Previous lives

Many biographies of the Buddha begin not with his birth in his last
lifetime but in a lifetime millions of years before, when he first made
the vow to become a buddha. According to a well-known version, many
aeons ago there lived a Brahman named (in some accounts) Sumedha, who realized that life is characterized by suffering and then set out to find a state beyond death.
He retired to the mountains, where he became a hermit, practiced
meditation, and gained yogic powers. While flying through the air one
day, he noticed a great crowd around a teacher, whom Sumedha learned was
the buddha Dipamkara. When he heard the word buddha he was
overcome with joy. Upon Dipamkara’s approach, Sumedha loosened his
yogin’s matted locks and laid himself down to make a passage across the
mud for the Buddha. Sumedha reflected that were he to practice the
teachings of Dipamkara he could free himself from future rebirth in that
very lifetime. But he concluded that it would be better to delay his
liberation in order to traverse
the longer path to buddhahood; as a buddha he could lead others across
the ocean of suffering to the farther shore. Dipamkara paused before
Sumedha and predicted that many aeons hence this yogin with matted locks
would become a buddha. He also prophesied Sumedha’s name in his last
lifetime (Gautama) and the names of his parents and chief disciples and described the tree under which the future Buddha would sit on the night of his enlightenment.

Over the subsequent aeons, the bodhisattva would renew his vow in the presence of each of the buddhas who came after Dipamkara, before becoming the buddha Shakyamuni himself. Over the course of his lifetimes as a bodhisattva, he accumulated merit (punya) through the practice of 6 (or 10) virtues. After his death as Prince Vessantara, he was born in the Tusita Heaven, whence he surveyed the world to locate the proper site of his final birth.

Birth and early life

He determined that he should be born the son of the king Shuddhodana of the Shakya clan, whose capital was Kapilavastu. Shortly thereafter, his mother, the queen Maha Maya, dreamed that a white elephant had entered her womb. Ten lunar months later, as she strolled in the garden of Lumbini,
the child emerged from under her right arm. He was able to walk and
talk immediately. A lotus flower blossomed under his foot at each step,
and he announced that this would be his last lifetime. The king summoned
the court astrologers to predict the boy’s future. Seven agreed that he
would become either a universal monarch (chakravartin)
or a buddha; one astrologer said that there was no doubt, the child
would become a buddha. His mother died seven days after his birth, and
so he was reared by his mother’s sister, Mahaprajapati.
As a young child, the prince was once left unattended during a
festival. Later in the day he was discovered seated in meditation under a
tree, whose shadow had remained motionless throughout the day to
protect him from the sun.

The prince enjoyed an opulent life; his father shielded him from exposure to the ills of the world, including old age,
sickness, and death, and provided him with palaces for summer, winter,
and the rainy season, as well as all manner of enjoyments (including in
some accounts 40,000 female attendants). At age 16 he married the
beautiful princess Yashodhara. When the prince was 29, however, his life
underwent a profound change. He asked to be taken on a ride through the
city in his chariot. The king gave his permission but first had all the
sick and old people removed from the route. One old man escaped notice.
Not knowing what stood before him, the prince was told that this was an
old man. He was informed, also, that this was not the only old man in
the world; everyone—the prince, his father, his wife, and his
kinsmen—would all one day grow old. The first trip was followed by three
more excursions beyond the palace walls. On these trips he saw first a
sick person, then a corpse being carried to the cremation ground, and
finally a mendicant
seated in meditation beneath a tree. Having been exposed to the various
ills of human life, and the existence of those who seek a state beyond
them, he asked the king for permission to leave the city and retire to
the forest. The father offered his son anything if he would stay. The
prince asked that his father ensure that he would never die, become ill,
grow old, or lose his fortune. His father replied that he could not.
The prince retired to his chambers, where he was entertained by
beautiful women. Unmoved by the women, the prince resolved to go forth
that night in search of a state beyond birth and death.

