THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MAHAYANA BUDDHISM 95Buddha Amitabha in his Pure Land (see Section 5.5.4) is apprehended in his
enjoyment-body by the bodhisattvas there, whereas he appears in his appari-
tion-body to favored persons in this world.
Archaeological evidence reveals that the Yogacarin theory ofthe multiple
bodies of the Buddha developed at the same time that monasteries throughout
India began building "perfumed chambers" (see Section 3.4.2), where Bud-
dha-images were placed and in which the Buddha, in certain senses, was
thought to reside. These chambers acted as focal points for devotees, lay and
monastic, who wanted to earn the merit that could come from offering gifts
directly to the Buddha himself. In light of this evidence, it is possible to view
the Yogacarin Buddhology not only as a result of the internal logic of
Yogacarin theory, but also as an attempt to explain a sense of "Buddha" that
could literally be here, there, and everywhere, residing in monasteries all over
the subcontinent.
The grand equation of the purified store-consciousness, the perfected level
of experience, the womb of Tathagatahood, and the Dharmakaya created a
number of problems for the Yogacarins. One was the accusation from other
Buddhists that this equation was little more than a recasting of the Upani~adic
equation of the essential self with Brahman, the universal principle underlying
the cosmos. Another problem revolved around the question, "If the perfected
has been perfected all along, how can it be involved in the creation of suffer-
ing?" This is a question the Hinayana and Madhyamika schools had neatly
avoided by insisting on the totally transcendent nature of nirval).a, by refusing
to discuss questions of temporal origins, or both. In the middle of the sixth
century C.E., the Yogacarins themselves split over the issue-arguing as to
whether the store-cons~iousness could indeed be equated with the per-
fected-as they became more concerned with their system as a system, rather
than as a tool for meditators. The earlier Yogacarins, however, seem to have
been unfazed by these issues, perhaps because they viewed their entire theory
as a map on the imaginary level of reality that would dissolve, along with the
questions it proposed to answer, when the dependent level was cleansed of the
imaginary, leaving only the ultimate emptiness of the perfected. Thus the issue
could by settled only through meditative practice.
Given the Yogacarin talent for philosophical synthesis, it should come as
no surprise that during the succeeding centuries it absorbed and was absorbed
by many other trends in its environment. On the Hinayana side, it took over
the Vaibha~ika tradition (see Section 4.4) and with it the entire Abhidharma
enterprise; pulled together all the classifications, subclassifications, lists, and
numbers that appeared in the Sutras and treatises; and proceeded to invent
more. One of the great ironies of the Mahayana movement is that it began as
a reaction against the Abhidharma and ended up developing the most elabo-
rate Abhidharma tradition of any Buddhist tradition. On the Mahayana side,
the Yogacara school entered into a variety ofYogacara-Madhyamika syntheses
that have preoccupied Mahayana scholastics ever since. At the great university
ofNalanda (see Section 6.2), Madhyamika took the dominant role in the syn-
theses, whereas at the western university at Valabhi, Yogacarin thought was