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History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 8

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History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 8

8.1 The Sectarian Period of Buddhism.

Immediately after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa, his disciples engaged in extensive debates regarding his teachings, which eventually led to the formation of various Buddhist sects. Among the major early schools, one may single out the Sthaviravāda, Sarvāstivāda, Mahāsāṃghika, and Mahīśāsaka traditions. Even these broad currents contained internal sectarian subdivisions and doctrinal variations.

Within the Sthaviravāda current, the Vātsīputrīya school emerged, later dividing into several branches, the most prominent being the Sāṃmitīya. All branches of the Vātsīputrīyas were collectively known as the Pudgalavāda (from pudgala, “person”), as they taught that while no eternal ātman exists, there is nonetheless an ineffable “person” (pudgala) that is neither identical to nor entirely distinct from the five skandhas. This pudgala secures personal identity and continuity through the cycle of saṃsāra and ultimately attains nirvāṇa. Because this doctrine departed significantly from the classical anātman (no-self) teaching, the Vātsīputrīyas were frequently criticized as heretical by other schools.

The Mahīśāsakas developed a doctrine of a “root consciousness” (mūlavijñāna), which served as the underlying source of all empirical forms of consciousness. This concept was later adopted and refined by the Mahāyāna Yogācāra school into the ālayavijñāna (storehouse consciousness).

Another pivotal development was the Sarvāstivāda school (from sarva, “all,” and asti, “exists”), which produced the Vaibhāṣika philosophical tradition. They formulated the classical Abhidharma theory of dharmas, asserting that dharmas are real, discrete entities that constitute the ultimate ontological foundation of experience, existing in the past, present, and future.

Sharply distinct from the Sthaviravāda were the schools of the Mahāsāṃghikas (“the Great Community”). The most representative of these was the Lokottaravāda (from lokottara, “transcendent” or “supramundane”). They taught that while Siddhārtha Gautama appeared as a man, his true nature upon awakening was united with an eternal, supramundane principle. From their perspective, the Buddha’s physical body and his awakening were metaphysical realities transcending saṃsāra.

Over time, the immense diversity of these early sects coalesced into two dominant vehicles: Theravāda and Mahāyāna. Theravāda (“the Teaching of the Elders”) absorbed the doctrines of the ancient Sthaviravāda traditions, while Mahāyāna (“the Great Vehicle”) assimilated and expanded upon the innovations of the Mahāsāṃghikas.

8.2 Theravada and the Śrāvakayāna —the Buddhism of the Lesser Vehicle.

The term Hīnayāna (a pejorative Mahāyāna designation that broadly encompasses the Śrāvakayāna, or “Vehicle of Hearers,” and the Pratyekabuddhayāna, or “Vehicle of Solitary Realizers”) translates as “Lesser Vehicle.” Adherents of these traditions consider the term offensive; thus, modern scholarship prefers the specific historical designation Theravāda. The formation of Theravāda as a distinct, codified tradition can be reasonably dated to the 1st century BCE, when the Pāli Tipiṭaka was first committed to writing in Sri Lanka.

In the history of Buddhology, the view long prevailed that Theravāda was an earlier and therefore more authentic version of Buddhism, closer to the Buddha himself. As Ye. Torchinov writes, however, “this view began to be intensively reconsidered from the 1920s–1930s (not without the influence of the works of representatives of our St. Petersburg (Leningrad) school) and was definitively rejected by world scholarship in the 1950s. First, it became clear that between the Theravada, which took shape in the 1st century BC, and the teaching of the Buddha and the first Buddhists (5th–4th centuries BC), there lies a whole gulf. Second, the roots of Mahāyāna in the teachings of the Mahasanghikas were elucidated, and these appeared rather early, long before the formation of the Pali Tipitaka. And, finally, third, the dating of the early Mahāyāna texts demonstrated their chronological proximity to the time of Theravada’s formation” [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

In Theravāda, the highest spiritual goal is to become an arhat (“worthy one”). An arhat is a practitioner who has attained nirvāṇa through diligent practice of the Noble Eightfold Path, thereby eradicating all defilements and ending the cycle of rebirth. The path to arhatship progresses through four stages:

1. Sotāpanna (Stream-enterer): One who has irrevocably entered the path and will be reborn at most seven more times.

2. Sakadāgāmi (Once-returner): One who will return to the realm of desire (kāmadhātu) only once more.

3. Anāgāmi (Non-returner): One who will not return to the desire realm but will be reborn in the Pure Abodes (Śuddhāvāsa) of the form realm (rūpadhātu) and attain nirvāṇa there.

4. Arhat: The final stage of liberation.

Accordingly, Theravāda is predominantly a monastic movement. Laypeople too may profess it; however, from the lay state, according to the Lesser Vehicle, it is impossible to attain nirvana—one can only partially correct and improve one’s karma. For this reason Theravāda has spread little and is rarely encountered beyond the borders of the countries where it has traditionally been present. After Buddhism died out in India in the 13th century, Theravāda survived only in the territories of such South and Southeast Asian countries as Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, from which it received the name “Southern Buddhism.” The monastic orientation of the Lesser Vehicle entails the phenomenon of temporary monasticism. In Thailand, for instance, the practice is well established whereby young men retire to a monastery for a period in order to determine whether they will follow the path of the Buddha or return to lay life. Monasticism here is understood not mystically but functionally; a monk is one who takes the vows (the Vinaya), and so it is not considered shameful to set aside the monastic vows should one choose to return to ordinary life.

Another important distinctive feature of Theravāda is its conception of the Buddha himself. According to Hinayana teaching, the Buddha before his awakening was an ordinary man, endowed only with great virtues and holiness acquired through self-perfection over many hundreds of lives.

After his awakening (bodhi), which from the Hinayana perspective consisted in the attainment of the fruit of arhatship, Siddhārtha Gautama ceased to be a man in the proper sense of the word and became a Buddha—that is, an enlightened “being” liberated from samsara.

If a person follows the Buddha’s example and his teaching, then he attains what the Buddha attained. More importantly, however, the Siddhārtha Gautama himself has entered parinirvāṇa; he is no longer in the world, and for him there is no world; therefore to pray to him or to ask him for help is meaningless. Upon his parinirvāṇa, he passed beyond the world. Consequently, Buddha statues are not worshipped as idols containing his literal presence. The Buddha is not present in them. They are merely a landmark, a reminder to the living of the ideal path that must be traversed; they are an aid for concentration, not an object of worship. All veneration of the Buddha and the offering of gifts to his images are needed not by the Buddha but by people, who in this way pay the debt of remembrance and cultivate the virtue of giving (dāna), and accumulate merits (puṇya).

8.3 Mahāyāna.

Mahāyāna — the Great Vehicle, as noted above, arose as the heir of the Mahāsāṃghika and the ideological opponent of Śrāvakayāna; its approach to the doctrinal questions described above was wholly different.

First, the ideal figure for the followers of the Great Vehicle was not the arhat striving for nirvāṇa but the bodhisattva striving to attain the state of Buddhahood for the benefit of all living beings. Further, for the Great Vehicle the Buddha is not simply a person. The Buddha is a metaphysical reality, the true nature of all dharmas, only manifested to human beings in the form of a man — the Buddha Shakyamuni. It was likewise manifested earlier in the figures of other Buddhas, and it will also be manifested again in the Buddhas of the future.