When he had been informed seven days earlier that his wife had given
birth to a son, he said, “A fetter has arisen.” The child was named Rahula,
meaning “fetter.” Before the prince left the palace, he went into his
wife’s chamber to look upon his sleeping wife and infant son. In another
version of the story, Rahula had not yet been born on the night of the
departure from the palace. Instead, the prince’s final act was to
conceive his son, whose gestation period extended over the six years of
his father’s search for enlightenment. According to these sources,
Rahula was born on the night that his father achieved buddhahood.

The prince left Kapilavastu and the royal life behind and entered the
forest, where he cut off his hair and exchanged his royal robes for the
simple dress of a hunter. From that point on he ate whatever was placed
in his begging bowl. Early in his wanderings he encountered Bimbisara, the king of Magadha and eventual patron of the Buddha, who, upon learning that the ascetic
was a prince, asked him to share his kingdom. The prince declined but
agreed to return when he had achieved enlightenment. Over the next six
years, the prince studied meditation and learned to achieve deep states
of blissful concentration. But he quickly matched the attainments of his
teachers and concluded that despite their achievements, they would be
reborn after their death. He next joined a group of five ascetics
who had devoted themselves to the practice of extreme forms of
self-mortification. The prince also became adept at their practices,
eventually reducing his daily meal to one pea. Buddhist art often
represents him seated in the meditative posture in an emaciated form,
with sunken eyes and protruding ribs. He concluded that mortification of
the flesh is not the path to liberation from suffering and rebirth and
accepted a dish of rice and cream from a young woman.

The enlightenment

His companions remained convinced of the efficacy of asceticism
and abandoned the prince. Now without companions or a teacher, the
prince vowed that he would sit under a tree and not rise until he had
found the state beyond birth and death. On the full moon of May, six
years after he had left his palace, he meditated until dawn. Mara,
the god of desire, who knew that the prince was seeking to put an end
to desire and thereby free himself from Mara’s control, attacked him
with wind, rain, rocks, weapons, hot coals, burning ashes, sand, mud,
and darkness. The prince remained unmoved and meditated on love, thus
transforming the hail of fury into a shower of blossoms. Mara then sent
his three beautiful daughters, Lust, Thirst, and Discontent, to tempt
the prince, but he remained impassive. In desperation, Mara challenged
the prince’s right to occupy the spot of earth upon which he sat,
claiming that it belonged to him instead. Then, in a scene that would
become the most famous depiction of the Buddha in Asian art, the prince,
seated in the meditative posture, stretched out his right hand and
touched the earth. By touching the earth, he was asking the goddess of
the earth to confirm that a great gift that he had made as Prince
Vessantara in his previous life had earned him the right to sit beneath
the tree. She assented with a tremor, and Mara departed.

The prince sat in meditation through the night. During the first
watch of the night, he had a vision of all of his past lives,
recollecting his place of birth, name, caste, and even the food he had
eaten. During the second watch of the night, he saw how beings rise and
fall through the cycle of rebirth as a consequence of their past deeds.
In the third watch of the night, the hours before dawn, he was
liberated. Accounts differ as to precisely what it was that he
understood. According to some versions it was the four truths: of
suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the
path to the cessation of suffering. According to others it was the
sequence of dependent origination: how ignorance leads to action and
eventually to birth, aging, and death, and how when ignorance is
destroyed, so also are birth, aging, and death. Regardless of their
differences, all accounts agree that on this night he became a buddha,
an awakened one who had roused himself from the slumber of ignorance and
extended his knowledge throughout the universe.

The experience of that night was sufficiently profound that the
prince, now the Buddha, remained in the vicinity of the tree up to seven
weeks, savouring his enlightenment. One of those weeks was rainy, and
the serpent king came and spread his hood above the Buddha to protect
him from the storm, a scene commonly depicted in Buddhist art. At the
end of seven weeks, two merchants approached him and offered him honey
and cakes. Knowing that it was improper for a buddha to receive food in
his hands, the gods of the four directions each offered him a bowl. The
Buddha magically collapsed the four bowls into one and received the gift
of food. In return, the Buddha plucked some hairs from his head and
gave them to the merchants.

