Post by Yogavatar सौन्दर्य on Feb 23, 2024 3:39:48 GMT
In the Vajrayana, following earlier tradition, the Buddha’s teachings are
understood to derive ultimately from his dharmakaya, the unoriginated
“body” of reality depicted as Samantabhadra in Nyingma tradition and
Vajradhara in the New Translation schools. Yet, for human beings in
general, the dharmakaya is inaccessible; therefore, out of compassion, the
primordial dharmakaya buddha takes shape in sambhogakaya and
nirmanakaya forms. Tulku Thondup clarifies the doctrine of the three
buddha bodies for an understanding of Vajrayana.
The doctrine of the three bodies of the Buddha is important for all
aspects of tantric teachings. The transmission comes from the
ultimate body, the formless absolute, empty aspect of Buddhahood,
the dharmakaya, to the body of enjoyment, the sambhogakaya. The
latter is the first of the two form-bodies. Its radiant, transcendent
form, endowed with the major and minor marks of buddhahood, can
be perceived only by enlightened or highly attained beings. The
Buddhas of the sambhogakaya level dwell in inconceivably vast pure
lands or Buddha-fields, whereas the other expression of the formbody, the nirmanakaya, enters samsara and manifests in various ways
in order to free beings from suffering.5
These themes come to life in the following account, told by Lama
Taranatha, of the first time that the Vajrayana was taught by the Buddha to
human beings. In this rendering, the Buddha gives the tantric teachings for
the first time to King Indrabhuti, ruler of the land of Uddiyana. In the story,
recounted here with commentary, the Buddha first appears in his
nirmanakaya form and then, when he wishes to reveal the tantric teachings,
manifests himself as the sambhogakaya Buddha at the center of a vast
mandala.6
King Indrabhuti, who rules over the tantric country of Uddiyana (in
present day Pakistan) is one day sitting on his palace veranda looking out
over the plains. In the far distance, he notices what appears to be a flock of
reddish birds flying across the sky. When he asks his courtiers what these
are, they reply, “Oh, that is Buddha Shakyamuni, together with this five
hundred arhants.”
Commentary: One of the qualities of enlightenment is that the
realized person has gained various miraculous powers, including the
ability to fly. Thus the Buddha and his arhants, as realized people, are
credited with this ability. They appear in the distance as reddish birds
because of the saffron robes that the Buddha’s disciples wore.
Indrabhuti expresses his wish that an invitation be extended to the
Buddha and his disciples to come to the palace for a noonday meal.
Although the king’s attendants express doubts that the Buddha will come
because he is so far away, nevertheless, the next day he and his five hundred
arhants arrive for the meal.
Commentary: In Indian Buddhism, it was customary to make
offerings of food to wandering holy men and women. On such
occasions, the layperson could expect to gain merit, proportionate to
the sanctity of the recipient. In addition, it was common for the
donor, after the meal was finished, to request teachings. Indian kings
were not only political rulers but also the ritual leaders of their
kingdoms. The well-being of the kingdom was thought to be
dependent upon the king’s purity and store of merit. As part of his
royal role, a king like Indrabhuti would frequently invite noted holy
people along with their renunciant disciples to partake of a noonday
meal, which might be quite lavish indeed. It was thought that the
great merit accrued by the king on such occasions would be enjoyed
by the lands under his protection.
After the meal is concluded, the king asks the Buddha for teachings. In
particular, he requests teachings on the means of attaining buddhahood. The
Buddha responds, “O king, abandon sense pleasures, keep to the three
trainings, and practice the six paramitas.”
Commentary: The Buddha is giving the king the teachings of the
conventional Hinayana and Mahayana. The king is advised to
abandon sense pleasures—in other words, to renounce the world, in
the “Hinayana” way. He is next told to keep the three trainings, which
include shila (ethical conduct), samadhi (meditation), and prajna,
(wisdom). Shila would involve for the king, as a layperson, the five
lay precepts; meditation would be shamatha-vipashyana; and prajna
would refer to study. Finally, the king is advised to practice the six
paramitas of the conventional Mahayana path.