Already the earliest Mahāyāna texts (the sutras of Transcendent Wisdom — Prajñāpāramitā) state that the nirvana for which the Theravadins strive is not the true and highest nirvana. The Great Vehicle acknowledges in the Lesser the genuine exit from saṃsāra, the liberation from the tormenting round of births and deaths, but the highest truth remains inaccessible to its adherents, since, having been liberated from the afflictive obstacles (kleśāvaraṇa), they still remain in the grip of the obstacles connected with incorrect knowledge. The latter can be removed only on the path of Mahāyāna, on which a different state of Buddhahood may be attained—not merely that of the simple arhat, but of the great, finally and wholly awakened being. This state of awakening, from the Mahāyāna perspective, is higher than the nirvana of the Theravadin arhats. The adherents of the Lesser Vehicle were called in Mahāyāna simply śrāvakas (hearers) — that is, disciples who have not understood the Buddha’s teaching to the end, who have become attached to the idea of nirvana as individual liberation. They were also called pratyekabuddhas—“solitary” Buddhas, “Buddhas for themselves.” It was supposed that pratyekabuddhas attain nirvāṇa on their own, by their own efforts, apart from the community and without relying on the teaching. Having attained the goal, they do not preach, but remain in solitude and detachment from the world.

If one approaches the polemic between the Greater and Lesser Vehicles from an ethical standpoint, the ideal of arhatship and personal nirvana is perceived in Mahāyāna as a refined form of egoism. The point is that Buddhist ethics had from early times proclaimed several ethical principles leading to liberation, foremost among them love (metta) and compassion (karuṇā) toward all living beings. But one who loves and has compassion on living beings only up to the moment of his own nirvana, and then, upon entering nirvana, simply forgets about the remaining beings, is presumably moved by an egoistic motive of personal salvation and has no thought for others. Just so do the arhats appear in the eyes of the representatives of the Great Vehicle. In their view, a person of true striving and compassion cannot abandon all others in samsara without any help. Hence arises the ideal of the bodhisattva (the “awakening being”), the ascetic of Mahāyāna, who vows not to strive for or enter nirvana so long as even one suffering being remains. In this perspective the goal becomes not nirvana but awakening itself — bodhi.

In Mahāyāna, a bodhisattva is any person, monk or layperson, endowed with bodhichitta, the intention to attain awakening, to become a Buddha. Thus, in early Mahāyāna, by comparison with Hinayana, the goal of Buddhist practice changes.

“In the texts devoted to the bodhisattva ideal, a new note begins to sound ever more loudly, gradually becoming the principal and most important one. This is the new motif of striving for awakening, usually formulated thus: ‘May I become a Buddha for the benefit of all living beings.’ This phrase is now regarded as the standard formula expressing the essence of bodhichitta—the aspiration to attain the state of Buddhahood. Bodhichitta is the capacity to see all living beings as one’s ‘mothers’ (for if we have all been in the round of saṃsāra from beginningless time, then we have already been with all beings in all possible relationships, including the fact that each of them has already been in the role of our mother). And since a good son or daughter cannot look on indifferently as their mother is tormented in samsara, and cannot strive for nirvāṇa while leaving her to suffer in the round of cyclical existence, their sacred duty is to renounce their own salvation until they have managed to save her. It is precisely so that bodhichitta is described in the writings of classical, or mature, Mahāyāna, and in the sermons of its contemporary representatives,” writes Ye. Torchinov [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

The two wings of the bodhisattva path are wisdom (prajñā) and compassion (karuṇā). The texts state that one cannot become a Buddha without possessing these two qualities in perfection, and compassion is understood in a practical aspect—as a set of skillful means (upāya) by which the compassionate bodhisattva acquires the ability to help living beings free themselves from the bonds of samsara. As a bird cannot fly with only one wing, the texts say, so the state of Buddhahood cannot be attained by wisdom alone or by skillful means alone: wisdom without means is passive, means without wisdom are blind.

In Tantric Buddhism these two ethical aspects of practice receive a symbolic depiction: wisdom comes to be depicted in the form of a female deity, skillful means or compassion in the form of a male; their union is the highest joining, leading to awakening and the attainment of Buddhahood.

The bodhisattva ideal compelled the philosophers of Mahāyāna to seek some ontological grounds for the being of these enigmatic figures, for the original alternative was binary: samsara or nirvana. The bodhisattva, however, is a being on the boundary; having attained awakening, the bodhisattva belongs neither to saṃsāra nor to nirvāṇa. There must therefore be a certain third mode of being that would account for the existence of bodhisattvas. Thus there took shape in Mahāyāna the doctrine of the Three Bodies of the Buddha (Trikāya), of which we shall speak in the next lesson. Here we may confine ourselves to the chief observation: in Mahāyāna the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are objects of prayer and not merely ethical landmarks. Their statues and images are venerated. The cults of such great bodhisattvas as Avalokiteśvara (the symbol of the essence of great compassion), Mañjuśrī (the embodiment of transcendent wisdom), Tara (a being full of compassion, who vowed to become a Buddha in a female body to show that woman is in no way inferior to man), Samantabhadra, and Kṣitigarbha (in popular Buddhism a tradition is widespread that he vowed to fill all the hells with his body so that no one else could be placed there) became the central cults of the Great Vehicle. These bodhisattvas are venerated as infinitely surpassing all the gods, and are not infrequently depicted juggling worlds.

The principal distinctive features of Mahāyāna can be summarized as follows:

Mahāyāna allows awakening not only for monks but also for laypeople.

Mahāyāna, renouncing nirvana as the goal, proclaims the bodhisattva ideal as the goal for the human being.

The Buddhas and bodhisattvas in Mahāyāna are objects of prayer and are venerated as truly active and as continuing to help living people after their death.

The doctrine of the Three Bodies of the Buddha, which accounts for the mode of existence of the bodhisattvas, is also a distinctive feature of Mahāyāna.

8.4 The Buddha and bodhi.

Before turning directly to the analysis of the doctrine of the Three Bodies of the Buddha in Mahāyāna, it is necessary to consider briefly the very concept of Buddhahood and how it relates to the concept of awakening, bodhi. What does the Buddha represent—the Buddha in general, and not only the historical Buddha Shakyamuni? On this question Mahāyāna follows the teaching of the Lokottaravādins-Mahasanghikas, its direct predecessors. The Buddha is a Buddha by virtue of being awakened, that is, by virtue of having attained bodhi. Consequently, the nature of the Buddha and the nature of bodhi coincide. To awaken is to attain Buddhahood. This Buddhahood, and hence bodhi, is described in Mahāyāna as a special, supernatural, “supramundane” nature, opposed to the nature of samsaric being. Our being is ignorant and blind and is like a dream, whereas bodhi is the true nature of reality, free from error. The word bodhi itself is usually translated either as “awakening” or as “enlightenment.” Both words capture this opposition well: one awakens from a dream; one is enlightened out of darkness (the darkness of ignorance and error). But this is only the first thesis.

The next thesis is the affirmation that the nature of the Buddha is the true nature of all phenomena, of all dharmas in the Abhidharmic sense of the word. That is, the world of samsara phenomenally proceeds from the Buddha. In Mahāyāna there developed a doctrine of Buddhahood as a reality endowed with the highest ontological status. The Buddha is the only thing that exists in the strict sense of the word “to exist.” Saṃsāric being is illusory; it is a product of avidyā, comparable to a dream, but at its foundation lies Buddhahood.

Formally, in the Great Vehicle there are many Buddhas. Besides Buddhas and bodhisattvas there are also yidams and dharmapalas, which represent Buddhist deities (mostly Tibetan), but are essentially various aspects and manifestations of Buddhahood. Buddhahood, then, is the one nature of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, yidams (meditational deities) and dharmapālas (protectors), are understood not as independent gods, but as diverse manifestations of this singular Buddhahood. In the world of saṃsāric phenomena they are perceived as distinct, but in the true nature of awakening they are one — Buddha.

Thus the Buddha, from the Mahāyāna perspective, is the only thing that is.

8.5 The Doctrine of the Three Bodies of the Buddha (Trikāya).

The Trikāya doctrine explains how the absolute, unconditioned Buddha interacts with the conditioned world:

1. Dharmakāya (Truth Body): The ultimate, unconditioned reality, synonymous with śūnyatā (emptiness) and bhūtatathatā (suchness). It is formless, omnipresent, and identical in all Buddhas.

