩提，于意云何？可以身相见如来不？须菩提答：不也，世尊，不可以身相见如来。

Explanation: The Buddha said: Subhūti, what do you think? To see the Tathāgata—is it to see the Tathāgata's physical body? Is one with a physical body the true Buddha? Is the Tathāgata seen through bodily marks? Subhūti said, it is not so; seeing the Tathāgata is not seeing through bodily marks. The true Buddha does not necessarily have marks, because Māra can also manifest a Buddha with the thirty-two marks, and that is not the true Buddha's body.

The Buddha has three bodies: the Dharmakāya, the Saṃbhogakāya, and the Nirmāṇakāya. The Dharmakāya is the true suchness, the principle-body; it cannot be seen, heard, or touched. The Dharmakāya is without marks, yet no mark is not He; nothing manifests apart from Him, and nothing is accomplished apart from Him. The Dharmakāya is also called the great perfect mirror wisdom (ādarśajñāna), whose light illuminates the great thousand worlds in the ten directions; there is no dharma that is not under His illumination, no dharma that can escape outside this perfect mirror—all are images within the mirror. He possesses immeasurable and boundless vast wisdom; there is no dharma He does not know, no dharma He cannot manifest. His merits are perfect and complete, and all dharmas are fully endowed in Him; He is also called the wisdom of all aspects (sarvākārajñatā). The Sambhogakāya Buddha is the adorned physical body reaped by the Buddha's cultivation over three great asaṃkhyeya kalpas. Śākyamuni Buddha's Sambhogakāya resides in the palace of the Akaniṣṭha Heaven, teaching the Dharma to the Dharmakāya bodhisattva-mahāsattvas from the first bhūmi to the tenth bhūmi, expounding the wisdom of the varieties of paths—the wisdom for attaining buddhahood—teaching the bodhisattvas to cultivate and study the functional seeds contained within the tathāgatagarbha. But bodhisattvas must have meditative concentration (dhyāna) at the level of the fourth dhyāna or above in order to be born into the highest heaven of the form realm to hear the Buddha personally teach the Dharma.

The Sambhogakāya Buddha has a self-enjoyment body and an enjoyment body for others. The self-enjoyment body is enjoyed by the Buddha Himself; the enjoyment body for others is manifested by the World-Honored One for the bodhisattvas. Because bodhisattvas' levels of realization differ, the body size and physical marks of the Sambhogakāya Buddha they see also differ; this is brought about by the bodhisattvas' merit and wisdom, not because the Buddha has discrimination. The lifespan of the Sambhogakāya Buddha is seven million asaṃkhyeya kalpas; one asaṃkhyeya kalpa contains countless great kalpas. One great kalpa contains four intermediate kalpas—formation, abiding, decay, and voidness. One intermediate kalpa contains twenty small kalpas, and one small kalpa is 16.8 million years. The Sambhogakāya Buddha's body is extremely vast; compared with the Buddha's body, the Earth is like a ping-pong ball in the Buddha's hand. One white hair curl between the Buddha's two eyebrows, when extended, can encircle five Mount Sumerus.

The Nirmāṇakāya Buddha is a physical body similar to sentient beings, manifested in response to the spiritual faculties of sentient beings in the ten directions, with the same lifespan. He must pass through the eight marks of attaining the path to become a Buddha: descending from the Tuṣita Heaven, entering the mother's womb, emerging from the womb, leaving home, subduing Māra, attaining buddhahood, teaching the Dharma, and entering parinirvāṇa. After leaving home, the World-Honored One manifested as doing the same as sentient beings—holding the alms bowl, eating and drinking, bathing, sleeping, and daily living. The Buddha did not need these, but deliberately manifested them to sentient beings, because sentient beings' faculties are dull; if He were not equal to sentient beings, they could not follow and learn from Him. They would think the Buddha was originally so miraculous that we cannot learn it, and then the Buddha would have no way to teach and transform sentient beings. When the Nirmāṇakāya Buddha enters parinirvāṇa, unlike arhats who extinguish the body and annihilate wisdom and abide in a state of nothingness, He has a liberated form (mokṣa-rūpa); there is always a physical body to benefit and bring joy to sentient beings. Having passed away in this world, He manifests a physical body in other worlds, and that body is liberated, without afflictions and habitual tendencies, having severed all ignorance, including fundamental ignorance, beginningless ignorance (avidyā), and dust-like ignorance (ignorance as numerous as dust).