VAJRA POINT I: THE BUDDHA

-from the root text of the Uttaratantra Shastra, Buddha Nature, Snowlion, p. 102

    According to Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, this includes "...doubts about the fact that the practice of virtue acts as a cause giving rise to the fruit of happiness, the fact that suffering will arise on the basis of unvirtuous action, and so on."

-BN/Annotation 4, p. 303

    Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche comments - "There is the full understanding of the nature of all phenomena which is the full blossoming of jñana. When this happens, a Buddha has the power to help others and shows other beings the fearless path. To do this he or she has a quality of knowledge which comes from complete realization of the nature of everything and the quality of compassionate love which creates a desire to share this knowledge with others."

-The Uttara Tantra: A Treatise on Buddha Nature, p. 23

Bikkhu Bodhi writes "..the Dhammapada shows that morality does not exhaust its significance in its contribution to human felicity here and now, but exercises a far more critical influence in molding personal destiny. This level begins with the recognition that, to reflective thought, the human situation demands a more satisfactory context for ethics than mere appeals to altruism can provide. On the one hand our innate sense of moral justice requires that goodness be recompensed with happiness and evil with suffering; on the other our typical experience shows us virtuous people beset with hardships and afflictions and thoroughly bad people riding the waves of fortune. Moral intuition tells us that if there is any long-range value to righteousness, the imbalance must somehow be redressed. The visible order does not yield an evident solution, but the Buddha's teaching reveals the factor needed to vindicate our cry for moral justice in an impersonal universal law which reigns over all sentient existence. This is the law of kamma (Sanskrit: karma), of action and its fruit, which ensures that morally determinate action does not disappear into nothingness but eventually meets its due retribution, the good with happiness, the bad with suffering.

The Buddha-body is ungraspable;
Unborn, uncreated,
It appears in accord with beings,
Equanimous as empty space.

-Avatamsaka Sutra, p. 175

    "There is, monks, an unborn -- unbecome -- unmade -- unfabricated. If there were not that unborn -- unbecome -- unmade -- unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born -- become - - made -- fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn -- unbecome -- unmade -- unfabricated, emancipation from the born -- become -- made -- fabricated is discerned."

-- Ud VIII.3



- The Tantra of Non-abiding (Naked Awareness, p. 104)

    This true nature is the mahashunyata, the great emptiness, the profound meaning beyond words, speech and mental conceptualization. Within this clear, profound samadhi, Lord Buddha was also able to secure the ultimate benefit of others. The beams of pure light pouring forth from his body to every direction and realm, then returning to be reabsorbed, then radiating out again, were pacifying the sufferings and removing the obscurations of all sentient beings. At the ultimate level of realization of the true nature, we do not just blend into everything and become inactive. In fact, at that level we become actively beneficial, and such realization makes it possible for us to reach millions of sentient beings and dissolve the obstacles to their liberation. That is the profound illumination.

-KPSR, Ceaseless Echoes of the Great Silence, p. 46

"This is peace, this is exquisite -- the resolution of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Nirvana."

-- AN III.32

The Buddhas have the same reality-body --
It depends on nothing, is without distinction;
It causes beings to see Buddha in physical form
According to their intellects

-Avatamsaka Sutra p.163

All the Buddhas
Are beyond all forms;
Who can understand this truth
Sees the Guide of the World.

-Avatamsaka p.169

All lands, wide and vast,
Billions of ages, inconceivable,
Can be shown in a moment’s span
In the enlightening being's concentration.

-Avatamsaka p.166

The ocean of sentient beings minds varies from moment to moment;
The Buddha's knowledge is so broad it comprehends all this,
Expounding the truth for them all, making them glad:
This is the liberation of Subtle Light

Buddha of yore for the sake of all beings
Cultivated an ocean of boundless compassion,
Entering birth and death along with all beings,
Teaching the masses, making them pure.

-Avatamsaka p.133

Buddha practice for boundless eons
Purifying and mastering transcendent vows;
Therefore he appears throughout the world

Saving beings forever and ever.

-Avatamsaka p.145

The Buddha-body, without distinction,
Fills the cosmos,
Able to manifest physical forms,
Teaching according to potentials.

-Avatamsaka p.168

In each mental moment
They observe all things
Abiding in the state of true thusness;
They comprehend the ocean of all phenomena.
In every Buddha-body For billions of ages, inconceivable,
They practiced ways of transcendence
And purified all the lands.

-The Avatamsaka Sutra (Flower Ornament Scripture) p.168

    The bodhisattva Paramarthasamudgata said to the Buddha: "In Benares, at Rsipatana in the Deer Park, the Blessed One first turned the wheel of doctrine, demonstrating the four noble truths for the followers of the hearers' vehicle. This turning of the wheel was marvelous and wonderful; it was such as nobody in the world, neither gods nor men, has turned before. Nevertheless, there were superior doctrines. The first turning gave rise to criticism, needed interpretation, and became an object of controversy.

    So then the Blessed One, with an implicit intention, turned the wheel for the second time for the sake of the followers of the great vehicle, explaining that all things are without essence, do not arise, are not destroyed, are quiescent from the beginning, and are originally in cessation. Nevertheless, there were teachings superior to this, for this also gave rise to criticism, needed interpretation, and became an object of controversy.

    So then the Blessed One, with an explicit intention, turned the wheel a third time for the sake of the followers of all vehicles, explaining that all things are without essence, do not arise, are not destroyed, are quiescent from the beginning, and are originally in cessation. This turning of the wheel is absolutely marvellous and wonderful. It is unsurpassed and does not give rise to criticism; it is explicit and does not become an object of controversy.

-Samdhinirmocana Sutra

    This passage highlights the Yogacara understanding of meanings and its interpretation. The first turning of the wheel includes the teachings of early Buddhists and of the Abhidharmikas, both of whom focused upon the four truths. These teachings are characterized as imperfect and in need of the Prajnaparamita negation, which ends in the position that all things are without essence (nihsvabhava) and empty (sunya). The Abhidharmika perspective (the first turning of the wheel), while not exactly false, thus needs to have its meaning (artha) interpreted or drawn out (neya). But even the second turning of the wheel, the Prajnaparamita perspective which issued in Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, does not, from the Yogacara perspective, make explicit the ground upon which its meaning is established, and so it too stands in need of interpretation. It is only the third turning of the wheel of the doctrine, Yogacara itself, that is beyond the need for such interpretation and its attendant controversies, for it does explicate the ground within conscious interiority for the meanings affirmed in its teachings. Yogacara is critically explicit (nitartha), since the ground for its meaning (artha) has been drawn out (nita) and made evident in the Yogacara critical evaluation of consciousness. It is important to note that the third turning of the wheel of doctrine does not differ from the second in terms of content, for exactly the same doctrinal themes are present in both. Emptiness is not rejected. Rather, Yogacara intends to critically ground the insights of the Prajnaparamita and the Madhyamaka. Yogacara is thus not a higher teaching, but an explanation or revealing (nirmocana) of meaning which had been previously hidden (samdhi).

-The Realm of Awakening, Griffiths, Hakamaya, Keenan, Swanson, Oxford, 1989 p. 5-6