2. Saṃbhogakāya (Enjoyment Body): A luminous, celestial form possessing the major and minor marks of a Buddha. It resides in pure lands (buddhakṣetras) and teaches the Mahāyāna Dharma to advanced bodhisattvas.

3. Nirmāṇakāya (Emanation Body): The physical, historical manifestation of a Buddha (such as Siddhārtha Gautama) that appears in the realm of desire (kāmadhātu) to teach ordinary beings.

The dharmakāya is the absolute ground; out of boundless compassion, it projects the saṃbhogakāya and nirmāṇakāya (collectively called the rūpakāya, or Form Bodies) to guide sentient beings. In East Asian iconography, the dharmakāya is often personified as the cosmic Buddha Vairocana.

The conception of the “three bodies” of the Buddha in Mahāyāna is found already in the earliest prajnaparamita sutras, for example in the Ashtasahasrika-prajnaparamita-sutra (1st–2nd centuries). All the early Mahāyāna conceptions of the “three bodies” shared the view that each Buddha possesses each of these bodies.

In Mahāyāna, the Dharma Body (dharmakāya) of the Buddhas is the reality endowed with the highest ontological status. The Dharma Body is one for all Buddhas; it is bhutatathata, true reality as such, and the nature of all dharmas. As water is one in all waves, so the dharmakāya is one in all Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Moreover, the dharmakāya is the true nature of all dharmas—that is, of all those “particles” of which reality is composed. Consequently, reality is not ontologically distinct from the Buddha, and bodhi is its true nature. At the same time, this is the highest mystery of avidya (ignorance): a person is born and dies again and again as a consequence of not knowing the true nature of the Buddha. In this sense, samsara is an error concerning being.

Out of his great compassion, the Buddha produces from his Dharma Body, as it were, two reflections: one in the world of forms and of formlessness, and the other in the world of desire. Both of these “bodies,” unlike the Dharma Body, possess a particular form, conditioned by the innumerable good qualities of the Buddhas. Therefore both of these “bodies” together are known as rupakaya, “the body of form.” To explain briefly: the world of desire (kamadhatu) is our world; the world of forms (rupadhatu) is the world of gods and higher beings; the formless world (arupadhatu) is the world of the immaterial—the sphere of beings who have no support in any material object and no support in a body; their states are self-sufficient. All three worlds belong to samsara and are subject to rebirth, with the sole difference that in the worlds of the gods the lifespans of beings are unimaginably great. But let us return to the two bodies.

The first of them is called saṃbhogakāya —“the body of bliss”; in it the Buddha (each Buddha has his own) enjoys awakening as positive bliss. Most importantly, it is precisely in this “body” that the Buddhas commune with higher persons (yogins, bodhisattvas), whose consciousness operates on the level of the worlds of form and the formless, and instruct them, appearing to them in visions. This is also the body of those who strive for and attain awakening, becoming bodhisattvas. In other words, this body explains the nature of the bodhisattva. In it the subject, the person, is preserved; one who attains the state of bodhisattva does not lose himself and continues to interact with the world, yet is not reborn and does not suffer.

The second of the two bodies present in the world, and the third in the list, is the nirmanakaya, “the manifested body,” or “the physical body.” In this body the Buddhas manifest themselves on the level of the world of desire and preach religion to people in the form of yogins, teachers, and monks. Such a Buddha in the “manifested body” was the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, after the attainment of bodhi by the person named Siddhartha Gautama.

“In Buddhist iconography the Dharma Body of the Buddha is usually not depicted at all, or is depicted in the form of a stupa (in the Far Eastern tradition its iconographic personification in the figure of the Buddha Vairochana—the Buddha of the Great Sun—is possible); the sambhogakaya as the ‘glorified Body’ is depicted in the form of a person in the yogic posture of contemplation, endowed with various sumptuous regal attributes—crowns, diadems, earrings, bracelets, and so on. Finally, in the nirmanakaya body the Buddha is depicted in simple monastic robes with a bowl for collecting alms (patra) in his hands,” notes Ye. Torchinov [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

The fully developed doctrine of the Three Bodies allows one to interpret the dharmakāya as the universal “first principle” and the existential Absolute; the saṃbhogakāya as the assembly of heavenly Buddhas endowed with the perfections of wisdom and compassion, the guardians of the Buddhist paradise (buddha-kshetra), who are nevertheless not able by their own efforts to grant liberation; and the nirmanakaya as the bodily limited and mortal earthly Buddhas, who appear temporarily in the world in order to preach the truth to gods and people.

8.6 The Concept of Emptiness and the Further Development of the Doctrine of

the Three Bodies.

Śūnyatā is the defining philosophical concept of Mahāyāna. It asserts that all dharmas lack svabhāva (intrinsic, independent existence). Emptiness is not nihilistic “nothingness”; rather, it is the very condition that allows for dependent origination and change. As Nāgārjuna famously argued, because things are empty of inherent existence, they can arise and cease. The dharmakāya itself is empty of any fixed, independent essence.

Emptiness— Śūnyatā, a term repeatedly encountered in various works of Buddhism (beginning with the texts of the Tipitaka) to denote the absence of a permanent “I” in the person and in phenomena. More broadly, however, it is the doctrine of the true nature of dharmas as lacking own-being, as essenceless, empty. Śūnya is the mark of all dharmas. “All phenomena are empty, have no independent self-being,” it is said in the sutras of the Prajñāpāramitā. Accordingly, the dharmakāya is empty in its nature. One should not, however, understand this term as “nothing.” In the poetic works of the famous Mahāyāna philosopher Nāgārjuna a more positive designation of emptiness is used: “Now like pure space, now beyond words and knowledge… that precisely is emptiness.” “Beyond words and knowledge,” as a characterization of emptiness, points to the apophatic and epistemological character of the term Śūnyatā.

The doctrine of the Three Bodies was gradually enriched in the philosophy of Mahāyāna. The Madhyamaka and the Yogachara are two philosophical schools that made an enormous contribution to the development of the conception of the Three Bodies. The dharmakāya as the true nature of the Buddhas is at the same time understood as the true nature of dharmas as such, and consequently the dharmakāya becomes the basis of reality as such, and everything is understood as Buddha—a point made regularly in late Mahāyāna. The person striving for awakening and the person attaining it are one and the same person—that is, the bodhisattva and the Buddha are ontologically identical. Siddhartha in his hundreds of births was the most diverse of beings, and at the same time he is the Buddha in all three bodies. Thus Buddhahood is the nature of all things, of all beings, of all phenomena.

8.7 Madhyamaka.

Founded by the philosopher Nāgārjuna (c. 2nd century CE), the Madhyamaka (“Middle Way”) school radicalized the concept of emptiness. Nāgārjuna argued that not only are all phenomena empty, but nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are also empty. In his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, he makes the astonishing claim:

“There is no difference at all between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra. / There is no difference at all between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa.”

One may pose the question: what distinguished Siddhartha Gautama from the Buddha? The answer seems obvious: the attainment of bodhi. In the philosophy of Mahāyāna, however, particularly in the Madhyamaka of Nāgārjuna, it is repeatedly stated that the attainment of bodhi is not the acquisition of something previously absent but only the correct realization of reality. For the most important thesis of Buddhism is the affirmation of the identity of being and thinking. There is no being distinct from thinking, and no thinking distinct and separate from being. The world is precisely thinking; it is represented in thinking, and is in many ways a derivative of the mind. Such is the view of Mahāyāna. Accordingly, the liberated Buddha and Prince Siddhartha (before awakening) differed from one another by the disposition of consciousness. Hence, in essence, nirvana is identical with samsara.

