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In Buddhist Cosmological and Soteriological Systems BSRV 31.1 (2014) 65–90 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (print) 0256-2897 doi: 10.1558/bsrv.v31i1.65 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (online) 1747-9681 The Meaning of ‘Mind-made Body’ (S. manomaya-kāya, C. yisheng shen 意生身) in Buddhist Cosmological and Soteriological systems SUMI LEE UCLA [email protected] ABSTRACT The ‘mind-made body’ (S. manomaya-kāya, C. yisheng shen 意生身) is seen as a subtle body attained by a Buddhist adept during meditative practice. Previ- ous research has elucidated this concept as having important doctrinal sig- nificance in the Buddhist cosmological system. The Pāli canonical evidence shows that the manomaya-kāya is not merely a spiritual byproduct of medi- tative training, but also a specific existential mode of being in the system of the three realms. Studies of the manomaya-kāya to date, however, have fo- cused mostly on early Pāli materials, and thus do not encompass theoretical development and soteriological significance of this notion in later tradition. As a beginning step to fill this gap, this article explores the meanings of the manomaya-kāya represented in the Śrīmālādevī Sūtra and the two treatises of the Ratnagotravibhāga Śāstra and the Foxing lun, which are doctrinally based on the Śrīmālādevī Sūtra in their discussion of the manomaya-kāya. Through the observation of the manomaya-kāya in these Mahāyāna texts, this article seeks to demonstrate how the concept is used in the broader cosmological and soteriological system of Mahāyāna tradition. For this purpose, I first review the meanings of the manomaya-kāya in early Buddhist texts and then observe the cosmological and soteriological meaning of the notion by ana- lyzing the theoretical connection between the three Mahāyāna texts. Keywords manomaya-kāya, antarā-bhava, Buddhist cosmology, mind, body, Śrīmālādevī Sūtra, Ratnagotravibhāga Śāstra, Foxing lun, Paramārtha Introduction Canonical texts from early Buddhism through to the Mahāyāna tradition make continuous reference to ‘mind-made body’ (S. manomaya-kāya, C. yisheng shen © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2014, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX 66 Sumi Lee 意生身), which is commonly known as a subtle body attained by a Buddhist adept during meditative practice. While the notion involves inner experiences not open to empirical checking and thus has been considered as representing the Buddhist mythological sphere, previous studies1 show that the manomaya-kāya has impor- tant doctrinal significance in the Buddhist cosmological system. These studies reveal that Buddhist adepts’ attainment of this special body, seen as capable of various supranormal activities, is associated with their existential advancement in Buddhist cosmological system. The studies on the manomaya-kāya to date, however, have focused mostly on Pāli materials. While they have substantially contributed to our understanding of this notion, they do not encompass the theoretical development and soteriologi- cal significance of the manomaya-kāya in Mahāyāna tradition. This article seeks to elucidate the later development of the notion to enable our systematic under- standing of it as a whole. To this end, it explores various phases of the meaning of the manomaya-kāya by connecting the previous scholarship on the Pāli sources with the doctrines in Mahāyāna scriptures and treatises. The first section will provide an overview of the previous scholarship on the meaning of manomaya-kāya presented in the Pāli sources, focusing on how or in what way the concept is related to the Buddhist cosmological system. Then, I will discuss another, distinct, meaning of the manomaya-kāya, as the mode of existence in the time between lives, as based on non-Pāli texts. The last and main section will examine the meaning of manomaya-kāya in Mahāyāna scriptures, in particular the Śrīmālā Sūtra, and related sixth and seventh century Chinese treatises, con- sidering how the manomaya-kāya concept is used in the Mahāyāna cosmological and soteriological system. Manomaya-kāya and meditation in Buddhist cosmology The term manomaya-kāya appears in various contexts in the Pāli canon, which provide it with different shades of meaning.2 Among these meanings, the 1. The representative studies on the notion of manomaya-kāya in this regard include: Johansson 1979, 34–39; Hamilton 1996, 144–155; Radich 2007, 224–287; Fukuhara 1960. 