Sukhavatlvyuha) described as resulting from specific
“world-designing” vows—celestial buddhas, like the
archaic buddhas of our own world, are described as
having immensely long life spans. Yet the factors that
elicited these seemingly parallel circumstances are not
the same. In the case of the archaic buddhas, their long
life spans are the corollary of their being placed at a
point in the cycle of evolution-and-devolution where
human life spans in general stretch to between sixty
thousand and eighty thousand years; the same is true
of the future buddha Maitreya, who is scheduled to
appear in our world when the maximum life span of
eighty thousand years has again arrived (Nattier
1991). In the case of celestial buddhas, on the other
hand, their long life spans are necessitated by their role
as the presiding buddhas in other realms to which be-
lievers from other worlds might aspire to be reborn.
Such an aspiration for rebirth makes sense, of course,
only if the believer is confident that the buddha in
question will still be alive when he or she arrives.
Celestial buddhas are not, however, described as
immortal; the Aksobhyavyuhamakes much of Aksob-
hya’s eventual parinirvanaand autocremation, while
early translations of the Sukhavatlvyuhamake it clear
that Avalokites ́vara will succeed to the position of
reigning buddha of Sukhavat after Amitabha has
passed away. Thus the lives of these buddhas—while
far more glorious in circumstances and far longer in
duration—still echo the pattern set by S ́akyamuni.
Other developments would subsequently take place,
such as the claim that S ́akyamuni Buddha had already
attained nirvana prior to his appearance in this world
and the concomitant assumption that his life span was
immeasurably, though not infinitely, long, and the
even grander claim that all buddhas who appear in this
or any other world are merely manifestations of an
eternal dharma-body. Throughout most of the history
of Buddhism in India, however, buddhas continued to
be viewed as human beings who had achieved awak-
ening as S ́akyamuni did, even as the list of their qual-
ities and their attainments grew ever more glorious.See also: Buddhahood and Buddha Bodies; Lotus
Sutra (Saddharmapundarlka-sutra); Pure LandsBibliography
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The buddha Amitabha, a celestial buddha who resides in the West-
ern paradise of Sukhavatl. (Vietnamese sculpture, eighteenth or
nineteenth century.) © Reunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Re-
source, NY. Reproduced by permission.