The king, however, is not satisfied with this instruction and responds: “I
request a method of attaining buddhahood through the enjoyment of the five
senses with my retinue of ladies.” Then the king composes a brief
spontaneous poem:
In the Rose Apple Grove so joyful to experience,
Even if I were to become a fox in my next life,
A liberation that abandons the sense pleasures
I could never desire, O Gautama.
Commentary: The king is saying that in the Rose Apple Grove,
referring to our human world, he cannot renounce the basic
experience of human life, oriented as it is to the pleasures of the five
senses. Seen from the point of view of the lower yanas, the king’s
hesitation is a sign of his weakness: an indication that he is so selfindulgent that he cannot give up sensual gratification to follow a
spiritual path. From the Vajrayana point of view, however, something
else is in motion here. The king senses the sacredness of human
experience in its full range and depth, and he affirms that he will not
turn his back on this even were it to land him in the low birth of a fox
in his next existence. The king desires a path to liberation that makes
use of, rather than rejects, the naked experience of human existence.
The following comments by Trungpa Rinpoche about the tantric
practitioner describe King Indrabhuti’s inspiration: “Some people are
tantric by nature. They are inspired in their lives; they realize that
some reality is taking place in the true sense, and they feel that the
experience of energy is relevant to them. They may feel threatened by
energy or they may feel a lack of energy, but they have a personal
interest in the world: the visual world, the auditory world, the world
of the senses altogether. They are interested in how things work and
how things are perceived. That sense of enormous interest, that
interest in perceptions, is tantric by nature.”7
Then abruptly the assembly of shravakas disappears. At that point, a
voice resounds from the sky saying, “None of the eight classes of holy
persons are here. There are not even any shravakas or pratyekabuddhas. The
bodhisattvas, whose magical power is great, are manifesting their forms.”
Commentary: Buddha Shakyamuni is evidently going to grant
Indrabhuti’s request, because the area is being cleared of those who
are not prepared or authorized to hear the secret Vajrayana. Those
who depart are all “Hinayanists,” including the five hundred arhant
disciples of the Buddha (the shravakas), along with the
pratyekabuddhas, the solitary saints who dwell alone in the forest
meditating. In fact, it seems to be only the high-level bodhisattvas,
those of great magical power who can manifest various forms, that
are able to remain.
Then the Buddha produces a great, vast mandala. He grants the king
initiation, abhisheka, and at that very moment King Indrabhuti attains the
body of unification (yuganaddha).
Commentary: The abhisheka is the ritual of initiation through which
the king is “shown” the secrets of the Vajrayana, in the form of the
deities of the mandala. Although appearing in external form, these
deities have both inner and outer dimensions: they represent the
underlying, substructure of external reality, the essential, inner body
of the yogin, and the full form of the buddha-nature of a person.
Having been granted this empowerment, the king instantly attains the
body of unification, which is, according to Trungpa Rinpoche, the
coemergence of wisdom and skillful means, and the svabhavikakaya,
which is the union of the three kayas or buddha-bodies. It is the
experience of reality, without an experiencer or subject. The king’s
immediate attainment of this realized state marks him as a fully
ripened person and appropriate for the introduction of the Vajrayana
into the human world.
Following the abhisheka and King Indrabhuti’s attainment, the Buddha
bestows on him all of the tantras. Then the king teaches extensively to all
the people in his kingdom of Uddiyana and also writes the tantras down in
text form. Finally, together with his retinue of royal consorts, he disappears
and they all become sambhogakaya beings. Indrabhuti subsequently travels
from one buddha-field to another, and acts as a collector and holder of the
entire Mantrayana.
Commentary: This story, which reflects the view of the New
Translation schools on the appearance of the Vajrayana in the human
world, sees King Indrabhuti as the progenitor of the various tantras
that make up the tradition. It depicts him as a person of great
inspiration and attainment, so much so that after receiving tantric
teachings from the Buddha, he, along with his consorts, leaves his
human body behind altogether and becomes a sambhogakaya being,
travelling from one pure land to another.
At that time, not only the king and his retinue, but also all the people of
the land of Uddiyana, plus its spirits (bhutas) and its animals all the way
down to the insects, attain siddhi by the path of mahasukha and achieve the
rainbow body.