2. Michael David Radich divides a range of meanings of manomaya-kāya in the Pāli canon into three categories — (I) Buddhist practice and attainment, (II) cosmology, (III) views of other schools — which are again divided into nine subcategories altogether. The first category includes five subcategories of manomaya-kāya: (1) the body as part of a path of practice by practitioners bound for arhatship, (2) the body as the post-mortem destiny of disciples who achieve a certain level of attainment, (3) the body in which the Buddha visits the heaven of Brahmā, (4) the form in which the Buddha comes to a disciple to teach him (once), (5) the kind of body of a generous lay person reborn in a certain heaven. The second category is divided into two subcategories: (6) the form in which certain devas are incarnated in some heavens, (7) the form in which certain beings are reincarnated in the early part of a kalpa in various cosmogonic accounts. The third is divided into two: (8) one of a range of objects of identi- fication that can be mistaken for a permanent self, in a teaching where the Buddha refutes the notion of such a self, (9) part of one of seven nihilist views refuted by the Buddha in the Brahmajāla Sutta (Radich 2007, 224–247). The typical meaning of manomaya-kāya, that is, the special body produced during meditation, corresponds to the first of the nine subcategories in Radich’s division. In Radich’s list, although the category of (I) Buddhist practice and attain- ment and (II) cosmology are divided, the first category contains many elements that may be reduced into the second category. I provide a discussion in this section on the correlation between Buddhist practice and attainment and the Buddhist cosmology. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2014 The Meaning of ‘Mind-made Body’ in Buddhist Cosmological and Soteriological systems 67 manomaya-kāya is best known as a special body attained by a Buddhist practitio- ner during meditative practice. The Samaññaphala Sutta (DN I 47–85; Rhys Davids 1899, 65–95) provides an archetypal depiction of the manomaya-kāya of the Pāli texts. It lists a series of ‘fruits of the life of a recluse’ in a progressive way, includ- ing the manomaya-kāya as one of the ‘fruits’ attained in the later stage of spiritual development. After gaining the ‘fruits’ of the earlier stage, such as various levels of ‘moralities’, ‘self-restraint over the senses’, ‘mindfulness and self-possession’, and ‘contentment’, the practitioner will ‘choose some lonely spot’ and ‘keeps intelligence (sati) alert and intent’. Through this procedure, the practitioner’s mind finally concentrates and enters the four meditative absorptions (P. jhāna, S. dhyāna). It is in the fourth jhāna — the stage characterized by ‘pure self-pos- session and equanimity, without pain and without ease’ — that the practitioner creates the manomaya-kāya: He calls up from this body another body, having form, made of mind, having all (his own body’s) limbs and parts, not deprived of any organ. Just, O king, as if a man were to pull out a reed from its sheath. He would know: ‘This is the reed, this is the sheath. The reed is one thing, the sheath another. It is from the sheath that the reed has been drawn forth’. And similarly were he to take a snake out of its slough, or draw a sword from its scabbard. (DN I 77; Rhys Davids 1899, 87–88) This special body has the ability to perform many supranormal activities, such as ‘having been one, becoming many’ or ‘having been many, becoming one’, ‘becoming visible or invisible’, ‘going, feeling no obstruction, to the further side of a wall or rampart or hill, as if though air’, ‘penetrating up and down through solid ground, as if through water’, ‘walking on water without breaking through, as if on solid ground’, ‘traveling cross-legged in the sky like the birds on wing’, ‘touching and feeling the sun and moon’, ‘reaching in the body even up to the heaven of Brahmā’ . (DN I 77-78; Rhys Davids 1899, 88-89). Even if the Samaññaphala Sutta appears to describe the manomaya-kāya as sim- ply a product of meditative practice in this context, the creation of the manomaya- kāya during the specific meditative absorption ofjhāna has a strong cosmological connotation, which is consistent with the three levels of Buddhism’s cosmologi- cal system, i.e., sensuous realm (kāma-dhātu), pure form realm (rūpa-dhātu) and formless realm (arūpa-dhātu). In the Buddhist worldview, as we will see below, the practitioners’ moral and meditative attainment in previous lives determines their existential mode in one of the realms, and ‘mind-made’ (manomaya) is considered as the existential mode of the pure form realm. In view of this worldview, we may understand the Buddhist practitioners’ attainment of meditative absorption of jhāna and the subsequent creation of the manomaya-kāya not just as a supranor- mal experience during meditative practice, but as a preliminary sign of their advancement to a higher existential level in the Buddhist cosmological system. The Poṭṭhapāda Sutta has a passage that represents the correlation between the three levels of the cosmological system and three existential modes of the realms. In the text, the Buddha
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