The first disciples

He was unsure as to what to do next, since he knew that what he had
understood was so profound that it would be difficult for others to
fathom. The god Brahma
descended from his heaven and asked him to teach, pointing out that
humans are at different levels of development, and some of them would
benefit from his teaching. Consequently, the Buddha concluded that the
most suitable students would be his first teachers of meditation, but he
was informed by a deity that they had died. He thought next of his five
former comrades in the practice of asceticism. The Buddha determined through his clairvoyance that they were residing in a deer park in Sarnath, outside Varanasi (Banaras). He set out on foot, meeting along the way a wandering ascetic with whom he exchanged greetings. When he explained to the man that he was enlightened and so was unsurpassed even by the gods, the man responded with indifference.

Although the five ascetics had agreed to ignore the Buddha because he had given up self-mortification, they were compelled by his charisma
to rise and greet him. They asked the Buddha what he had understood
since they left him. He responded by teaching them, or, in the language
of the tradition, he “set the wheel of the dharma in motion.” (Dharma
has a wide range of meanings, but here it refers to the doctrine or
teaching of the buddhas.) In his first sermon, the Buddha spoke of the
middle way between the extremes of self-indulgence and
self-mortification and described both as fruitless. He next turned to
what have come to be known as the “Four Noble Truths,”
perhaps more accurately rendered as “four truths for the [spiritually]
noble.” As elaborated more fully in other discourses, the first is the
truth of suffering, which holds that existence in all the realms of
rebirth is characterized by suffering. The sufferings particular to
humans are birth, aging, sickness, death, losing friends, encountering
enemies, not finding what one wants, finding what one does not want. The
second truth identifies the cause of this suffering as nonvirtue,
negative deeds of body, speech, and mind that produce the karma that
fructifies in the future as physical and mental pain. These deeds are
motivated by negative mental states, called klesha (afflictions), which include desire, hatred, and ignorance, the false belief that there is a permanent and autonomous self amidst the impermanent constituents of mind and body. The third truth is the truth of cessation, the postulation of a state beyond suffering, called nirvana.
If the ignorance that motivates desire and hatred can be eliminated,
negative deeds will not be performed and future suffering will not be
produced. Although such reasoning would allow for the prevention of
future negative deeds, it does not seem to account for the vast store of
negative karma accumulated in previous lifetimes that is yet to bear
fruit. However, the insight into the absence of self, when cultivated
at a high level of concentration, is said to be so powerful that it
also destroys all seeds for future lifetimes. Cessation entails the
realization of both the destruction of the causes of suffering and the
impossibility of future suffering. The presence of such a state,
however, remains hypothetical without a method for attaining it, and the fourth truth, the path, is that method. The path was delineated in a number of ways, often as the three trainings in ethics, meditation, and wisdom. In his first sermon, the Buddha described the Eightfold Path
of correct view, correct attitude, correct speech, correct action,
correct livelihood, correct effort, correct mindfulness, and correct
meditation. A few days after the first sermon, the Buddha set forth the
doctrine of no-self (anatman), at which point the five ascetics became arhats, those who have achieved liberation from rebirth and will enter nirvana upon death. They became the first members of the sangha, the community of monks.

The post-enlightenment period

The Buddha soon attracted more disciples,
sometimes converting other teachers along with their followers. As a
result, his fame began to spread. When the Buddha’s father heard that
his son had not died following his great renunciation but had become a
buddha, the king sent nine successive delegations to his son to invite
him to return home to Kapilavastu. But instead of conveying the
invitation, they joined the disciples of the Buddha and became arhats.
The Buddha was persuaded by the 10th courier (who also became an arhat)
to return to the city, where he was greeted with disrespect by clan
elders. The Buddha, therefore, rose into the air, and fire and water
issued simultaneously from his body. This act caused his relatives to
respond with reverence. Because they did not know that they should
invite him for the noon meal, the Buddha went begging from door to door
instead of going to his father’s palace. This caused his father great chagrin, but the Buddha explained that this was the practice of the buddhas of the past.