Commentary: The path of mahasukha (“great bliss”) is a way of
speaking about the Vajrayana in which liberation is attained by means
of experiencing the “pleasure” of the five senses. A master of great
attainment is said to have the ability to enable his close disciples,
students, and lay devotees, to participate in his realization. In this
story, even the insects of Uddiyana attain the rainbow body, the
highest attainment of Vajrayana that can be gained on earth. This
attainment, another way of talking about the realization of the
sambhogakaya, will be discussed in chapter 11.
Taranatha’s account illustrates the Tibetan perspective that people other
than buddhas can be pure incarnations—nirmanakayas—and that they may
also manifest on the sambhogakaya level. We have already seen in the story
how King Indrabhuti became a sambhogakaya being. In addition, Taranatha
tells us that the king is the human incarnation of the sambhogakaya deity
Vajrapani, the Lord of Secret, whose role is to disclose the tantras to human
beings.
Subsequent Tantric Origins
In the Tibetan view, the primordial, dharmakaya buddha exists beyond time
and space, and can give forth teachings at any time. While the teachings
contained in the early, Hinayana canons represent one occasion on which
the dharma was transmitted to the human world from the primeval state, it
is by no means the only one. In the Mahayana, as noted, the second and
third turnings of the wheel of dharma also constitute fresh promulgations.
Beyond this, the individual Mahayana sutras are often equally presented as
unprecedented expressions of the Buddha’s teaching. The Vajrayana, in
particular, has from its inception been characterized by a more or less
continuous stream of revelations, seen most vividly in the Terma tradition.
From the Tibetan viewpoint, this is to be explained by the intense practice
orientation of the tantric vehicle. Vajrayana practitioners who spend a great
deal of time in meditation will, by virtue of their practice, draw near to the
primal, sacred sources of the dharma. They will be able to receive fresh
teachings in a way that others, more preoccupied with books and past
tradition, will not.
Thus it is that throughout the history of Tantric Buddhism in both India
and Tibet, one observes the continual appearance of new revelations,
understood as originating from the Buddha himself in his ultimate,
dharmakaya aspect. Sometimes these teachings are mediated by a
sambhogakaya buddha to the nirmanakaya. At other times, a realized
human being, understood as a nirmanakaya, can journey in his or her subtle
body to receive teachings directly from the dharmakaya.
We may see an example of this latter approach in the life of Tilopa, the
guru of Naropa, mentioned in chapter 1. Tilopa had pursued a long journey
that included renouncing the world, spending some time as a monk, and
then entering the Vajrayana. At this point, after studying with many tantric
masters, Tilopa felt that he still remained within the realm of the
conditioned, that he had not yet broken through to the ultimate. He
therefore went to Bengal and took up residence in a cremation ground.
There he planted himself in a tiny grass hut, barely big enough for his body
upright in meditation, and remained there. To ordinary people, Tilopa
appeared to be sitting immobile in his little shelter, in a state of samadhi.
However, at this very same time, he was traveling to a celestial realm in his
ethereal body and was receiving transmissions directly from the
dharmakaya buddha Vajradhara. In this instance, it was Tilopa himself who
made the link with the dharmakaya through his own subtle body and
brought these teachings back to the world, where he, himself understood as
a nirmanakaya, transmitted what he had received to his human disciples. It
was Tilopa’s extraordinary ability to find his way to this ultimate, original
dharmakaya source that enabled him to become the human progenitor of the
Kagyü lineage. (For a summary of Tilopa’s hagiography, see Indestructible
Truth.)
Tulku Thondup articulates the Nyingma explanation of the process of the
Three Lineages, by which new revelations originate from the dharmakaya
buddha and are mediated by the sambhogakaya buddha to the nirmanakaya
beings of the human realm. Thus, the dharmakaya Buddha—
Samantabhadra in the Ancient School—is the original source for the
Vajrayana.8 He transmits these teachings to his disciples, the sambhogakaya
buddhas, through direct mind transmission, known as the Thought Lineage
of the Victorious Ones, without the use of signs or words. The
sambhogakaya divinities then transmit them to the nirmanakaya emanations
through the use of signs and symbols, termed the Sign Lineage of the
Vidyadharas. These nirmanakayas are the masters who stand at the origins
of the various tantras, such as Garab Dorje for atiyoga or dzokchen, and
King Ja for mahayoga and anuyoga teachings (see chapter 2).b The
nirmanakayas teach other human beings with words and concepts, called
the Hearing Lineage of the Individuals. These teachings came to
Padmasambhava, Yeshe Tsogyal, Vimalamitra, Vairochana, and others who
either propagated them in Tibet to be passed on from one generation to
another (the Nyingma Kama lineages) or hid them for later discovery (the
Terma lineages). (See chapter 2.) (For a discussion of the Three Lineages,
see Indestructible Truth.)