The founder of Madhyamaka is the philosopher Nāgārjuna, who lived in the 1st–2nd centuries AD (the most likely date being the second half of the 2nd century). Nāgārjuna’s biography has come down to us in two versions: the Chinese, written by Kumarajiva (turn of the 4th–5th centuries), and the Tibetan.

Nāgārjuna’s main ideas have, in essence, already been discussed above: everything exists only insofar as it is causally conditioned, and there is nothing (no single dharma) that is not causally conditioned. This means that nothing (no single dharma) possesses own-being (svabhava)—that is, there is no essence that would be self-sufficient, that would exist of itself, by virtue of its own nature. Since this is so and everything is causally conditioned, there are no self-existent essences, for derivative being is not authentic. In essence this is an elaboration of the conception of emptiness and of dependent co-arising; but Nāgārjuna adds to this the thesis of the identity of samsara and nirvana:

“There is no difference at all between nirvana and samsara.

There is no difference at all between samsara and nirvana.

What is the limit of nirvana

Is also the limit of samsara.

Between these two we cannot find

Even the slightest shadow of a difference”

[Nāgārjuna. Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. XXV.19–20].

How is this assertion to be understood? The simplest way is through the category of a dream. Samsara is a dream; the Buddha is wakefulness (awakening). These two states are distinct, but their ontology is the same. Or, by another analogy: a person remains the same person whether awake or dreaming. Nirvana and samsara are in essence one, but differ in recognition and in lived experience. Nāgārjuna’s follower Chandrakirti, in stanza 6.194 of “The Buddhist Teaching on Emptiness,” states: “Since samsara has neither a first—a beginning—nor a last—an end—it is described as beginningless and endless. And since it is free from coming and going, it is like a dream.”

For further clarification, let us cite another quotation from the Tibetan lama Geshe Jampa Tinley: “Previously we thought that nirvana is simply a beautiful place. Now we understand that nirvana is a state of mind. In dirty water purity is originally present. The state of your mind at the present moment is polluted. It is darkened by anger, envy, arrogance, attachment… Nirvana is the pure state of mind. And what is samsara? It too is a state of mind, one that is under the control of ignorance and other polluting factors… When you think of samsara and nirvana as states of our mind, then you understand the situation correctly…” [Geshe Jampa Tinley. Mind and Emptiness. Moscow: Tsongkapa Publishing, 2002, p. 33].

Ye. Torchinov, summing up the chapter on Madhyamaka, writes: “Since nirvana is nirvana only relative to samsara, and samsara is such only relative to nirvana, then neither samsara nor even nirvana possesses own-being, and consequently they too are empty and essenceless, and their common tathata, their genuine nature, is shunyata, emptiness. The bodhisattva apprehends the emptiness of both samsara and nirvana, and thereby attains the state of Buddhahood” [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

8.8 The Formation of Vajrayāna.

In the mid-first millennium CE, a new esoteric movement emerged within Mahāyāna: Vajrayāna (the Diamond Vehicle), also known as Tantric Buddhism. The vajra (diamond/thunderbolt) symbolizes the indestructible, luminous nature of the mind.

At the beginning of the second half of the 1st millennium, a new current gradually arose and took shape within Mahāyāna Buddhism, receiving the name Vajrayāna, or Tantric Buddhism; this current may be considered the final stage in the development of Buddhism in India. In its incipient form, the emergence of Vajrayāna may be dated approximately to 300 AD, but the form in which we know it Tantrism acquired from the 600s. It developed mainly in Tibet, and from there spread into Buryatia, Mongolia, and elsewhere.

The vajra (Tibetan dorje, literally “diamond”) is the throwing weapon of the Indian god Indra, resembling a six-edged mace or a two-headed club. One of the meanings of the word vajra is “diamond”; hence the name of this current—the Diamond Vehicle. This form of Buddhism is also called Tantric Buddhism, magical Buddhism, or the Vehicle of Mantras.

Buddhism was in many respects formed as a movement of protest, in opposition to traditional Brahmanism and orthodox caste society. Gradually, however, this provocative spirit within Buddhism began to change. As Ye. Torchinov writes: “by the time of the appearance of the Diamond Vehicle, Buddhism itself, as a widespread and flourishing religion, had developed its own external piety, enamored of its own righteousness and the virtues acquired within the walls of the monasteries; a monastic elite had arisen which had replaced the spirit of the Awakened One’s teaching with scrupulous adherence to the letter of monastic statutes and formal prescriptions. This gradual extinction of the living religious impulse moved a number of Buddhist followers to challenge the traditional monastic way of life in the name of reviving the spirit of the Buddha’s teaching, in opposition to all formalism and dogmatic deadness and based on direct psychotechnical experience. This tendency found its highest expression in the figures of the mahasiddhas (‘great perfected ones’), people who preferred the experience of solitary hermitage and yogic self-perfection to monastic enclosure.”

Mahasiddhas is the traditional name in Hinduism and Buddhism for people who have attained, through the practice of yoga, special abilities—siddhis (powers acquired in yoga). The mahasiddhas are in many ways representatives of religious eclecticism and of a “holy-fool” type. They combined sectarian Tantric yogic practices from Hinduism with Buddhist practice. Figures like Tilopa, Nāropa, and Virūpa engaged in antinomian behavior to prove that for a fully realized being, concepts of “pure” and “impure” are obsolete. A treatise containing their biographies has likewise been preserved: “The Lives of the Eighty-Four Mahasiddhas” (composed around the 11th–12th centuries).

Ye. Torchinov in his work cites a fragment about the former monk Virupa; let us quote a portion: “Once in Kanasati, Virupa bought wine at an eating-house. The serving-maid brought him wine and rice cakes, which he greatly enjoyed. He feasted for two whole days, and the sun did not move from its place. Then the king of those parts, perplexed by this circumstance, demanded to know who had performed this miracle. The goddess of the sun appeared to the king in a dream and said: ‘A wandering yogin has left me in pledge to the serving-maid of the eating-house.’ Some time later, when the king and his retinue paid for the wine Virupa had drunk—his debt by then having reached fabulous sums—he disappeared” [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

This is a characteristic example from the lives of the mahasiddhas. In the eyes of traditional Buddhists such behavior appeared unacceptable; for his antics Virupa had by then already been expelled from the monastery. But the authors of the text are not in the least embarrassed by these circumstances; on the contrary, all this is presented as the result of Virupa’s true knowledge and awakening, which raised him not only above ordinary monks but above all beings in general, including the gods (in the next fragment Shiva himself bows down to him). The point of this passage may be understood as follows: Virupa has already attained awakening; he is therefore a living Buddha, and for him there exist no rules or laws of the samsaric illusory world of ignorance.

He is above the world; he is the Buddha; he has attained bodhi, and therefore what for ordinary beings is impure and shameful is permitted to him, because he is not attached to it and transcends impurity. This is a typical line of reasoning for Tantric sects, which were inclined to teach about special, marginal methods of attaining awakening, forbidden to ordinary people but permitted to chosen Tantrikas. To put it quite simply: what orthodox Buddhist and Indian society considers a sin is used in Tantrism (above all in the “left-hand” path) as a special practice of the chosen.

8.9 Distinctive Features of Vajrayāna.

Philosophically, Vajrayāna rests on the same Madhyamaka and Yogācāra foundations as classical Mahāyāna. Its distinctiveness lies in its methods. Vajrayāna claims to offer a “short path,” enabling a practitioner to attain Buddhahood in a single lifetime.

With regard to theoretical philosophy, Vajrayāna introduces practically nothing new in comparison with classical Mahāyāna. The distinctive features of Vajrayāna lie in its methods, although the goal of applying these methods remains the same—the attainment of the state of Buddhahood for the benefit of all living beings. Vajrayāna asserts that it is possible to attain Buddhahood within a single lifetime—that is, that it is a short path. Consequently, an adherent of the Tantric path can more quickly fulfill the bodhisattva vow and become a Buddha for the deliverance of all living beings from suffering.

