Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

27. Of such a nature was the Shepherd ; He, too, was the Christ of God, the Son of the Father, who could take all forms to carry out the Divine Will. When the form, — even though that form might for the disciple take on the appearance of the cosmos itself, as he conceived it, — had served its purpose, the Shepherd once more " mingled with the Powers."

THE THREE "BODIES" OF THE BUDDHA

The Shepherd was a Christ for those who prefer the name of Christian Tradition, a Buddha for those who are more familiar with Eastern terms. And that this is so may be clearly seen by considering the so-called "three bodies" (trikayam) of a or the Buddha, for Buddhahood is a state beyond individuality in the separated sense in which we understand the term.

In the Chinese Version of Ashvaghosha's now lost Sanskrit treatise, Mahayana-shraddhotpada-shastra^ we read:

"It is characteristic of all the Buddhas that they consider all sentient beings as their own self, and do not cling to their individual forms. How is this ? Because they know truthfully that all sentient beings as well as their own self come from one and the same Suchness, and no distinction can be established among them."

" All Tathagatas are the Dharinakaya 2 itself, are the highest truth (paramarthasatya) itself, and have nothing to do with conditionality (samvrittisatya) and compulsory actions ; whereas the seeing, hearing, etc., of the sentient being diversify the Activity z of Tathagatas.

" Now this Activity has a twofold aspect.

" The first depends on the phenomena-particularizing consciousness by means of which the Activity is conceived by the minds of all who fall short of the state of a Bodhisattva in their various degrees. This aspect is called the Body of Transformation (Nirmanakaya).

" But as the beings of this class do not know that the

1 Ashvaghosha's Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahdydna. Translated for the first time from the Chinese Version by Teitaro Suzuki (Chicago, 1900). Mahay ana means the " Great Vehicle" of Buddhism.

2 Lit. Body of the Law.

3 The italics are mine throughout.

Body of Transformation is merely the shadow [or reflection] of their own evolving consciousness, they imagine it comes from some external sources, and so they give it a corporeal limitation. But the Body of Transformation [or what amounts to the same thing, the Dharmakaya] has nothing to do with Limitation or measurement."

That is to say, a Buddha can only communicate with such minds hy means of a form, that form being really that of their own most highly evolved consciousness. There are, however, others who have the consciousness of the " formless " state, but have not yet reached the Nirvanic Consciousness. These in this system are called Bodhisattvas.

" The second aspect [of the Dharmakaya] depends on the activity -consciousness (karmavijnana), by means of which the Activity is conceived by the minds of the Bodhisattvas while passing from their first aspiration (chittotpada) stage up to the height of Bodhisattva-hood. This is called the Body of Bliss (Sambhogakaya) " (pp. 100, 101).

We have used the term " formless state " in the penultimate paragraph to signify the states of consciousness in " worlds " called Arupa ; but these are only " formless " for consciousness which has not reached the Bodhisattva level — presumably the Buddhic plane of Neo-theosophical nomenclature.

For " this Body has infinite forms. The form has infinite attributes. The Attribute has infinite excellencies. And the accompanying reward of Bodhisattvas —that is, the region where they are predestined to be born — also has infinite merits and ornamentations. Manifesting itself everywhere, the Body of Bliss is infinite, boundless, limitless, unintermittent, directly coming forth from the Mind" (p. 101).

The older Chinese Version says : " It is boundless, cannot be exhausted, is free from the signs of limitation. Manifesting itself wherever it should manifest itself, it always exists by itself and is never destroyed " (p. 101, n. 2).