Explanation of the Diamond Sutra: Chapter Five, Seeing Reality According to Principle

Seeing according to reality means seeing the true reality and actual dharma, not seeing false and illusory dharmas, and not taking illusory dharmas as real. This chapter, following the refutation of the four marks, goes a step deeper to refute all marks, including the Buddha's bodily marks, in order to highlight the Tathāgata's Dharma body and highlight the dharma of ultimate reality.

Original text: 须菩提。于意云何。可以身相见如来不。须菩提答。不也。世尊。不可以身相见如来。

Explanation: Subhūti, what do you think? To see the Tathāgata—is it to see the Tathāgata's physical body? Is only one with a physical body the true Buddha? Is the Tathāgata seen through bodily marks? Subhūti said: It is not so, World-Honored One; the Tathāgata is not seen through bodily marks.

The true Buddha does not necessarily have marks, because Māra can also conjure up a Buddha with the thirty-two marks; one with marks is not the true Buddha's body. The Buddha has three bodies: the Dharma body, the reward body, and the manifested body. The Dharma body is the true suchness, the principle-body; it cannot be seen, heard, or touched. The Dharma body is without marks, yet no mark is not He; nothing manifests apart from Him, and nothing is accomplished apart from Him. The Dharma body is also called the great mirror-like wisdom (ādarśa-jñāna), whose light illuminates the great trichiliocosm and the worlds of the ten directions; there is no dharma not under His illumination, no dharma that can escape outside this perfect mirror—all are images within the mirror. He possesses immeasurable and boundless vast wisdom; there is no dharma He does not fully know, no dharma He cannot manifest and transform. His merits are perfect and complete, and all dharmas are fully endowed in Him; He is also called omniscience/wisdom of all aspects (sarvākārajñatā). The Sambhogakāya Buddha is the adorned physical body reaped from the Buddha's cultivation over three great asaṃkhyeya kalpas. Śākyamuni Buddha's reward body resides in the palace of the Akaniṣṭha Heaven, expounding the Dharma to the great bodhisattvas of the Dharma body from the first bhūmi to the tenth bhūmi, proclaiming the wisdom of the varieties of paths—the wisdom for attaining buddhahood—teaching the bodhisattvas to cultivate and study the seed functions contained within the tathāgatagarbha. But bodhisattvas must have meditative concentration (dhyāna) at the level of the fourth dhyāna or above in order to be born into the highest heaven of the form realm to hear the Buddha personally expound the Dharma.

The Sambhogakāya Buddha has a self-enjoyment body and an enjoyment body for others. The self-enjoyment body is enjoyed by the World-Honored One Himself; the enjoyment body for others is what the World-Honored One manifests for the bodhisattvas. Because bodhisattvas' levels of realization differ, the bodily dimensions and marks of the reward body Buddha they see also differ; this is brought about by the bodhisattvas' merit and wisdom, not because the Buddha has discrimination. The lifespan of the Sambhogakāya Buddha is seven million asaṃkhyeya kalpas; one asaṃkhyeya kalpa contains countless great kalpas. One great kalpa contains four intermediate kalpas—formation, abiding, decay, and void; one intermediate kalpa contains twenty small kalpas, and one small kalpa is 16.8 million years. The Buddha's reward body is of extremely vast dimension; compared with the Buddha's body, the Earth is like a ping-pong ball in the Buddha's hand. When one white hair between the Buddha's two eyebrows extends out, it can encircle five Mount Sumerus.

The Nirmāṇakāya Buddha is a physical body similar to sentient beings, manifested in response to the faculties of sentient beings of the ten directions, with a similar lifespan, and He must pass through the eight marks of attaining the path to become a Buddha: descending from Tuṣita, entering the mother's womb, emerging from the womb, leaving home, subduing Māra, attaining buddhahood, turning the Dharma wheel, and entering parinirvāṇa. After leaving home, the World-Honored One manifested as being the same as sentient beings—alms-begging, eating, bathing, sleeping, and daily activities. The Buddha could have done without these, but deliberately manifested them to sentient beings, because sentient beings' faculties are dull; if He were not equal with sentient beings, they could not follow and learn from Him, and the Buddha would have no way to teach and transform them. When the Nirmāṇakāya Buddha enters parinirvāṇa, unlike arhats who extinguish the body and annihilate wisdom, destroying the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) body, He retains a liberated form (mokṣa-rūpa) to benefit and bring joy to sentient beings: having entered parinirvāṇa in this world, He manifests another physical body in other worlds. And that physical body is liberated, without afflictions or habitual tendencies, having severed all ignorance, including beginningless ignorance of one thought, beginningless ignorance (ādikaulyka-avidyā), and ignorance like dust and sand. The ignorance of one thought can only be fully severed by an arhat of the fourth fruit; only when it is fully severed can one transcend the three realms. Beginningless ignorance is severed by bodhisattvas after their realization; sentient beings, from beginningless kalpas, have not known that there is a mind of ultimate reality (dharmatā-citta), the tathāgatagarbha; after realization, beginningless ignorance is broken. The ignorance like dust and sand refers to the matters and principles that sentient beings do not understand, as numerous as dust particles and grains of sand; after enlightenment, ignorance is gradually and completely broken, and the Buddha path is perfectly accomplished.

The transformation body is the immeasurable physical bodies that the Buddha conjures through supernatural powers and meditative absorption (samādhi), distributed throughout the worlds of the ten directions to broadly deliver those with affinity; He manifests whatever body is needed to deliver beings and expounds the Dharma accordingly, engaging in the same activities and practicing together with sentient beings. The reward body, the manifested body, and the transformation body are all born from the Dharma body; they are subject to arising and ceasing, subject to change, impermanent, and not the true Buddha. Therefore, to see the Tathāgata, one must not see Him through bodily marks. The true Buddha is without marks; if there are marks, it is not true.

Original text: 何以故。如来所说身相。即非身相。

Explanation: Why is this said? Because the bodily marks of which the Tathāgata speaks are marks that are without bodily marks.

After Subhūti turned his mind toward the Mahāyāna, he studied the principle of true suchness of ultimate reality; his wisdom became penetrating and fluent, and he could profoundly understand the true meaning of what the Buddha taught. What kind of mark is the Tathāgata's bodily mark that the World-Honored One spoke of in the previous sentence? Subhūti said that the bodily mark of which the Tathāgata speaks is a mark without the mark of a physical body—a markless mark. The Dharmakāya Buddha possesses the principle of the eightfold negations of the middle way and the immeasurable middle ways; it has true meritorious functions, possessing the virtue of prajñā, the virtue of liberation, and the virtue of nirvāṇa. The virtue of liberation means that the Dharma body does not attach to any dharma, does not abide in any dharma, and is not bound by any dharma; He is not within the three realms, yet is not absent from the three realms; He is not outside the three realms, yet is not absent from outside the three realms; toward all dharmas He is suchness is immovable (tathatā-acalita). The virtue of nirvāṇa means that the Dharma body possesses the nature of neither arising nor ceasing, the nature of neither coming nor going, the nature of true permanence, the nature of quiescent cessation, the nature of purity (viśuddha), the nature of unchangingness, and the nature of permanence, bliss, self, and purity. The virtue of prajñā means the great wisdom of the Dharma body by which it can give birth to all dharmas.