His wife Yashodhara had remained faithful to him in his absence. She
would not go out to greet him when he returned to the palace, however,
saying that the Buddha should come to her in recognition of her virtue.
The Buddha did so, and, in a scene often recounted, she bowed before him
and placed her head on his feet. She eventually entered the order of
nuns and became an arhat. She sent their young son Rahula to his father
to ask for his patrimony, and the Buddha responded by having him
ordained as a monk. This dismayed the Buddha’s father, and he explained
to the Buddha the great pain that he had felt when the young prince had
renounced the world. He asked, therefore, that in the future a son be
ordained only with the permission of his parents. The Buddha made this
one of the rules of the monastic order.

The Buddha spent the 45 years after his enlightenment traveling with a group of disciples across northeastern India,
teaching the dharma to those who would listen, occasionally debating
with (and, according to the Buddhist sources, always defeating) masters
from other sects, and gaining followers from all social classes. To some
he taught the practice of refuge; to some he taught the five precepts
(not to kill humans, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, lie, or use
intoxicants); and to some he taught the practice of meditation. The
majority of the Buddha’s followers did not renounce the world, however,
and remained in lay life. Those who decided to go forth from the
household and become his disciples joined the sangha, the community of
monks. At the request of his widowed stepmother, Mahaprajapati, and
women whose husbands had become monks, the Buddha also established an
order of nuns. The monks were sent out to teach the dharma
for the benefit of gods and humans. The Buddha did the same: each day
and night he surveyed the world with his omniscient eye to locate those
that he might benefit, often traveling to them by means of his
supernormal powers.

It is said that in the early years the Buddha and his monks wandered
during all seasons, but eventually they adopted the practice of
remaining in one place during the rainy season (in northern India,
mid-July to mid-October). Patrons built shelters for their use, and the
end of the rainy season came to mark a special occasion for making
offerings of food and provisions (especially cloth for robes) to monks.
These shelters evolved into monasteries that were inhabited throughout
the year. The monastery of Jetavana in the city of Shravasti
(Savatthi), where the Buddha spent much of his time and delivered many
of the discourses, was donated to the Buddha by the wealthy banker
Anathapindada (Pali: Anathapindika).

The Buddha’s authority, even among his followers, did not go
unchallenged. A dispute arose over the degree of asceticism required of
monks. The Buddha’s cousin, Devadatta, led a faction that favoured more rigorous discipline than that counseled
by the Buddha, requiring, for example, that monks live in the open and
never eat meat. When the Buddha refused to name Devadatta as his
successor, Devadatta attempted to kill him three times. He first hired
assassins to eliminate the Buddha. Devadatta later rolled a boulder down
upon him, but the rock only grazed the Buddha’s toe. He also sent a
wild elephant to trample him, but the elephant stopped in his charge and
bowed at the Buddha’s feet. Another schism arose between monks of a
monastery over a minor infraction of lavatory etiquette. Unable to
settle the dispute, the Buddha retired to the forest to live with
elephants for an entire rainy season.

The death of the Buddha

Shortly before his death, the Buddha remarked to his attendant Ananda on three separate occasions that a buddha can, if requested, extend his life span for an aeon. Mara
then appeared and reminded the Buddha of his promise to him, made
shortly after his enlightenment, to pass into nirvana when his teaching
was complete. The Buddha agreed to pass away three months hence, at
which point the earth quaked. When Ananda asked the reason for the
tremor, the Buddha told him that there are eight occasions for an
earthquake, one of which was when a buddha relinquishes the will to
live. Ananda begged him not to do so, but the Buddha explained that the
time for such requests had passed; had he asked earlier, the Buddha
would have consented.

