Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
134T he T ransformat ion Body displays wit h skill birt h, enlight enment , and
Nirvāna,
For it possesses much magic power to lead men to enlightenment.
The Body of the Buddhas is wholly c omprised in these three bodies...
In basis, tendenc y, and ac t they are uniform.
They are stable by nature, by persistenc e, and by c onnec tion.Commentary: The Three Bodies are one and the same for all the Buddhas for three
reasons: basis, for the basis of phenomena^7 is indivisible; tendenc y, because there
is no tendenc y partic ular to one Buddha and not to another; and act, because their
actions are common to all. And the Three Bodies have a threefold stability: by
nature, for the Body of Essence is essentially stable; by persistenc e, for the Body of
Bliss experienc es phenomena unc easingly; and by c onnec tion, for t he
Transformation Body, once it has passed away, shows it metamorphoses again and
again.
[ F ro m Mahāyānasutrālankāra, 9.60-66]...Magical Utterances
It would be wrong to depic t Mahāyāna Buddhism as simply a syst em of idealist
philosophy, with a pantheon of benevolent and c ompassionate deities and an
exalt ed and alt ruist ic et hic al syst em. It contained many elements from a lower
st rat um of belief, as will be made c lear from following ext rac t from t he Lankāvātara
Sūtra, one of the most important sacred texts of Mahāyāna Buddhism, from whic h
we have already given two quotations.
Belief in t he magic al effic ac y of c ert ain syllables, phrases, and verses is as old
as the Rig Veda. The Pali scriptures, however, pay little attention to this aspect of
popular religion, and it would seem t hat t he early Buddhist s who were responsible
for t he c ompilat ion of t hese t ext s t ook a c omparat ively rat ionalist ic view of t he
world. T he c rit ic ism of vain and useless rituals c ontained in the Pali texts and in
Ashoka’s edic ts was probably intended to c over the vain repetition of mantras or
magical utterances. But from early in the Christian era onwards, suc h things
became more and more closely associated wit h Buddhism, espec ially wit h t he
Mahāyāna sects. Hinduism and Buddhism alike developed sc hools whic h taught that
the c onstant repetition of mantras was a sure means of salvation. T he following
passage is not strictly Tantric, for it does not attribute to the mantras it quotes any
effic ienc y ot her t han in t he dispelling of evil spirit s; but t he import anc e give t o t he
mantras, and the fact that they are attributed to the Buddha himself, show that
Mahāyāna Buddhism was, by the fourth of fifth c entury A.D., permeated with the
ideas whic h were t o lead t o fully developed T ant ric ism.
(^7) Dharmadhātu, the Absolute