Like a short road in the mountains, which is the most dangerous precisely because it goes straight ahead, so the path of Vajrayāna is considered the most dangerous. The slightest error on this path leads a person to madness and to rebirth in a special “Vajra hell.” The guarantee of success on this path is adherence to the bodhisattva ideal and the striving to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of others—selflessness and altruism. If, however, someone follows this path for the sake of his own success, in pursuit of magical powers and might, he is doomed to a more terrible fate than one who follows no path at all, or even than any ordinary sinner.

The second precondition for the Tantric path is the obligatory presence of a teacher—again by analogy with mountain roads, on which one cannot do without a guide. Accordingly, the beginning of practice in the Vajrayāna system presupposed receiving special initiations and corresponding oral instructions and explanations from a teacher. All the more so since Tantric texts were considered secret. Without receiving initiation, it is impossible to set out upon spiritual practice. Initiation in this Buddhist system plays the same important role that it had in the mystery cults of ancient Greece and Rome.

In the tantras the instructions are placed in the mouth of the Buddha himself. The texts are divided into four classes:

1. Kriyā Tantras (Action): Emphasis on external rituals and purity.

2. Caryā Tantras (Performance): Balance of external ritual and internal meditation.

3. Yoga Tantras: Emphasis on internal meditative union.

4. Anuttarayoga Tantras (Highest Yoga): Focus on the subtle body, channels, and the transformation of primal energies.

Each class of tantra has its own corresponding methods: in the kriya tantras these are external forms of practice and various rituals; in the charya tantras elements of contemplative practice appear; in the yoga tantras the latter predominates; and the anuttara yoga tantras are devoted exclusively to deep work with psycho-emotional states. The principal methods of the first three classes of tantras can be reduced to the performance of special ritual liturgies of complex symbolic significance, as well as to the practice of mantras, the technique of visualizing bodhisattvas, yidams, and dharmapalas, and the contemplation of Maṇḍalas. The anuttara yoga tantras have a number of specific features. In fact, what is usually associated with Tantrism refers precisely to the last category, the tantras of the highest yoga.

8.10 The Basic Practices of Vajrayāna.

Vajrayāna employs specialized psychophysical techniques:

Mantra Recitation: The use of sacred syllables (e.g., Oṃ svabhāva-śuddhāḥ sarva-dharmāḥ svabhāva-śuddho ‘haṃ) to structure consciousness and align the practitioner’s speech with the Buddha’s speech.

Maṇḍala Visualization: Constructing and merging with complex geometric representations of the awakened universe.

Deity Yoga: The practitioner dissolves their ordinary self-image and arises as a yidam (meditational deity), recognizing that the deity’s enlightened qualities are already present within their own Buddha-nature.

The practice of pronouncing mantras is well known also to classical Mahāyāna. Indeed, it is well known in classical Hinduism. A mantra is a verbal formula: “Om! Svabhava shuddha, sarva dharma svabhava shuddha. Hum!” (“Om! Own-being is pure; the own-being of all dharmas is pure. Hum!”). Or “Buddham sharanam gacchami” (“I go to the Buddha for refuge”). These, however, are classical Buddhist mantras, not specifically Tantric ones.

Ye. Torchinov writes about the veneration of mantras: “The sound combinations forming these mantras—such as hum, ah, hri, e-ma-ho, and the like—have no lexical meaning. They are calculated for the direct effect of their sound, of the very sound vibrations and modulations of the voice in their pronunciation, upon the consciousness and psychophysical state of the yogin who repeats them. The pronunciation of mantras also involves contemplative concentration and an understanding of the inner (esoteric) meaning of the mantra and its effect. Often the written texts of mantras may also be contemplated (sometimes visualized on particular parts of the body), with a definite color, size, thickness, and other parameters of the contemplated letters being specified” [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

In the 1st chapter of the Mahavairochana Sutra the power of mantras is explained as follows: “Thanks to the original vow of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, a miraculous power is present in the mantra, so that by means of its pronunciation one can acquire boundless merits. The success of our designs, realized by means of mantras, proceeds from their being consecrated by the Buddha, who has infused into them a profound and incomprehensible power.”

E. Conze, summarizing four aspects of the recitation of mantras described in the Mahavairochana Sutra, writes: “a) the practitioner recites the mantra, contemplating in his own heart the form of its letters—this is called ‘heart enlightenment’; b) the practitioner clearly distinguishes the sound of the individual letters and c) clearly understands the meaning of the phrases; and, finally, d) the ‘practice of breathing,’ in which the practitioner regulates his breathing, striving to contemplate the mutual interpenetration of the believer and the Buddha. Then follow the second and third operations—recitation accompanied by the offering to the deity of flowers, incense, and so on. And, finally, the fourth operation—recitation of realization, when, thanks to the power of the mantras, the practitioner attains ‘success’ (siddhi)” [Conze, E. Buddhism: Its Essence and Development. St. Petersburg, 2003, p. 244].

The practice of recitation is built on the idea that sound, being a wave, is ontologically not distinct from the rest of being and is therefore able to exert a structuring influence upon it. This may be compared to the modulation of a wave. If consciousness is a wave with various amplitudes, then a mantra is superimposed upon consciousness as a modulation upon a wave, and thereby structures thinking. The idea is that by means of external properties the character and content of consciousness may be changed. That is, a whole series of thoughts, desires, and attachments simply does not arise. Such is the methodology of the Buddhism of the Diamond Path.

This concerns not only consciousness but being as a whole. In Tibetan medicine, for example, mantras are imposed that structure the functioning of one or another organ.

The next practice is the visualization of Maṇḍalas. A Maṇḍala (literally “circle”) is a complex image or figure expressing the other, awakened reality. Maṇḍalas correspond to Buddhas, yidams, and bodhisattvas. At a certain stage in the visualization of a Maṇḍala, cases are described in which the adept meets the master of the Maṇḍala, but the goal is neither meeting nor dialogue, but rather the joining of one’s own consciousness with the consciousness of this or that Buddha or yidam.

“The yogin visualizes the Maṇḍala, building, as it were, an inner Maṇḍala in his consciousness, which is then by an act of projection joined to the outer Maṇḍala, transubstantiating the world surrounding the yogin into a divine world—or, more precisely, changing the consciousness of the yogin in such a way that it begins to operate on a different level, corresponding to the level on which the consciousness of the deity of the Maṇḍala operates,” writes Ye. Torchinov [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

The third group of practices widely represented in Tantrism comprises practices of identification with deities and visualization of them. Tantra has developed a system of meditation upon deities, which E. Conze summarizes as follows:

“First of all one must realize emptiness and immerse one’s own individuality in it.

Then the practitioner must repeat and visualize the seed syllables (bija).

Third, the practitioner forms a conception of the external appearance of the deity, as is manifested in statues, images, and so on.

Fourth, through identification he himself becomes this deity” [Conze, E. Buddhism: Its Essence and Development. New York, 1975, p. 246].

The Tantric gods and deities are the yidams and dharmapalas, who represent streams in the Dharma Body of the Buddha and qualities of the awakened mind. On the visualization of the yidam the practitioner concentrates his attention during meditation. The yidam is, as it were, an ideal form with which the meditator identifies himself, discovering his own nature as Buddha. The yidams have various forms—the bodhisattvas embodying compassion, Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri; the teachers Padmasaṃbhava and the Karmapa; the wrathful forms of the defenders of the Buddhist teaching (such as Hayagrīva, Vajrakīlaya, Vajrapāṇi, Hevajra, Mahākāla, or Palden Lhamo). Their representations, replete with symbolism, are contemplated in meditation.

