ootnote 94: Watters, vol. II. p. 38. "Spiritual essence" is Fa-shen
in Chinese, _i.e._ Dharma-kaya. Another passage is quoted to the
effect that "henceforth the observances of all my disciples constitute
the Tathagata's Fa-shen, eternal and imperishable."]

[Footnote 95: Mahaparinib. Sut. VI. i.]

[Footnote 96: Something similar might happen in English if think and
thing were pronounced in the same way and a thing were believed to be
that which we can think.]

[Footnote 97: See Ashtasahasrika Prajna-paramita, chap. IV, near
beginning.]

[Footnote 98: It is in this last point that no inferior intelligence
can follow the thought of a Buddha.]

[Footnote 99: _The Awakening of Faith_, Teitaro Suzuki, p. 59.]

CHAPTER XIX

MAHAYANIST METAPHYSICS

Thus the theory of the three bodies, especially of the Dharma-kaya, is
bound up with a theory of ontology. Metaphysics became a passion among
the travellers of the Great Vehicle as psychology had been in earlier
times. They may indeed be reproached with being bad Buddhists since
they insisted on speculating on those questions which Gotama had
declared to be unprofitable and incapable of an answer in human
language. He refused to pronounce on the whence, the whither and the
nature of things, but bade his disciples walk in the eightfold path
and analyse the human mind, because such analysis conduces to
spiritual progress. India was the last country in the world where such
restrictions were likely to be observed. Much Mahayanist literature is
not religious at all but simply metaphysics treated in an
authoritative and ecclesiastical manner. The nature and origin of the
world are discussed as freely as in the Vedanta and with similar
results: the old ethics and psychology receive scant attention. Yet
the difference is less than might be supposed. Anyone who reads these
treatises and notices the number of apparently eternal beings and the
talk about the universal mind is likely to think the old doctrine that
nothing has an atman or soul, has been forgotten. But this impression
is not correct; the doctrine of _Nairatmyam_ is asserted so
uncompromisingly that from one point of view it may be said that even
Buddhas do not exist. The meaning of this doctrine is that no being or
object contains an unchangeable permanent self, which lives unaltered
in the same or in different bodies. On the contrary individual
existences consist of nothing but a collection of skandhas or a
_s