At age 80 the Buddha, weak from old age and illness,
accepted a meal (it is difficult to identify from the texts what the
meal consisted of, but many scholars believe it was pork) from a smith
named Chunda, instructing the smith to serve
him alone and bury the rest of the meal without offering it to the other
monks. The Buddha became severely ill shortly thereafter, and at a
place called Kusinara (also spelled Kushinagar; modern Kasia) lay down
on his right side between two trees, which immediately blossomed out of
season. He instructed the monk who was fanning him to step to one side,
explaining that he was blocking the view of the deities who had
assembled to witness his passing. After he provided instructions for his
funeral, he said that lay people should make pilgrimages to the place
of his birth, the place of his enlightenment, the place of his first
teaching, and the place of his passage into nirvana. Those who venerate
shrines erected at these places will be reborn as gods. The Buddha then
explained to the monks that after he was gone the dharma and the vinaya
(code of monastic conduct) should be their teacher. He also gave
permission to the monks to abolish the minor precepts (because Ananda
failed to ask which ones, it was later decided not to do so). Finally,
the Buddha asked the 500 disciples who had assembled whether they had
any last question or doubt. When they remained silent, he asked two more
times and then declared that none of them had any doubt or confusion
and were destined to achieve nirvana. According to one account, he then
opened his robe and instructed the monks to behold the body of a buddha,
which appears in the world so rarely. Finally, he declared that all
conditioned things are transient
and exhorted the monks to strive with diligence. These were his last
words. The Buddha then entered into meditative absorption, passing from
the lowest level to the highest, then from the highest to the lowest,
before entering the fourth level of concentration, whence he passed into
nirvana.

The Buddha’s relics

The Buddha had instructed his followers to cremate his body as the
body of a universal monarch would be cremated and then to distribute the
relics among various groups of his lay followers, who were to enshrine
them in hemispherical reliquaries called stupas. His body lay in a
coffin for seven days before being placed on a funeral pyre and was set
ablaze by the Buddha’s chief disciple,
Mahakashyapa, who had been absent at the time of the Buddha’s death.
After the Buddha’s cremation, his relics were entrusted to a group of
lay disciples,
but armed men arrived from seven other regions and demanded the relics.
In order to avert bloodshed, a monk divided the relics into eight
portions. According to tradition, 10 sets of relics were enshrined, 8
from portions of the Buddha’s remains, 1 from the pyre’s ashes, and 1
from the bucket used to divide the remains. The relics were subsequently
collected and enshrined in a single stupa. More than a century later, King Ashoka is said to have redistributed the relics in 84,000 stupas.

The stupa would become a reference point denoting the Buddha’s
presence in the landscape of Asia. Early texts and the archeological
record link stupa worship with the Buddha’s life and the key sites in
his career. Eight shrines are typically recommended for pilgrimage and
veneration. They are located at the place of his birth, his
enlightenment, his first turning of the wheel of dharma,
and his death, as well as sites in four cities where he performed
miracles. A stupa in Samkashya, for example, marked the site where the
Buddha descended to the world after teaching the dharma to his mother
(who died seven days after his birth) abiding in the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods.