8.11 The Practices of the Highest Yoga.

The anuttara yoga tantras (the tantras of the highest yoga) employ all the methods and techniques described above, but their content is significantly altered. In addition, the tantras of this class have a number of specific features of their own—for example, in the Guhyasamāja Tantra, Hevajra Tantra, Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa Tantra, Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, Kālacakra Tantra, and others. In the highest yoga, practice is often built upon extravagant and intense states of consciousness.

In various schools of Buddhist yoga, for example, the so-called bardo—the intermediate state between death and a new birth—is practiced. The yogin attains a special state of consciousness in which the sensation of the body disappears and consciousness can move freely, experiencing various visions. At the same time the person feels that he is connected to his body by a thread. “What is the purpose of entering the intermediate state?” asks Ye. Torchinov, and answers: “In Tantric Buddhism there is the conception that every deceased person at a certain moment experiences awakening and contemplates the boundless clear light of the empty Dharma Body, identical with his own original nature. The fixing of this experience (which, as the tradition affirms, almost no one succeeds in doing) means the attainment of Buddhahood and the exit from samsara. Therefore the yogin strives, while still living, to enter the intermediate state while in a state of samadhi, and in it to attempt to attain awakening” [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

Also of interest is dream yoga, with its technique of “lucidity in dreams,” which gradually develops into the ability to practice yoga in a dream and gives an apprehension of the illusoriness of all phenomena.

Tibetan Buddhism produced many extreme practices and unusual schools. Arising out of Vajrayāna, they gradually acquired independence, while preserving the Tantric multi-layered character of practice and its esoteric quality. Another radical practice is gCod (Chöd), founded by the Tibetan yoginī Machig Labdrön.

This practice is usually carried out in solitary places, such as caves and mountain peaks, and especially in cemeteries and cremation grounds, most often at night. Sitting in the darkness, the yogin plays the kangling, a special flute made from the thighbone of a deceased person, and summons the spirits of the three worlds, offering his own body as an offering to the demons. The ritual rosaries are cut from the brow bones of deceased ascetics. The central place in the practice of Chöd is occupied by a female deity, the dakini Vajrayoginī, who is the object of visualization during meditation. In essence, Chöd uses fear as a powerful emotion exerting an influence upon consciousness.

Characterizing the method of Vajrayāna, Ye. Torchinov very aptly notes that it works “with the dark depths of the subconscious, that ‘stagnant pool’ in which ‘devils breed,’ using its mad surrealistic images and archetypes for the swift uprooting of the very roots of the afflictions: passions, inclinations (sometimes pathological), and attachments—everything that the practitioner may not even consciously recognize, yet that bombards his consciousness ‘from within.’”

Finally, in left-hand Vajrayāna Tantra sexual practices are present, though extremely rarely. They are forbidden to monks, since abstinence and celibacy are among the obligatory vows; nevertheless they have been and are encountered among “free yogins.” On the whole Vajrayāna insists on a symbolic interpretation of sexual imagery and forbids its enactment in actual practice; nevertheless, quite physical sexual rituals practiced in Tibet are also known.

Adherents of the Diamond Vehicle correlated the sexual imagery of the subconscious with the basic positions of the Mahāyāna doctrine. Vajrayāna regarded bliss as the most important attribute of the Buddha-nature and proclaimed the thesis of the identity of emptiness and bliss. In some tantras the concept of the Body of Great Bliss (mahasukhakaya) is introduced, which is regarded as the single essence of all three Bodies of the Buddha. Finally, there is the conception of the identity of method and wisdom (prajnaparamita), whose unity leads to awakening. Iconographically this was sometimes depicted as the union of the one and the other in the figures of visualized deities. For most adherents of Vajrayāna, as noted above, these remain symbols, but a small part of the “left-hand” school nevertheless practices the corresponding rituals.

“It is now altogether clear that in the early period of the development of Vajrayāna, yogins who had not taken monastic vows really did practice sexual rituals, which presupposed, as a necessary condition of their effectiveness, the self-identification of the partners with deities. Sometimes a sexual ritual formed part of a Tantric initiation (as in the case of the esoteric four highest initiations into the practice of the Kalachakra Tantra). Moreover, it was asserted that some forms of Tantric yoga, especially in the final stage of practice, necessarily required actual union with a partner (karmamudrā), and not its meditative reenactment in the mind,” Torchinov concludes [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

8.12 Tibetan Buddhism.

The term “Lamaism,” coined by 19th-century European scholars to emphasize the central role of the spiritual teacher (lama), is outdated and inaccurate. The correct designation is Tibetan Buddhism. The beginnings of the spread of Buddhism in Tibet are shrouded in myth, but in any case the Tibetans’ acquaintance with the Indian teaching began no earlier than the 7th century. Buddhism (Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna), upon entering Tibet, was blended with the local shamanic Bon tradition, and as a result the number of deities and the variety of psycho-practices increased.

The word “Lamaism” is used in a broad sense to mean Tibetan Buddhism as a whole, and in a narrow sense to denote the transmission of the Buddhist teaching, and of spiritual and secular power, within the framework of the tradition of the “rebirths” (tulkus) of prominent Buddhist figures. In its development this idea led to the unification of spiritual and secular power in the institution of the Dalai Lamas. According to this idea, the highest lamas acquire divine status by virtue of being regarded as incarnations (in their successive rebirths) of one or another of the highly venerated Buddhas, bodhisattvas, or famous figures of Buddhism. This became the doctrinal basis for the legitimation and sacralization of the highest Tibetan clergy, from the Dalai Lama to the abbots of monasteries.

Lamaism is distinguished by a distinctive cosmology. Alongside Buddhas and bodhisattvas, various deities and spirits are highly venerated, among whom a not insignificant place is occupied by the protector-dokshits, depicted in iconography in the form of dreadful monsters with furious faces, bared fangs, and other visible attributes of wrath. The world of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, which had already become “densely populated” in Mahāyāna, continued to grow and to be ordered in Lamaism. The hierarchy of all the divine persons is complex and intricate. At its head are certain Buddhas and bodhisattvas, among whom the first place is occupied not by the Buddha Shakyamuni, nor by the mystical figure of the personified primordial substance Adi-Buddha (the Original Buddha), but by one of the five Dhyani-Buddhas brought forth by Adi- Buddha—Amitabha. Amitabha is regarded as the lord of the Western paradise and as a kind of creator-patron of the present period in the existence of the Universe. Also highly venerated by the Lamaists is the “emanation” of the Buddha Amitabha—the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. In ethics and practice, Lamaism in many respects repeats Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna.

8.13 The Genesis of Chan Buddhism.

The word chan, an abbreviation of channa (Japanese zen), is the Chinese equivalent of the Sanskrit word dhyana, which means “contemplation,” “meditation.” The formation of Chan Buddhism began at the start of the 5th century, when the translation of the Lankavatara Sutra into Chinese was undertaken. To approximately 520 belongs the appearance of the legendary preacher of chan and the first Zen patriarch, Bodhidharma. He was preceded by preachers of “sudden awakening”—Kumarajiva, Seng Zhao, and Dao Sheng (many regard the latter as “the true founder of chan”).

According to tradition, however, the chan school was founded by the Buddha Shakyamuni himself, who transmitted this tradition to his disciple Mahakashyapa. It is described as follows: once the Buddha held up a flower before his disciples and smiled (the “Flower Sermon” of the Buddha). No one but Mahākāśyapa understood the meaning of this. Mahakashyapa in response likewise held up a flower and smiled. At that very moment he experienced awakening. Thus the state of awakening was transmitted to him by the Buddha directly, without instruction in oral or written form. Thus, according to chan, began the tradition of direct (“from heart to heart”) transmission of bodhi from teacher to disciple.

