In the Buddha's Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi [24]
Perhaps in interpreting a body of ancient religious literature we can never fully avoid inserting ourselves and our own values into the subject we are interpreting. However, though we may never achieve perfect transparency, we can limit the impact of personal bias upon the process of interpretation by giving the words of the texts due respect. When we pay this act of homage to the Nikāyas, when we take seriously their own account of the background to the Buddha’s manifestation in the world, we will see that they ascribe to his mission nothing short of a cosmic scope. Against the background of a universe with no conceivable bounds in time, a universe within which living beings enveloped in the darkness of ignorance wander along bound to the suffering of old age, sickness, and death, the Buddha arrives as the “torchbearer of humankind” (ukkādhāro manussānaṃ) bringing the light of wisdom.1 In the words of Text II,1, his arising in the world is “the manifestation of great vision, of great light, of great radiance.” Having discovered for himself the perfect peace of liberation, he kindles for us the light of knowledge, which reveals both the truths that we must see for ourselves and the path of practice that culminates in this liberating vision.
According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha Gotama is not merely one unique individual who puts in an unprecedented appearance on the stage of human history and then bows out forever. He is, rather, the fulfillment of a primordial archetype, the most recent member of a cosmic “dynasty” of Buddhas constituted by numberless Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past and sustained by Perfectly Enlightened Ones continuing indefinitely onward into the future. Early Buddhism, even in the archaic root texts of the Nikāyas, already recognizes a plurality of Buddhas who all conform to certain fixed patterns of behavior, the broad outlines of which are described in the opening sections of the Mahāpadāna Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 14, not represented in the present anthology). The word “Tathāgata,” which the texts use as an epithet for a Buddha, points to this fulfillment of a primordial archetype. The word means both “the one who has come thus” (tath̄ ̄gata), that is, who has come into our midst in the same way that the Buddhas of the past have come; and “the one who has gone thus” (tath̄ gata), that is, who has gone to the ultimate peace, Nibbāna, in the same way that the Buddhas of the past have gone.
Though the Nikāyas stipulate that in any given world system, at any given time, only one Perfectly Enlightened Buddha can arise, the arising of Buddhas is intrinsic to the cosmic process. Like a meteor against the blackness of the night sky, from time to time a Buddha will appear against the backdrop of boundless space and time, lighting up the spiritual firmament of the world, shedding the brilliance of his wisdom upon those capable of seeing the truths that he illuminates. The being who is to become a Buddha is called, in Pāli, a bodhisatta, a word better known in the Sanskrit form, bodhisattva. According to common Buddhist tradition, a bodhisatta is one who undertakes a long course of spiritual development consciously motivated by the aspiration to attain future Buddhahood.2 Inspired and sustained by great compassion for living beings mired in the suffering of birth and death, a bodhisatta fulfills, over many eons of cosmic time, the difficult course needed to fully master the requisites for supreme enlightenment. When all these requisites are complete, he attains Buddhahood in order to establish the Dhamma in the world. A Buddha discovers the long-lost path to liberation, the “ancient path” traveled by the Buddhas of the past that culminates in the boundless freedom of Nibbāna. Having found the path and traveled it to its end, he then teaches it in all its fullness to humanity so that many others can enter the way to final liberation.
This, however, does not exhaust the function of a Buddha. A Buddha understands