The informed reader may find the Tibetan Vajrayana approach to origins
—particularly the notion of the three kayas and of people other than the
Buddha engaging these levels of spiritual reality—to be far removed indeed
from the Buddhism of the early canons of the Eighteen Schools. However,
as the scholar Edward Conze noted a half century ago, the notion of the
three kayas is quite present in early tradition, if under different names.9
For
example, in the early texts, the Buddha is quoted as observing that the realm
of dharma exists beyond time, whether or not there is an awakened person
to proclaim it. In other words, the “realm” of reality—structurally
equivalent to the dharmakaya—abides eternally, there needing only
someone to give it expression. If the prototype of the dharmakaya is in preMahayana tradition, so is the sambhogakaya, for Buddha Shakyamuni is
depicted one rainy season as journeying in his subtle body to the Tushita
heaven (the god realm where a buddha-to-be awaits his final birth and
blessed individuals may take rebirth), when he gives teachings to his
deceased mother.
10
It is also interesting that in pre-Mahayana tradition it is
not only the Buddha who can speak “buddha word” (buddha-vachana), i.e.,
speak with the wisdom and authority of a buddha. In the Sarvastivada, a
member of the group of early Eighteen Schools and the one whose
traditions are most important to the Tibetans, the texts of the Abhidharma
Pitaka, understood as buddha word, are each attributed to human authors
who, by virtue of their realization, can speak the dharma in a pure form as
did Buddha Shakyamuni. All three kayas, then, are prefigured in early
Buddhism. This suggests that there is some truth to the Tibetan view that
the continually appearing revelations found in tantric tradition are simply
the intensification of a process that is present in all the schools of
Buddhism, going back to the earliest appearance of the dharma in our
world.
Secrets of the Vajra World Tantric Buddhism
understood to derive ultimately from his dharmakaya, the unoriginated
“body” of reality depicted as Samantabhadra in Nyingma tradition and
Vajradhara in the New Translation schools. Yet, for human beings in
general, the dharmakaya is inaccessible; therefore, out of compassion, the
primordial dharmakaya buddha takes shape in sambhogakaya and
nirmanakaya forms. Tulku Thondup clarifies the doctrine of the three
buddha bodies for an understanding of Vajrayana.
The doctrine of the three bodies of the Buddha is important for all
aspects of tantric teachings. The transmission comes from the
ultimate body, the formless absolute, empty aspect of Buddhahood,
the dharmakaya, to the body of enjoyment, the sambhogakaya. The
latter is the first of the two form-bodies. Its radiant, transcendent
form, endowed with the major and minor marks of buddhahood, can
be perceived only by enlightened or highly attained beings. The
Buddhas of the sambhogakaya level dwell in inconceivably vast pure
lands or Buddha-fields, whereas the other expression of the formbody, the nirmanakaya, enters samsara and manifests in various ways
in order to free beings from suffering.5
These themes come to life in the following account, told by Lama
Taranatha, of the first time that the Vajrayana was taught by the Buddha to
human beings. In this rendering, the Buddha gives the tantric teachings for
the first time to King Indrabhuti, ruler of the land of Uddiyana. In the story,
recounted here with commentary, the Buddha first appears in his
nirmanakaya form and then, when he wishes to reveal the tantric teachings,
manifests himself as the sambhogakaya Buddha at the center of a vast
mandala.6
King Indrabhuti, who rules over the tantric country of Uddiyana (in
present day Pakistan) is one day sitting on his palace veranda looking out
over the plains. In the far distance, he notices what appears to be a flock of
reddish birds flying across the sky. When he asks his courtiers what these
are, they reply, “Oh, that is Buddha Shakyamuni, together with this five
hundred arhants.”
