The Buddha: divinization and multiplicity

In the Mahayana tradition the Buddha is viewed as a supramundane being. He multiplies himself and is often reflected in a pentad of buddhas—Vairochana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha, and Amoghasiddhi—who reveal various doctrines and elaborate liturgies and sometimes take the place of Shakyamuni.

As the tradition developed, there emerged new texts that were considered by Mahayana adherents to be Buddhavachana (“the word or words of the Buddha”). This new literature went far beyond the ancient canons and was believed to be the highest revelation, superseding earlier texts. In this literature the teaching is thought to operate on various levels, each adapted to the intellectual capacity and karmic propensities of those who hear it.

The bodhisattva ideal

The purpose of the bodhisattva is to achieve enlightenment and to fulfill the vow to become a buddha. The bodhisattva also foregoes entrance into nirvana in order to remain in the world as long as there are creatures to be saved from suffering.

Beginning with the vow to become a buddha, the career of a bodhisattva, according to some texts, traverses 10 stages or spiritual levels (bhumi) and achieves purification through the practice of the 10 perfections (paramitas). These levels elevate the bodhisattva to Buddhahood. The first six levels are preliminary, representing the true practice of the six perfections (generosity, morality, patience, vigour, concentration, and wisdom). Even though further purification and fortification must be achieved in the following stages, irreversibility occurs as soon as the seventh stage has been reached and the bodhisattva has assumed the true buddha nature. This is the moment when he engages in activity aimed at fulfilling the obligations of a bodhisattva. The difference between this and the preceding six stages is that now the activity is explained as an innate and spontaneous impulse manifested with conscious constraint and therefore not subject to doubt. Everything is now uncreated, ungenerated; thus, the body of the bodhisattva becomes identified more and more completely with the essential body (dharmakaya), with Buddhahood, and with omniscience.

The three Buddha bodies

The three bodies (trikaya; i.e., modes of being) of the Buddha are rooted in Hinayana teachings concerning the physical body, the mental body, and the body of the law. The theory of the three bodies was a subject of major discussion for the Mahayana, becoming part of the salvation process and assuming central significance in doctrine. The emanation body (nirmanakaya) is the form of the Buddha that appears in the world to teach people the path to liberation. The enjoyment (or bliss) body (sambhogakaya) is the celestial body of the Buddha to which contemplation can ascend. In the heavenly regions, or Pure Lands, the enjoyment body teaches the bodhisattva doctrines that are unintelligible to those who are unenlightened. The unmanifested body of the law (dharmakaya) already appears in the Saddharmapundarika, or Lotus Sutra, a transitional text of great importance to Mahayana devotional schools. In many Mahayana texts buddhas are infinite and share an identical nature—the dharmakaya.

As anticipated in ancient schools, the Buddha is the law (dharma) and is identified with an eternal dharma, enlightenment (bodhi), and nirvana. In later schools real existence is opposed to the mere appearance of existence, and voidness, the “thingness of things,” an undefinable condition, present and immutable within the Buddhas, is stressed. All is in the dharmakaya, the third body and expression of ultimate reality; nothing is outside it, just as nothing is outside space; transcendence and immanence come together. Other schools posit a presence that is innate within all human beings, even if it is not perceived. It is like a gem hidden in dross, which shines in its purity as soon as the veil of ignorance has been removed.

New revelations

New revelations are made on earth and in heavenly paradises by Shakyamuni and other buddhas. The teaching is expounded uninterruptedly in the universe because worlds and paradises are infinite and all buddhas are consubstantial with the essential body. They speak to assemblies of shravakas (disciples), bodhisattvas, gods, and demons. The authors of the new doctrines revealed their religious enthusiasm in various highly expressive ways, filling their works with phantasmagoria of celestial choruses, fabulous visions in which shine flashes of new speculations, and trains of thought influenced by Indian speculative and mystical traditions. The texts, from which new trends spring, overflow with repetitions and modulate the same arguments with a variety of readings.

Mahayana thinkers faced the daunting challenge of producing a completely logical arrangement of this prolix literature, some of which had legendary origins. The Prajnaparamita (“Perfection of Wisdom”) and the Avatamsaka-sutras (“Flower Ornament Sutras”), for instance, are said to have been concealed by the nagas, demigods that live in miraculous palaces in an underground kingdom. There are various Prajnaparamita texts, ranging from 100,000 verses (the Shatasahasrika) to only a few lines (the Prajnaparamitahrdaya-sutra, widely known as the Heart Sutra). The fundamental assumption of the Prajnaparamita is expounded in a famous verse: “like light, a mirage, a lamp, an illusion, a drop of water, a dream, a lightning flash; thus must all compounded things be considered.” Not only is there no “self,” but all things lack a real nature (svabhava) of their own. The Prajnaparamita-sutras announce that the world as it appears to us does not exist, that reality is the indefinable “thingness of things” (tathata; dharmanam dharmata), that voidness (shunyata) is an absolute “without signs or characteristics” (animitta).