The importance given to the stupa suggests the persistence of the Buddha in the world despite his apparent passage into nirvana.
Two types of nirvana are commonly described. The first is called the
“nirvana with remainder,” which the Buddha achieved under the Bo tree,
when he destroyed all the seeds for future rebirth. This first nirvana
is therefore also called the final nirvana (or passing away) of the afflictions.
But the karma that had created his present life was still functioning
and would do so until his death. Thus, his mind and body during the rest
of his life were what was left over, the remainder, after he realized
nirvana. The second type of nirvana occurred at his death and is called
the “final nirvana of the aggregates (skandha)
of mind and body” or the “nirvana without remainder” because nothing
remained to be reborn after his death. Something, in fact, did remain:
the relics found in the ashes of the funeral pyre. A third nirvana,
therefore, is sometimes mentioned. According to Buddhist belief, there
will come a time in the far distant future when the teachings of Shakyamuni
Buddha will disappear from the world and the relics will no longer be
honoured. It is then that the relics that have been enshrined in stupas
around the world will break out of their reliquaries and magically
return to Bodh Gaya,
where they will assemble into the resplendent body of the Buddha,
seated in the lotus posture under the Bo tree, emitting rays of light
that illuminate
10,000 worlds. They will be worshiped by the gods one last time and
then will burst into flame and disappear into the sky. This third
nirvana is called the “final nirvana of the relics.” Until that time,
the relics of the Buddha are to be regarded as his living presence,
infused with all of his marvelous qualities. Epigraphic and literary
evidence from India
suggests that the Buddha, in the form of his stupas, not only was a
bestower of blessings, but was regarded as a legal person and an owner
of property. The relics of the Buddha were, essentially, the Buddha.

Images of the Buddha

The Buddha also remains in the world in the form of the texts that
contain his words and statues that depict his form. There is no
historical evidence of images of the Buddha being made during his
lifetime. Indeed, scholars of Indian art
have long been intrigued by the absence of an image of the Buddha on a
number of early stone carvings at Buddhist sites. The carvings depict
scenes in which obeisance is being paid, for example, to the footprints
of the Buddha. One scene, considered to depict the Buddha’s departure
from the palace, shows a riderless horse. Such works have led to the
theory that early Buddhism
prohibited depiction of the Buddha in bodily form but allowed
representation by certain symbols. The theory is based in part on the
lack of any instructions for depicting the Buddha in early texts. This
view has been challenged by those who suggest instead that the carvings
are not depictions of events from the life of the Buddha but rather
represent pilgrimages to and worship of important sites from the life of
the Buddha, such as the Bo tree.

Consecrated
images of the Buddha are central to Buddhist practice, and there are
many tales of their miraculous powers. A number of famous images, such
as the statue of Mahamuni
in Mandalay, Myanmar, derive their sanctity from the belief that the
Buddha posed for them. The consecration of an image of the Buddha often
requires elaborate rituals in which the Buddha is asked to enter the
image or the story of the Buddha’s life is told in its presence.
Epigraphic evidence from the 4th or 5th century indicates that Indian
monasteries usually had a room called the “perfumed chamber” that housed
an image of the Buddha and was regarded as the Buddha’s residence, with
its own contingent of monks.

The Mahayana tradition and the reconception of the Buddha

Some four centuries after the Buddha’s death, movements arose in
India, many of them centred on newly written texts (such as the Lotus Sutra) or new genres of texts (such as the Prajnaparamita
or Perfection of Wisdom sutras) that purported to be the word of the
Buddha. These movements would come to be designated by their adherents
as the Mahayana,
the “Great Vehicle” to enlightenment, in contradistinction to the
earlier Buddhist schools that did not accept the new sutras as authoritative (that is, as the word of the Buddha).

The Mahayana sutras offer different conceptions
of the Buddha. It is not that the Mahayana schools saw the Buddha as a
magical being whereas non-Mahayana schools did not. Accounts of the
Buddha’s wondrous powers abound throughout the literature. For example,
the Buddha is said to have hesitated before deciding to teach after his
enlightenment and only decides to do so after being implored by Brahma.
In a Mahayana sutra, however, the Buddha has no indecision at all, but
rather pretends to be swayed by Brahma’s request in order that all those
who worship Brahma will take refuge in the Buddha. Elsewhere, it was
explained that when the Buddha would complain of a headache or a
backache, he did so only to convert others to the dharma; because his
body was not made of flesh and blood, it was in fact impossible for him
to experience pain.