Commentary: One of the qualities of enlightenment is that the
realized person has gained various miraculous powers, including the
ability to fly. Thus the Buddha and his arhants, as realized people, are
credited with this ability. They appear in the distance as reddish birds
because of the saffron robes that the Buddha’s disciples wore.
Indrabhuti expresses his wish that an invitation be extended to the
Buddha and his disciples to come to the palace for a noonday meal.
Although the king’s attendants express doubts that the Buddha will come
because he is so far away, nevertheless, the next day he and his five hundred
arhants arrive for the meal.
Commentary: In Indian Buddhism, it was customary to make
offerings of food to wandering holy men and women. On such
occasions, the layperson could expect to gain merit, proportionate to
the sanctity of the recipient. In addition, it was common for the
donor, after the meal was finished, to request teachings. Indian kings
were not only political rulers but also the ritual leaders of their
kingdoms. The well-being of the kingdom was thought to be
dependent upon the king’s purity and store of merit. As part of his
royal role, a king like Indrabhuti would frequently invite noted holy
people along with their renunciant disciples to partake of a noonday
meal, which might be quite lavish indeed. It was thought that the
great merit accrued by the king on such occasions would be enjoyed
by the lands under his protection.
After the meal is concluded, the king asks the Buddha for teachings. In
particular, he requests teachings on the means of attaining buddhahood. The
Buddha responds, “O king, abandon sense pleasures, keep to the three
trainings, and practice the six paramitas.”
Commentary: The Buddha is giving the king the teachings of the
conventional Hinayana and Mahayana. The king is advised to
abandon sense pleasures—in other words, to renounce the world, in
the “Hinayana” way. He is next told to keep the three trainings, which
include shila (ethical conduct), samadhi (meditation), and prajna,
(wisdom). Shila would involve for the king, as a layperson, the five
lay precepts; meditation would be shamatha-vipashyana; and prajna
would refer to study. Finally, the king is advised to practice the six
paramitas of the conventional Mahayana path.
The king, however, is not satisfied with this instruction and responds: “I
request a method of attaining buddhahood through the enjoyment of the five
senses with my retinue of ladies.” Then the king composes a brief
spontaneous poem:
In the Rose Apple Grove so joyful to experience,
Even if I were to become a fox in my next life,
A liberation that abandons the sense pleasures
I could never desire, O Gautama.
Commentary: The king is saying that in the Rose Apple Grove,
referring to our human world, he cannot renounce the basic
experience of human life, oriented as it is to the pleasures of the five
senses. Seen from the point of view of the lower yanas, the king’s
hesitation is a sign of his weakness: an indication that he is so selfindulgent that he cannot give up sensual gratification to follow a
spiritual path. From the Vajrayana point of view, however, something
else is in motion here. The king senses the sacredness of human
experience in its full range and depth, and he affirms that he will not
turn his back on this even were it to land him in the low birth of a fox
in his next existence. The king desires a path to liberation that makes
use of, rather than rejects, the naked experience of human existence.
The following comments by Trungpa Rinpoche about the tantric
practitioner describe King Indrabhuti’s inspiration: “Some people are
tantric by nature. They are inspired in their lives; they realize that
some reality is taking place in the true sense, and they feel that the
experience of energy is relevant to them. They may feel threatened by
energy or they may feel a lack of energy, but they have a personal
interest in the world: the visual world, the auditory world, the world
of the senses altogether. They are interested in how things work and
how things are perceived. That sense of enormous interest, that
interest in perceptions, is tantric by nature.”7
Then abruptly the assembly of shravakas disappears. At that point, a
voice resounds from the sky saying, “None of the eight classes of holy
persons are here. There are not even any shravakas or pratyekabuddhas. The
bodhisattvas, whose magical power is great, are manifesting their forms.”
Commentary: Buddha Shakyamuni is evidently going to grant
Indrabhuti’s request, because the area is being cleared of those who
are not prepared or authorized to hear the secret Vajrayana. Those
who depart are all “Hinayanists,” including the five hundred arhant
disciples of the Buddha (the shravakas), along with the
pratyekabuddhas, the solitary saints who dwell alone in the forest
meditating. In fact, it seems to be only the high-level bodhisattvas,
those of great magical power who can manifest various forms, that
are able to remain.
