The nature of a buddha
The Buddha is presented to us as in certain respects simply a
man: the sramat:ta or ascetic Gautama, the sage of the Sakya
people. Yet at the same time he is presented as something much
more than this: he was a buddha, an awakened one, the embodiment
at a particular time and place of 'perfection', a Tathagata,
one who comes and goes in accordance with the profoundest way
of things. At this point we need to begin to consider more fully .
what it is to be a buddha.
I have already referred to a generally accepted Indian view of
things that sees ordinary humanity, ordinary beings, as being born,
dying, and being reborn continually. This process is the round
of rebirth known as sarrtsiira or 'wandering', and it is this that
constitutes the universe. Beings wander through this vast endless
universe attempting to find some permanent home, a place
where they can feel at ease and secure. In the realms of the gods
they find great joy, and in the worlds of hell great suffering, but
their sojurn in these places is always temporary. Nowhere in this
universe is permanently secure; sooner or later, whatever the realrri
of rebirth, a being will die to be reborn somewhere else. So the
search for happiness and security within the round of rebirth never
ends. And yet, according to the teaching of the Buddha, this does
The Buddha
not mean that the search for happiness and security is futile and
without end, for a buddha is precisely one who finds and follows
the path to the end of suffering.
Now the question of what happens to a buddha when he dies
takes us to the heart of Buddhist philosophical thinking. Here
Buddhist thought suggests that we must be very careful indeed
about what we say, about how we use language, lest we become
fooled. The Buddha cannot be reborn in some new form of existence,
for to exist is, by definition, to exist at some particular time
and in some particular place and so be part of the unstable,
shifting world of conditions. If we say that the Buddha exists,
then the round of rebirth continues for the Buddha and the quest
for an end to suffering has not been completed. on the other
hand, to say that the Buddha simply does not exist is to suggest
that the Buddhist quest for happiness amounts to nothing but the
destruction of the individual being-something which is specifically
denied in the texts.32 Hence the strict doctrinal formulation
of Buddhist texts is this: one cannot say that the Buddha exists
after death, one cannot say that he does not exist, one cannot
say that he both exists and does not exist, and one cannot say
that he neither exists nor does not exist.33 one cannot say more
here without beginning to explore certain other aspects of Buddhist
metaphysics and ontology, and this I shall leave for later
chapters. The important point is that a Buddha is understood
as a being who has in some way transcended and gone beyond
the round of rebirth. Be is a Tathagata, one who, in accordance
with the profoundest way of things, has come 'thus' (tathii) and
gone 'thus'.34
So what does this transcendence imply about the final nature
of a buddha? If one is thinking in categories dictated and shaped
by the theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and also
modern Western thought, there is often a strong inclination to
suppose that such a question should be answered in terms of the
categories of human and divine: either the Buddha was basically
a man or he was some kind of god, perhaps even God. 35 But something
of an imaginative leap is required here, for these are not
the categories of Indian or Buddhist thought. In the first place,
The Buddha
according to the Buddhist view of things, the nature of beings is
not eternally or absolutely fixed. Beings that were once humans
or animals may be reborn as gods; beings that were once gods
may be reborn as animals or in hellish realms. Certainly, for the
Buddhist tradition, the being who became buddha or awakened
had been born a man, but equally that being is regarded as
having spent many previous lives as a god. Yet in becoming a
buddha he goes beyond such categories of being as human and
divine.
A story is told of how once a brahmin saw on the Buddha's
footprints one of the thirty-two marks, wheels complete with a
thousand spokes, with rims and hubs.36 He thought that such footprints
could hardly be those of a human being and followed them.
On catching up with the Buddha, he asked him whether he was
a god or some kind of angel or demon. The Buddha replied that
he was none of these. The brahmin then asked if he was a human
being. The Buddha replied that he was not. The brahmin was
puzzled. So what was the Buddha?
Just as a blue, red, or white lotus, born in water and grown up in water,
having risen above the water stands unstained by water, even so do I,
born in the world and grown up in the world, having overcome the
world, dwell unstained by the world. Understand that I am a buddha.
A buddha is thus a being sui generis: a buddha is just a buddha.37
But, in principle, according to Buddhist thought, any being can
follow the path of developing the perfections over countless
lives, and eventually become a buddha. That is, all beings have
the potential to become buddhas.
Thus something has happened to Gautama the man that means
that the categories that normally apply to beings no longer properly
apply. Ordinarily a human being's behaviour will sometimes ·
be motivated by greed, hatred, and delusion and sometimes by
such things as selflessness, friendliness, compassion, and wisdom.
The different deeds, words, and thoughts of a being are an
ｅxpression of these conflicting emotions and psychological forces.