One of the most important Mahayana sutras for a new conception of the Buddha is the Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapundarika-sutra),
in which the Buddha denies that he left the royal palace in search of
freedom from suffering and that he found that freedom six years later
while meditating under a tree. He explains instead that he achieved
enlightenment innumerable billions of aeons ago and has been preaching
the dharma in this world and simultaneously in myriad
other worlds ever since. Because his life span is inconceivable to
those of little intelligence, he has resorted to the use of skillful
methods (upuya), pretending to renounce his princely life, practice austerities, and attain unsurpassed enlightenment. In fact, he was enlightened
all the while yet feigned these deeds to inspire the world. Moreover,
because he recognizes that his continued presence in the world might
cause those of little virtue to become complacent
about putting his teachings into practice, he declares that he is soon
to pass into nirvana. But this also is not true, because his life span
will not be exhausted for many more billions of aeons. He tells the
story of a physician who returns home to find his children ill from
having taken poison during his absence. He prescribes a cure, but only
some take it. He therefore leaves home again and spreads the rumour that
he has died. Those children who had not taken the antidote
then do so out of deference to their departed father and are cured. The
father then returns. In the same way, the Buddha pretends to enter
nirvana to create a sense of urgency in his disciples even though his
life span is limitless.

The doctrine of the three bodies

Such a view of the identity of the Buddha is codified in the doctrine of the three bodies (trikaya)
of the Buddha. Early scholastics speak of the Buddha as having a
physical body and a second body, called a “mind-made body” or an
“emanation body,” in which he performs miraculous feats such as visiting
his departed mother in the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods and teaching
her the dharma. The question also was raised as to whom precisely the Buddhist should pay homage when honouring the Buddha. A term, dharmakaya,
was coined to describe a more metaphorical body, a body or collection
of all the Buddha’s good qualities or dharmas, such as his wisdom, his
compassion, his fortitude, his patience. This corpus of qualities was identified as the body of the Buddha to which one should turn for refuge.

All of this is recast in the Mahayana sutras. The emanation body (nirmanakaya)
is no longer the body that the Buddha employs to perform supernatural
feats; it is rather the only body to appear in this world and the only
body visible to ordinary humans. It is the Buddha’s emanation body that
was born as a prince, achieved enlightenment, and taught the dharma to
the world; that is, the visible Buddha is a magical display. The true
Buddha, the source of the emanations, was the dharmakaya, a term that still refers to the Buddha’s transcendent qualities but, playing on the multivalence of the term dharma, came to mean something more cosmic, an eternal principle of enlightenment and ultimate truth, described in later Mahayana treatises as the Buddha’s omniscient mind and its profound nature of emptiness.

The presence of multiple universes

Along with additional bodies of the Buddha, the Mahayana sutras also
revealed the presence of multiple universes, each with its own buddha.
These universes—called buddha fields, or pure lands—are
described as abodes of extravagant splendour, where the trees bear a
fruit of jewels, the birds sing verses of the dharma, and the
inhabitants devote themselves to its practice. The buddha fields became
preferred places for future rebirth. The buddhas who presided there
became objects of devotion, especially the buddha of infinite light, Amitabha, and his Western Paradise called Sukhavati. In the buddha fields, the buddhas often appear in yet a third form, the enjoyment body (sambhogakaya),
which was the form of a youthful prince adorned with the 32 major marks
and 80 minor marks of a superman. The former include patterns of a
wheel on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, elongated
earlobes, a crown protrusion (usnisa) on the top of his head, a circle of hair (urna)
between his brows, flat feet, and webbed fingers. Scholars have
speculated that this last attribute derives not from a textual source
but the inadequacies of early sculptors.

The marvelous physical and mental qualities of the Buddha were codified in numerous litanies
of praise and catalogued in poetry, often taking the form of a series
of epithets. These epithets were commented upon in texts, inscribed on
stupas, recited aloud in rituals, and contemplated in meditation. One of
the more famous is “thus gone, worthy, fully and completely awakened,
accomplished in knowledge and virtuous conduct, well gone, knower of
worlds, unsurpassed guide for those who need restraint, teacher of gods
and humans, awakened, fortunate.”