Body

Question 1

Human Body

Answer 1

• Human rebirth is one of the “six realms of existence”
• The human embodiment and its characteristics (attractiveness, health, wealth, class) depend on karma
• Insight Meditation on the body: the body is impure, and it is the sum of its parts
• The meditation on the female body as impure can be recurred to by celibate monastics as an antidote to lust
• The body as an object to observe the three marks of existence (impermanence, suffering, no-self)
• The human body is is impermanent: changes, subject to ageing and death
• It is a source of suffering: subject to illness and pain * It is not the self: remember the five aggregates

Question 2

The body of the buddha

Answer 2

altogether different matter:
SPLENDID BODY (not impure)

Thirty-two Characteristics of a Great Man (Skt. mahāpuruṣa lakṣaṇa)
* Wheels under the sole of his feet * Webbed hands and feet
* Golden skin
* Protuberance on the head
* Straight limbs * Long fingers
* Good teeth…

Question 3

SUBSTITUTES OF THE BUDDHA’S PRESENCE

Answer 3

Bodily RELICS i.e. in Stupas: When the relics are seen, the Buddha is seen”: Bones of the special dead are not
impure, but retain his sacred presence

VISUALIZATION PRACTICES: RECOLLECTING THE BUDDHA
* Need to encounter Buddhas on the path to Awakening
* Belief in other Buddhas presently alive and teaching
* Development of practices aiming at seeing/encountering these Buddhas
* Use of substitutes to the Buddha’s presence (esp. images) to witness aspirations to emulate them.

Question 4

Bodies of the Buddha

Answer 4

A) * rūpakāya (body of form): The phyisical body of the Buddha
B) * dharmakāya (body of dharma):
* The collection/body (kāya) of pure elements (dharmas) possessed by the Buddha, or factors that distinguish a Buddha
* The collection/body of his Teachings (Dharma)

Question 5

the 3 Buddha bodies

Answer 5

An influential model of embodiment was developed in the
Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkara (4th century CE Yogācāra treatise attributed to
Asaṅga):
(1) Dharmakāya,or“the body of Dharma”, the ultimate goal. HAS NO FORM, CANNOT BE DESCRIBED BY LANGUAGE
,this being the form in which buddhahood is embodied for the knowledge of (the) buddha(-hood) himself/itself.
(2) Sāṃbhogikakāya, or “embodiment(s) pertaining to common enjoyment”, i.e. the miraculous body endowed with the major and minor marks of the Great Man (mahā- puruṣa), which is golden, gigantic etc., and which is the body seen by congregations of advanced, “celestial” bodhisattvas when the Buddha preaches advanced discourses to them.
(3) Nairmāṇikakāya, or “embodiment(s) pertaining to illusory manifestation”, the ordinary mortal body in which he apparently was born in historical India in perhaps the sixth or fifth century BCE as the scion of a princely family, fled to the wilderness to undertake ascetic practices, was enlightened under the bodhi tree, preached for several decades, and passed away.

Question 6

BUDDHISM DOCETISM

Answer 6

• Doctrine defining the Buddha in contrast with what he appears (Gr. dokein) to be. Mostly apophatic in nature, although accompanied by positive corollaries, which Radich terms “miraculous-material” and “soteriological- transcendent”.
• The Buddha appears as a human person (born from a womb, child, ageing, suffering illness, eventually dying) as a teaching strategy only.