[Footnote 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 santana, a succession or series of mental phenomena.  In the Pali books this doctrine is applied chiefly to the soul and psychological enquiries.  The Mahayana applied it to the external world and proved by ingenious arguments that nothing at all exists.  Similarly the doctrine of Karma is maintained, though it is seriously modified by the admission that merit can