Mahākāśyapa is the first hidden patriarch of the Zen school, and the circumstances of the transmission of the teaching to him reflect the principal difference between the chan teaching and classical Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna. The teaching is transmitted directly and unexpectedly; awakening itself is paradoxical and sudden. The case of Mahākāśyapa is a striking illustration. The Buddha says nothing but silently extends a flower. Kashyapa does the same and smiles in response. This bears little resemblance to instruction, and yet in this brief and sudden gesture the teaching was transmitted, and a separate branch of Buddhism arose.

It is worth briefly noting that Buddhism always traces the origin of all its branches back to the Buddha. It is held that the Buddha himself gave different teachings to different disciples in accordance with their personal characteristics, qualities, and capacities.

The chan legend further declares that the teaching was transmitted over the course of twenty-eight generations of teachers, among whom, according to tradition (of an entirely mythical character, of course), were such Buddhists as Ashvaghosha and Nāgārjuna. The twenty-eighth patriarch of the school of contemplation in India was the aforementioned Bodhidharma, an ascetic from southern India who traveled as a preacher to China (at the beginning of the 6th century) and became the first overt patriarch of the new Buddhism.

8.14 Bodhidharma and His Followers.

Bodhidharma is famous for his nine years of “wall-gazing” meditation at the Shaolin Temple and his uncompromising emphasis on direct realization over textual study. He transmitted the Dharma to Huike, initiating a lineage that eventually split into Northern and Southern schools. The Southern school, championed by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, became dominant, emphasizing “sudden awakening” and giving rise to the classical Chan houses (such as Linji and Caodong).

“A teaching not dependent on dogmas,

Not standing in need of words and letters,

Directed straight into the human soul,

Contemplating its true nature,

And [leading to] the attainment of the state of Buddhahood.”

These words characterizing Zen are ascribed to the legendary Bodhidharma (in the Chinese tradition, Putidamo, or simply Damo; in the Japanese, Daruma), although they were composed much later. The milestones of Bodhidharma’s life are briefly recounted by the well-known Buddhologist and specialist on chan Buddhism, Heinrich Dumoulin: “He was thought to be a descendant of South Indian brahmans, and some sources asserted that this patriarch was of royal lineage. He left his father’s house and, after a long and exhausting journey, came to southern China. During a meeting with the Emperor Wu-ti (502–550), founder of the Liang dynasty, he fearlessly pointed out to the monarch the futility of building Buddhist temples and reciting sutras. He then crossed the wide Yangtze River on a reed leaf, and for nine years, until his legs withered, he sat motionless before the wall of a monastery… There are extremely few reliable facts about the life of Bodhidharma. With certainty one can say that he really did exist and was a native of India. In southern China he did not stay long, and afterwards he set out for the north, where for more than forty years he preached his doctrine of enlightenment… Between 516 and 526 he appears at the temple Yong-ni-su, and then at the Shaolin-su monastery, where after nine years of silent sitting before a wall he transmits the dharma to his disciple Hui-ke. He died at a mature age (before 534). Dao-xuan ends the biography of the patriarch with the following words: ‘He made pilgrimages and preached. Where he died is unknown’” [Dumoulin, H. A Zen Buddhism: a history, New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan. 1988,, pp. 75–76].

Formally, Bodhidharma is named the successor of the 27 Indian patriarchs of Buddhism, becoming the first patriarch of chan. After Bodhidharma there were five more common patriarchs in China, and then the teaching split into the Northern and Southern schools. The latter subsequently developed and was transformed into five chan schools, of which only two survive today: Caodong and Linji.

The patriarchs after Bodhidharma were: Hui-ke, Sengcan, Daoxin, and Hongren. Hongren long hesitated in appointing a successor, which led to the aforementioned schism and the formation of the Northern and Southern schools under the patriarchs Shenxiu and Huineng. Huineng is the sixth patriarch and is in fact considered the second founder of Zen Buddhism.

8.15 The Principle of Inexpressibility.

The principal goal of Zen is the penetration into the true nature of the mind. Scholars of the teaching note that its essence is the “inexpressible,” which cannot be explained theoretically or studied as a sacred doctrine. The saying cited above begins with this assertion:

“A teaching not dependent on dogmas,

Not standing in need of words and letters,

Directed straight into the human soul.”

Of such sayings there is no shortage in chan Buddhism. By way of example, let us cite one of the legends about Bodhidharma:

“Nine years had passed, and he [Bodhidharma] wished to return to the West, to India. Having summoned his disciples, he said: ‘The time has come. Why does not each of you tell of his attainments?’

The disciple Dao-fu replied: ‘In my understanding, truth is inaccessible to words and letters, yet neither is it separable from them. It functions as the Way.’

The Teacher said: ‘Thou hast attained my skin.’

Then the nun Zong-ji spoke: ‘As far as I understand the truth, it is like the gracious gleam of the land of the Buddha Akshobhya; it can be seen but once, and not a second time.’

The Teacher said: ‘Thou hast attained my flesh.’

Dao-yu said: ‘The four great elements are originally empty; the five skandhas do not exist. According to my faith, the dharma is incomprehensible.’

And finally the turn came to Hui-ke. He bowed respectfully and did not utter a word.

The Teacher said: ‘Thou hast attained my essence’” [Dumoulin, H. A Zen Buddhism: a history, New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan. 1988, p. 80].

Another example:

“Just as hunger cannot be satisfied by talk about food, so words are unable to express the essence of reality, even though they sound for ten thousand eons.”

Professor of philosophy D. T. Suzuki notes: “…all Buddhist teachings contained in the sutras and shastras, from the standpoint of Zen, are no more than waste paper, whose only use lies in helping to sweep the dust from the intellect, but nothing more” [Suzuki, D. T., Katsuki, S. Zen Buddhism: The Foundations of Zen Buddhism. The Practice of Zen. Bishkek: MP “Odyssey,” 1993, p. 25].

Truth is inexpressible because all that can be said can only be said about things. In the highest sense, however, things do not represent reality; only bodhi is real, but it is opposed to the world of things:

“Bodhi is not like a tree;

The pure mirror stands nowhere.

Originally not a single thing exists;

Whence then should a speck of dust come?” [Huineng].

Chan Buddhism fully embraces and develops to its logical conclusion the idea of the emptiness of what exists. Bodhidharma, sitting for years before an empty wall, is a striking illustration. Commenting on the cited verse, Dumoulin writes: “Huineng’s paradoxical verse points to the unreality of all things, including inner experiences. So long as the passions are taken seriously, the mind is inclined to discriminate. For one who understands the essence of the doctrine, however, all things are equal. The passions are identical with enlightenment; greed is equivalent to the Path. Obstacles are illusory. Consequently, the metaphysics of orthodox Zen Buddhism can be characterized as a radical and absolute monism of identity” [Dumoulin, H. A Zen Buddhism: a history, New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan. 1988, p. 80].

These ideas were embodied in Zen monasteries in the most paradoxical fashion. In some monasteries, for example, libraries were not infrequently located near the latrines, and among chan legends there are not a few that directly express disdain for the classical sutras:

“Once the chan master I-xiu, who lived on Mount Bijuishan, saw how a great multitude of believers was ascending to the monastery Bijuishansy located on the mountain for pilgrimage, since the monks were at that time airing the Buddhist sutras. In those parts there was a tradition that if the wind blew on the sutras, it would also blow away all the misfortunes and tribulations of the believers and increase their wisdom. Therefore many believers were continually ascending the mountain in order to receive this blessing brought by the wind. The chan master I-xiu understood this and said:

— I too shall air the sutras!

With these words, I-xiu at once stripped to the waist and lay down to sunbathe on the grass. Many of the believers, looking on, were astonished and could not understand what was happening, and they condemned the monk’s unseemly behavior. When the monks of the monastery learned of this, they too came running and began to beg I-xiu not to behave so reprehensibly.