Madhyamika (Sanlun/Sanron)

The Madhyamika (“Doctrine of the Middle Way”) system, also known as Shunyavada (“Theory of Negativity or Relativity”), held both subject and object to be unreal and systematized the doctrine of shunyata (“cosmic emptiness”) contained in the Prajnaparamita literature.

Along with his disciple Aryadeva, the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 150–250 ce) is recognized as the founder and principal exponent of the Madhyamika system. Nagarjuna is the presumed author of the voluminous Mahaprajnaparamita-shastra (“The Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom”), preserved in its Chinese translation (402–405) by Kumarajiva, and the Mulamadhyamakakarika (more commonly known as Madhyamika Karika; “Fundamentals of the Middle Way”), which is considered by many to be the Madhyamika work par excellence. The main work of Aryadeva, the Chatushataka, criticizes other forms of Buddhism and the classical Sanskrit philosophical systems.

Nagarjuna and his followers sought a middle position, devoid of name and character and beyond all thought and words. They used rigorous logic to demonstrate the absurdity of various philosophical positions, including those of Hindus and other Buddhists. Assuming that contradiction is proof of error, Nagarjuna took any point of view that would reveal the error of his opponents. He did not, however, accept the opposing point of view but used it only as a means to expose the relativity of the system he was attacking. Because he was willing to refute his first position, he could claim adherence to no doctrine. Moreover, Nagarjuna attempted to prove that all worldly thought is empty (shunya) or relative and that the true path is that of the middle, the path that is between or, more correctly, above extremes. This belief has been called the doctrine of emptiness of all things, which posits that all things lack essential characteristics and exist only in relation to conditions surrounding them.

Nagarjuna presented this middle path above extremes in his statement of the Eightfold Path of Buddhism:

Nothing comes into being, nor does anything disappear. Nothing is eternal, nor has anything an end. Nothing is identical, nor is anything differentiated. Nothing moves here, nor does anything move there.

In presenting these pairs of opposites, Nagarjuna taught that anything that can be conceptualized or put into words is relative. This led to the Madhyamika identification of nirvana and samsara, which are empty concepts with the truth lying somewhere beyond.

After the world’s emptiness or relativity has been proved, the question arises of how one is to go beyond this position. Nagarjuna answered with the doctrine of the two truths, explaining that humans can gain salvation and are not irreconcilably caught in this world, which can be used as a ladder leading to the absolute. In his doctrine the relative truth is of this existence. This leads first to the realization that all things are empty of subhava (“own being”) and then to the intuition of an absolute truth beyond all conceptions. The link between these two truths—the relative and the absolute—is the Buddha. He experienced the absolute truth, which is nisprapancha—i.e., inexplicable in speech and unrealizable in ordinary thought—and yet he returned to point to this truth in the phenomenal world. By following this path, one can be saved. Thus, Nagarjuna taught that through the middle path of Madhyamika, which is identified as the Buddha’s true teachings, one is guided to an experience beyond affirmation and negation, being and nonbeing. Madhyamika is a philosophy that can rightly be called a doctrine of salvation, for it claims to present humans with a system that leads to rescue from their situation.

The Madhyamika school divided into two subtraditions in the 5th and 6th centuries. The Prasangika school, which emphasized a more negative form of argumentation, was founded by Buddhapalita (c. 470–540), who wrote many works, including a commentary on Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika Karika. The school was continued by Chandrakirti, a famous logician of the 7th century and author of a commentary on the Madhyamika Karika, and by Shantideva (c. 650–750), whose Shiksa-samuccaya (“Summary of Training”) and Bodhicharyavatara (“The Coming of the Bodhisattva Way of Life”) are among the most popular Mahayana literary works.

The Svatantrika school, which utilized a syllogistic mode of argumentation, was founded by Bhavaviveka, a contemporary of Buddhapalita and author of a commentary on the Madhyamika Karika. Santiraksita, a great scholar who wrote the Tattvasamgraha (“Summary of Essentials”) and the Madhyamikalankara Karika (“Verses on the Ornament of the Madhyamika Teaching”), continued the school. Both the Svatantrika tradition and the Prasangika tradition strongly influenced Buddhist philosophy in Tibet.

The missionary translator Kumarajiva took the Madhyamika school to China from India in the 5th century. Three of the texts that he translated from Sanskrit into Chinese—the Madhyamika Karika and the Dvadashamukha-shastra or Dvadasha-dvara-shastra (“The Twelve Topics or Gates Treatise”) of Nagarjuna and the Shata-shastra (“One Hundred Verses Treatise”) of Aryadeva—became the basic texts of the Chinese Sanlun (Japanese: Sanron), or “Three Treatise,” school of Madhyamika. Although this school was challenged by the Silun, or “Four Treatise,” school, which also accepted the Mahaprajnaparamita-shastra as a basic text, Sanlun regained preeminence as a result of the teachings of Sengzhao, Kumarajiva’s disciple, and later of Jizang. Both of these Chinese Madhyamika masters commented on Nagarjuna’s thesis in numerous influential works.

A Korean disciple of Jizang, Ekwan (Huiguan), then spread Sanlun (Korean: Samnon) to Japan in 625. This school was never popular among the masses and rarely formed an independent sect, though it remained the basis of logical and philosophical thought among the learned.