Then the Buddha produces a great, vast mandala. He grants the king
initiation, abhisheka, and at that very moment King Indrabhuti attains the
body of unification (yuganaddha).
Commentary: The abhisheka is the ritual of initiation through which
the king is “shown” the secrets of the Vajrayana, in the form of the
deities of the mandala. Although appearing in external form, these
deities have both inner and outer dimensions: they represent the
underlying, substructure of external reality, the essential, inner body
of the yogin, and the full form of the buddha-nature of a person.
Having been granted this empowerment, the king instantly attains the
body of unification, which is, according to Trungpa Rinpoche, the
coemergence of wisdom and skillful means, and the svabhavikakaya,
which is the union of the three kayas or buddha-bodies. It is the
experience of reality, without an experiencer or subject. The king’s
immediate attainment of this realized state marks him as a fully
ripened person and appropriate for the introduction of the Vajrayana
into the human world.
Following the abhisheka and King Indrabhuti’s attainment, the Buddha
bestows on him all of the tantras. Then the king teaches extensively to all
the people in his kingdom of Uddiyana and also writes the tantras down in
text form. Finally, together with his retinue of royal consorts, he disappears
and they all become sambhogakaya beings. Indrabhuti subsequently travels
from one buddha-field to another, and acts as a collector and holder of the
entire Mantrayana.
Commentary: This story, which reflects the view of the New
Translation schools on the appearance of the Vajrayana in the human
world, sees King Indrabhuti as the progenitor of the various tantras
that make up the tradition. It depicts him as a person of great
inspiration and attainment, so much so that after receiving tantric
teachings from the Buddha, he, along with his consorts, leaves his
human body behind altogether and becomes a sambhogakaya being,
travelling from one pure land to another.
At that time, not only the king and his retinue, but also all the people of
the land of Uddiyana, plus its spirits (bhutas) and its animals all the way
down to the insects, attain siddhi by the path of mahasukha and achieve the
rainbow body.
Commentary: The path of mahasukha (“great bliss”) is a way of
speaking about the Vajrayana in which liberation is attained by means
of experiencing the “pleasure” of the five senses. A master of great
attainment is said to have the ability to enable his close disciples,
students, and lay devotees, to participate in his realization. In this
story, even the insects of Uddiyana attain the rainbow body, the
highest attainment of Vajrayana that can be gained on earth. This
attainment, another way of talking about the realization of the
sambhogakaya, will be discussed in chapter 11.
Taranatha’s account illustrates the Tibetan perspective that people other
than buddhas can be pure incarnations—nirmanakayas—and that they may
also manifest on the sambhogakaya level. We have already seen in the story
how King Indrabhuti became a sambhogakaya being. In addition, Taranatha
tells us that the king is the human incarnation of the sambhogakaya deity
Vajrapani, the Lord of Secret, whose role is to disclose the tantras to human
beings.
Subsequent Tantric Origins
In the Tibetan view, the primordial, dharmakaya buddha exists beyond time
and space, and can give forth teachings at any time. While the teachings
contained in the early, Hinayana canons represent one occasion on which
the dharma was transmitted to the human world from the primeval state, it
is by no means the only one. In the Mahayana, as noted, the second and
third turnings of the wheel of dharma also constitute fresh promulgations.
Beyond this, the individual Mahayana sutras are often equally presented as
unprecedented expressions of the Buddha’s teaching. The Vajrayana, in
particular, has from its inception been characterized by a more or less
continuous stream of revelations, seen most vividly in the Terma tradition.
From the Tibetan viewpoint, this is to be explained by the intense practice
orientation of the tantric vehicle. Vajrayana practitioners who spend a great
deal of time in meditation will, by virtue of their practice, draw near to the
primal, sacred sources of the dharma. They will be able to receive fresh
teachings in a way that others, more preoccupied with books and past
tradition, will not.
Thus it is that throughout the history of Tantric Buddhism in both India
and Tibet, one observes the continual appearance of new revelations,
understood as originating from the Buddha himself in his ultimate,
dharmakaya aspect. Sometimes these teachings are mediated by a
sambhogakaya buddha to the nirmanakaya. At other times, a realized
human being, understood as a nirmanakaya, can journey in his or her subtle
body to receive teachings directly from the dharmakaya.