Then I-xiu very patiently explained to them the meaning of what he was doing:

— The sutras that you are airing are dead, and bookworms therefore appear in them, and these can do nothing with them. But the sutra that I am airing is alive; it can preach, can perform service, can eat. And any person endowed with wisdom will perfectly discern which of these two sutras is more valuable!” [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

8.16 The Principle of Direct Transmission.

In place of the transmission of tradition through texts, chan Buddhism insists on a direct, immediate transmission, like the one experienced by Mahakashyapa upon receiving the Buddha’s flower. The principle of “direct pointing” (zhi- zhi) means in Zen the expression of the teaching by means of non-symbolic words or actions that may seem strange or senseless to one not acquainted with Zen. It is a directness, a pointing at the truth without the use of any symbols.

To emphasize the principle of the immediacy of this transmission and to root out in their disciples attachment to the letter, the image, the symbol, many chan masters of the early period demonstratively burned the texts of sutras and sacred images. The monk Linji Yixuan even said: “If you meet the Buddha—kill the Buddha. If you meet a patriarch—kill the patriarch.”

Commenting on this saying, Ye. Torchinov writes: “The sense of this saying is that one must kill in oneself attachment to everything external, to all images and names; the Buddha is the person himself in his truth, and not some religious authority or lawgiver. Still less is he an image or a text. As the abbot of the monastery on Mount Yontyson (Vietnam) said to the young Vietnamese emperor Tran Thai-tong (13th century), who had decided to become a monk: ‘In the mountains there is no Buddha. The Buddha is your own heart, and outside it there is no other Buddha’” [Torchinov, Ye. Introduction to Buddhism. Moscow, 2005].

The principle of immediate transmission is grounded in the old Mahāyāna doctrine of tathāgatagarbha — that is, of the embryo of the Buddha in every being. “All is Buddha and you are Buddha,” and therefore outside the human being there are neither Buddhas nor bodhisattvas, nor patriarchs. Let us cite a Chinese text whose authorship is ascribed to Bodhidharma: “If thou desirest to find the Buddha, thou must look into the depths of thine own Nature, for this Nature is the Buddha <…>. This Nature is Consciousness; Consciousness is the Buddha; the Buddha is the Way; and the Way is Zen.”

8.17 Sudden Awakening and Its Practices.

Awakening (satori or kenshō) in Chan is sudden and spontaneous. It cannot be achieved through linear, logical progression. To induce this cognitive collapse, Chan developed the use of gong’an (Japanese: kōan)—unsolvable riddles or paradoxical dialogues (e.g., “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”). By exhausting the rational mind’s attempts to solve the kōan, the practitioner is forced into a direct, non-conceptual apprehension of reality.

From all of the foregoing it follows that awakening comes, from the Zen perspective, not through reflection and philosophy, nor through the visualization of Buddhas and deities as in Vajrayāna (the chan masters spoke very sarcastically of these practices, giving to understand that all this is no more than imagination), but only suddenly and spontaneously. It cannot be attained logically; it cannot be attained “by the rules,” for all this is only the play of the mind clouded by passions. It must be like a short circuit.

There are many examples of sudden awakening: one monk heard the creaking of a door and awakened; another heard the sound of a falling roof tile and attained awakening; a third was awakened on receiving from his master a blow with a staff on the head; a fourth, on seeing how his master blew out a candle; and so on. Let us cite one characteristic description by the founder of the Engakuji temple, Ju-yuan, of his attainment of what in Japan is called satori:

“Suddenly there reached my ear the sound of a creaking floorboard from the room of the senior monk, which laid open to me the essence of the ‘authentic person.’ As soon as I closed my eyes, this image arose before me again and again. I left my place of meditation and ran out into the moonlit night, then ascended to the garden house called ‘Ganki,’ where I directed my gaze into the sky and laughed merrily, exclaiming: ‘Oh, how majestic is the Dharmakāya! Oh, how great and immeasurable it is!’” [Dumoulin, H. A Zen Buddhism: a history, New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan. 1988, p. 292].

Yet despite the suddenness of satori, it is possible to provoke it, and this in fact is what the practice of Zen amounts to. Within it one may distinguish various elements, such as the discipline of labor, meditation without images (in order to avoid the deceptions of the imagination), and the contemplation of nature, but perhaps the best known is the practice of question-and-answer exchanges (wen-da, Jap. mondo) and kōans.

The question-and-answer exchanges and kōans are verbal paradoxes; prolonged reflection upon them is meant to place the practitioner in a logical impasse, in a kind of collapse of consciousness, so that ordinary consciousness collapses and only the awakened consciousness remains. These paradoxical sayings do not merely startle the listener; the monks must hold a kōan, or some parable in question-and-answer form, in mind for years, going round and round through these paradoxes again and again. This distinctive practice is the result of the teaching about the suddenness, spontaneity, and even, in some currents, the momentariness of awakening.

Let us cite some examples:

— In what does the basic principle of Buddhism consist?

— Wait, said Suibi. When we are alone, I will tell you.

After some time Seikei again turned to him:

— Now we are alone, I beg you, explain.

Suibi rose and led Seikei, who was burning with impatience, into a bamboo grove, but said nothing; and when the latter persistently demanded an answer, he whispered:

— How tall these trees are, and how small those ones over there. [Suzuki, D. T., Katsuki, S. Zen Buddhism: The Foundations of Zen Buddhism, p. 189].

— What is the Buddha?

— A lump of clay (a variant: a piece of dried excrement).

— What is the Tao?

— Three pounds of flax!

— What is Zen?

— A branch of a flowering plum tree (or: the cypress in the garden; or: to scoop up snow with a silver pitcher). [Pomerants, G. S., Mirkina, Z. A. To Scoop Up Snow with a Silver Pitcher (Zen Buddhism) // The Great Religions of the World. Moscow, 2006, p. 150].

“Everyone knows the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping?”

“What was your face before your parents were born?”

“Without affirming and without denying, say in what the meaning of Chan consists.”

“Imagine that, with your hands and feet bound, you are hanging over an abyss, having seized in your teeth onto the branch of a tree. To the edge of the abyss a teacher comes up and asks why Bodhidharma came from the West. What is to be said to him?”

Bibliography :

Buswell, Robert E. Jr.; Gimello, Robert M., eds. Paths to Liberation. The Marga and its Transformations in Buddhist Thought, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers 1992

Buswell, Robert E. Jr.; Lopez, Donald Jr. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University Press 2003

Cozort, Daniel. Highest Yoga Tantra. Snow Lion Publications. 2005

Dumoulin, H. A Zen Buddhism: a history, New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan. 1988

Davidson, Ronald M. Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement, New York: Columbia University Press 2003

Garson, Nathaniel DeWitt. Penetrating the Secret Essence Tantra: Context and Philosophy in the Mahayoga System of rNying-ma Tantra 2004

Fowler, Merv. Buddhism: Beliefs and Practices, Sussex Academic Press, 1999

Gethin, Rupert. The foundations of Buddhism. Oxford University Press 1998

Keown, Damien. Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press 2003

Keown, Damien; Prebish, Charles S. Encyclopedia of Buddhism, London: Routledge, 2010

Lopez, Donald S. Jr. The Story of Buddhism, HarperCollins 2001

Mitchell, Donald W. Buddhism: introducing the Buddhist experience, Oxford University Press 2002

Powers, J. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (Rev ed.). Ithaca: Shambhala. 2007

Robinson, Richard H.; Johnson, Willard L. Buddhist Religions: A Historical Introduction (4th ed.). Wadsworth Publishing. 1997

Suzuki D.T. Zen Buddhism. Doubleday Anchor Books 1956

Suzuki D.T. Manual Of Zen Buddhism. Rider and Company London. 1974

Williams, Paul, ed., Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, 8 volumes, London: Routledge 2005

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  • 8.4-8.6
  • 8.7-8.9
  • 8.10-8.12
  • 8.13-8.17

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