But for a buddha all this has changed. He has rooted out any
sense of pride, attachment, or hostility. The thoughts, words, and
30 The Buddha
deeds of a buddha are motivated only by generosity, loving kindness,
and wisdom. A buddha can think, say, and do nothing that
is not based on these. This is the effect or 'fruit' of what happened
as he sat in meditation beneath the tree of awakening.
The bodies of the Buddha
One early Buddhist text puts it that the Buddha is 'one whose
body is Dharma, whose body is Brahma; who has become
Dharma, who has become Brahma'.38 Now dharma and brahma
are two technical terms pregnant with emotional and religious
'meaning. Among other things Dharma is 'the right way to
behave', 'the perfect way to act'; hence it is also the teaching of
the Buddha since by following the teaching of the Buddha one
follows the path that ends in Dharma or perfect action. We have
already come across the term Brahma denoting a divine being
(p. 24), but in Buddhist texts brahma is also used to denote or
describe the qualities of such divine beings; thus brahma. conveys
something of the sense of the English 'divine', something
of the sense of 'holy' and something of the sense of 'perfection'.
Like the English word 'body' the Sanskrit/Pali word kiiya
means both a physical body and figuratively a collection or
aggregate of something-as in 'a body of opinion'. To say that the
Buddha is dharma-kiiya means that he is at once the embodiment
of Dharma and the collection or sum of all those qualitiesnon-
attachment, loving kindness, wisdom, etc.-that constitute
Dharma. Thus the nature of a buddha does not inhere primarily
in his visible human body-it is not that which makes him a
buddha-but in his perfected spiritual qualities.
Another passage of the ancient texts relates how the monk
Vakkali was lying seriously ill on his sick-bed; when the Buddha
arrives Vakkali explains to him that, although he has no sense
of failure in his conduct, he is troubled by the fact that because
of his illness he has not been able to come and visit the Buddha.
The Buddha responds: 'Enough, Vakkali. What point is there in
your seeing this decaying body? He who sees Dharma sees me;
he who sees me sees Dharma.'39
This kind of thinking gives rise in developed Buddhist
thought to various theories of 'the bodies of the Buddha'. Such
The Buddha 31
theories are often presented as a distinguishing feature of later
Mahayana Buddhism. This is misleading. Certainly, there is a rather
sophisticated understanding of 'the three bodies' (trikiiya) of the
Buddha worked out and expounded in the writings of the fourthcentury
CE Indian Mahayanist thinker Asmiga (see Chapter 9).
But this theory stands at the end of a process of development,
and some conception of the bodies of the Buddha is common
to all Buddhist thought. What is common is the distinguishing
between the 'physical body' (rupa-kiiya) and the 'dharma-body'.
The physical body is the body that one would see if one
happened to meet the Buddha. Most people, most of the time,
it seems, would see a man who looked and dressed much like
any other Buddhist monk. However, recalling the stories of the
brahmins who examined the Buddha's body after his birth and
the brahmin who followed his footprints, some people some of
the time see-or perhaps, more precisely, experience-a body
that is eighteen cubits in height and endowed with the thirtytwo
marks of the great man as described in the Lakkha!Ja Sutta,
'the discourse on the marks of the great man'.40 This apparently
extraordinary body appears in part to be connected with theories
of the 'subtle body' developed in meditation. All this then is the
physical body-the body as it appears to the senses. The Dharmabody,
as we have seen already, is the collection of perfect qualities
that, as it were, constitute the 'personality' or psychological
make-up of the Buddha.
A Buddha's physical body and Dharma-body in a sense parallel
and in a sense contrast with the physical and psychological
make-up of other more ordinary beings. According to a classic
Buddhist analysis that we shall have occasion to consider more
fully below, any individual being's physical and psychological
make-up comprises five groups of conditions and functions: a
physical body normally endowed with five senses; feelings that
are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral; ideas and concepts; various
desires and volitions; and self-consciousness. Any being might
be considered as consisting in the accumulation of just these
five 'heaps' or 'aggregates' (skandha/khandha) of physical and
psychological conditions. And in this respect a buddha is no
different. Yet a buddha has transformed these five into an
32 The Buddha
ｅxpression and embodiment of Dharma. Thus rather than, or as
well as, consisting in the accumulation of these five aggregates,
the psychological make-up of the Buddha might be considered
as consisting in the accumulation of another set of five 'aggregates',
namely, the various qualities of perfect conduct (sllalsfla),
meditation (samadhi), wisdom (prajflalpaflfla), freedom (vimuktil
vimutti), and knowledge and understanding ( vimukti-jnana-darsana/
vimutticilii!Ja-dassana ).41
Sravaka-buddhas, pratyeka-buddhas, and samyak-sambuddhas
In this chapter we have seen how the Buddhist tradition regards
a particular historical individual-Siddhartha Gautama-as an
instance of a certain kind of rare and extraordinary being-a
buddha. Such a being having resolved to become a buddha by
making a vow in the presence of some previous buddha of a far
distant age, practises the perfections for countless lives and
finally, born as a man, attains buddhahood by finding 'the path
to the cessation of suffering'; he then goes on to teach this path
to the cessation of suffering to others so that they may reach the
same realization as he has done, so that they too may become
'awakened' or buddha. Both Gautama and those who come
to realization by following his teachings-the arhats-may be
referred to as 'buddhas' since both, by the rooting out of greed,
hatred, and delusion, have come to understand suffering and
the path to its cessation. And yet, as the tradition acknowledges,
some difference between Gautama and the arhats must remain.