We may see an example of this latter approach in the life of Tilopa, the
guru of Naropa, mentioned in chapter 1. Tilopa had pursued a long journey
that included renouncing the world, spending some time as a monk, and
then entering the Vajrayana. At this point, after studying with many tantric
masters, Tilopa felt that he still remained within the realm of the
conditioned, that he had not yet broken through to the ultimate. He
therefore went to Bengal and took up residence in a cremation ground.
There he planted himself in a tiny grass hut, barely big enough for his body
upright in meditation, and remained there. To ordinary people, Tilopa
appeared to be sitting immobile in his little shelter, in a state of samadhi.
However, at this very same time, he was traveling to a celestial realm in his
ethereal body and was receiving transmissions directly from the
dharmakaya buddha Vajradhara. In this instance, it was Tilopa himself who
made the link with the dharmakaya through his own subtle body and
brought these teachings back to the world, where he, himself understood as
a nirmanakaya, transmitted what he had received to his human disciples. It
was Tilopa’s extraordinary ability to find his way to this ultimate, original
dharmakaya source that enabled him to become the human progenitor of the
Kagyü lineage. (For a summary of Tilopa’s hagiography, see Indestructible
Truth.)
Tulku Thondup articulates the Nyingma explanation of the process of the
Three Lineages, by which new revelations originate from the dharmakaya
buddha and are mediated by the sambhogakaya buddha to the nirmanakaya
beings of the human realm. Thus, the dharmakaya Buddha—
Samantabhadra in the Ancient School—is the original source for the
Vajrayana.8 He transmits these teachings to his disciples, the sambhogakaya
buddhas, through direct mind transmission, known as the Thought Lineage
of the Victorious Ones, without the use of signs or words. The
sambhogakaya divinities then transmit them to the nirmanakaya emanations
through the use of signs and symbols, termed the Sign Lineage of the
Vidyadharas. These nirmanakayas are the masters who stand at the origins
of the various tantras, such as Garab Dorje for atiyoga or dzokchen, and
King Ja for mahayoga and anuyoga teachings (see chapter 2).b The
nirmanakayas teach other human beings with words and concepts, called
the Hearing Lineage of the Individuals. These teachings came to
Padmasambhava, Yeshe Tsogyal, Vimalamitra, Vairochana, and others who
either propagated them in Tibet to be passed on from one generation to
another (the Nyingma Kama lineages) or hid them for later discovery (the
Terma lineages). (See chapter 2.) (For a discussion of the Three Lineages,
see Indestructible Truth.)
The informed reader may find the Tibetan Vajrayana approach to origins
—particularly the notion of the three kayas and of people other than the
Buddha engaging these levels of spiritual reality—to be far removed indeed
from the Buddhism of the early canons of the Eighteen Schools. However,
as the scholar Edward Conze noted a half century ago, the notion of the
three kayas is quite present in early tradition, if under different names.9
For
example, in the early texts, the Buddha is quoted as observing that the realm
of dharma exists beyond time, whether or not there is an awakened person
to proclaim it. In other words, the “realm” of reality—structurally
equivalent to the dharmakaya—abides eternally, there needing only
someone to give it expression. If the prototype of the dharmakaya is in preMahayana tradition, so is the sambhogakaya, for Buddha Shakyamuni is
depicted one rainy season as journeying in his subtle body to the Tushita
heaven (the god realm where a buddha-to-be awaits his final birth and
blessed individuals may take rebirth), when he gives teachings to his
deceased mother.
10
It is also interesting that in pre-Mahayana tradition it is
not only the Buddha who can speak “buddha word” (buddha-vachana), i.e.,
speak with the wisdom and authority of a buddha. In the Sarvastivada, a
member of the group of early Eighteen Schools and the one whose
traditions are most important to the Tibetans, the texts of the Abhidharma
Pitaka, understood as buddha word, are each attributed to human authors
who, by virtue of their realization, can speak the dharma in a pure form as
did Buddha Shakyamuni. All three kayas, then, are prefigured in early
Buddhism. This suggests that there is some truth to the Tibetan view that
the continually appearing revelations found in tantric tradition are simply
the intensification of a process that is present in all the schools of
Buddhism, going back to the earliest appearance of the dharma in our
world.
Secrets of the Vajra World Tantric Buddhism