Gautama, the Buddha, has found the path by his individual striving
without the immediate help of an already awakened being
and then gone on to show others the way. His followers on the
other hand may have come to precisely the same understanding
and realization as Gautama but they have done so with the
assistance of his unequalled abilities as teacher.
We have then here
two kinds of buddha:
'the perfectly, fullyawakened one' (samyak-lsamma-sambuddha) like Gautama, and
the arhat or 'one who has awakened as a disciple' (sravaka-/savaka-buddha).
Thus while on the one hand wishing to stress that the 'awakening' of Gautama and his 'awakened' disciples is the
The Buddha 33
same, the Buddhist tradition has also been unable to resist the
tendency to dwell on the superiority of Gautama's achievement.
Apart from becoming 'awakened' as a samyaksam-buddha or
arhat, Buddhist texts also envisage a third possibility: that one
might become awakened by one's unaided effort without hearing
the teaching of a buddha and yet fail to teach others the way to
awakening. Such a one is known as a 'solitary buddha' (pratyeka-1
pacceka-buddha ).
The sense that the achievements of these three kinds of 'buddha'
are at once the same but different-the Buddha's achievement
being somehow superior-is a tension that lies at the heart
of Buddhist thought and, as we shall see, explains in part certain
later developments of Buddhist thought known as the Mahayana.
How does the Buddha's superiority to arhats and pratyekabuddhas
manifest itself? In order to answer this question it is
useful to return to a question raised earlier concerning the Buddha's
nature as man or god. In the context especially of early
Buddhism and Buddhism as practised today in Sri Lanka and
South-East Asia, once it has been established that theoretically
the Buddha is neither a god nor a 'Saviour', there has been a
tendency amongst observers to conclude that the Buddha ought
then to be seen by Buddhists as simply a man-as if this was the
only alternative. A further conclusion is then drawn that, since
Buddhism teaches that there is no 'saviour', the only way to 'salvation'
must be through one's own unaided effort.
True, the Buddha did not create the world and he cannot
simply 'save' us-and the Buddhist would say that it is not so
much that the Buddha lacks the power as that the world is just
not like that: no being could do such a thing. Yet although no
saviour, the Buddha is still 'the teacher of gods and men, the unsurpassed
trainer of unruly men'; in the Pali commentaries of
fifth-century Sri Lanka he is often referred to as simply the
Teacher (satthar). That is, we have here to do with a question of
alternative religious imagery and metaphor: not the 'Father' or
'Saviour' of Judaism or Christianity, but the Teacher. If one is
not familiar with the Indian cultural context it is easy to underestimate
the potency of the image here. For a Buddhist no being
34 The Buddha
can match the Buddha's abilities to teach and instruct in order
to push beings gently towards the final truth of things. A buddha
may not be able to save us-that is, he cannot simply turn us
into awakened beings-yet, if awakening is what we are intent
on, the presence of a buddha is still our best hope. Indeed some
contemporary Buddhists would suggest that it is no longer possible
to reach awakening since conditions are now unpropitious;
rather it is better to aspire to be reborn at the time of the next
buddha or in a world where a buddha is now teaching so that
one can hear the teachings directly from a buddha. For the Buddhist
tradition, then, the Buddha is above all the great Teacher;
it is his rediscovery of the path to the cessation of suffering and
his teaching of that path that offers beings the possibility of following
that path themselves.
As Teacher, then, the Buddha set in motion the wheel of
Dharma. As a result of setting in motion the wheel of Dharma
he established a community of accomplished disciples, the Sangha.
In the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha the Buddhist thus has 'three
jewels' (tri-ratna/ti-ratana) to which to go for refuge. Going to
the three jewels for refuge is realized by the formal recitation
of a threefold formula: 'To the Buddha I go for refuge; to the
Dharma I go for refuge; to the Sangha I go for refuge.' Going to
these three jewels for refuge is essentially what defines an individual
as a Buddhist. Having considered the Buddha,let us now
turn to consider his teaching and how that teaching is put into
practice by those who take refuge in the three jewels.