by Harvey Kraft
Universal Radiance Buddha embodied three properties of the Universe: its emergence, amplification, and boundless wisdom.
First, this Buddha represented the immense spark and birth of the Universe as light emerged on a colossal scale from the moment the Buddha manifested in the Field of Form.
Second, he represented the whole body and mind of the Universe in amplification mode. From him emanated countless Buddha-worlds filling the boundless expanse of the Universe. In every direction they were organized into networks, filaments, and ever-expanding clouds of innumerable stars.
All is expounded in these networks of light . . .
Some see the Buddhas as various lights
Some see Buddhas as oceans of worlds and clouds of light . . .
They fill the cosmos, without any bounds.132
Buddha-stars formed into groups of stars. The sutra described them as “clusters of stars,” “clouds of light,” and “oceans of worlds,” evoking images of constellations, galaxies, nebulae, and cosmic dust formations. It also referred to “networks of light” forming webs of light-emitting Buddhas, and “ornamental strands” referred to garlands of Buddha-stars, a vision of strings of galaxies integrated into nets of cosmic filaments.
Third, he embodied the source of infinite wisdom; his body and mind were the essence of cosmic wisdom personified in a Buddha. Together Vairochana and the innumerable Buddhas emanating from him offered a vision of infinite wisdom permeating everywhere and forever.
This model of the Universe, personified as an archetypal enlightened being producing infinite multiples, equated light with the spread of life throughout the Universe. It asserted that the infinite wisdom of a Buddha was the power source that gave rise to the Universe. It described it as a fountainhead releasing the energy that animated Existence across all space, time, and scale, and as the source of the creative impetus that gave rise to living worlds and living beings.
There is no end of worlds in all directions.
No equals. No bounds, yet each is distinct.
The Buddha’s unhindered power emits a great light
Clearly revealing all of those lands.133
The ancient myths of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Vedic hymns of the Arya had personified celestial bodies as deities. Now Sakamuni Buddha used the mythic dream language to advance an alternative cos-mological vision. He replaced the depiction of celestial bodies as gods with Buddhas.
The Buddhas names are equal to the worlds,
filling all lands in the ten directions . . .
The realm of a Buddha has no bounds—
In an instant the cosmos is filled.134
This vision introduced the Cosmology of Infinite Wisdom. Herein, Buddhas emitting the starlight of infinite wisdom were manifested as a Universe filled with stars destined to transform into enlightened lands. This Buddha-centric Universe permeated with Buddha-stars continuously emitting the light of infinite wisdom across boundless space. At its core, every light-emitting star was a Buddha’s Wisdom-body, a cauldron of energy and the fountainhead of life.
The concept of a Buddha filling the cosmos with Buddha-worlds in an instant reflected the emergence of the Universe at an inconceivable rate and forever expanding in all directions. At the dawn of the Universe, the light of Universal Radiance Buddha expanded out into innumerable Buddha-worlds, just as a Lotus flower’s petals open and extend when sunlight falls upon the flower. From the first burst of light at the origination point of the Universe, the wisdom-light emitted by Universal Radiance Buddha permeated everywhere and opened the gate for innumerable Buddhas to manifest and form into a multi-galactic Universe.
Each tip of (Vairochana’s) hair strands contained numerous worlds, the spaces between those worlds so far apart there could be no chance of interference among them, each world manifesting immeasurable spiritual powers and teachings for civilizing all living beings.135
Each strand of the colossal Buddha’s hair was likened to an ocean of space that knew no bounds. Even the tip of a single strand represented a breathtakingly large space. In it the distance between stars was so great that none could ever touch. As the light of the Universe expanded, more and more Buddha-worlds emerged, continuously producing more Buddha-world copies at various times, in various places, and at various levels of scale—all this activity for the purpose of advancing Life.
Within the scope of the Infinite Wisdom macrocosm, the stars throughout the star-studded Universe were Buddhas, suggesting that the sun was inherently a Buddha, too. In mythic terms each star where living beings may exist, like the sun’s solar system, would be the home of a Cosmic Mountain world-system.
The network of star-systems filled the boundless Universe with conscious life forms, like the web of a spider, an echo of the Sumerian Goddess Uttu. The Infinite Wisdom Cosmology had the power of multiplicity, flexibility, and diversity, and was able to manifest in the form of a Universe, person, or atom. It inherently possessed the ability to duplicate any manifestation multiple times, yet with each copy it could produce a unique variant. This process explained why no two people were exactly alike, even though all people shared a common model.
The title of the Flower Garland Sutra alluded to countless Buddha-worlds strung together like garlands of lotus blossoms. This image referred to the multiplicity of innumerable Buddhas, past, present, and future. It revealed that Siddhartha Gautama was not the first Buddha in Existence, nor was he one of a kind. Yet the appearance of a Buddha as a teacher was a rare event to be cherished by those fortunate enough to encounter one. Each Buddha was a unique expression of enlightenment, but all the Buddhas embraced a common goal: to foster evolution.
ESSENCE
The Buddhas possessed the powers of manifestation, multiplicity, diversity, and reformulation—factors that made evolution possible. But they only offered an opportunity to evolve; Evolution itself was up to its participants. The role of Buddhas was to help living beings advance their evolutionary journey from ignorance to wisdom regardless of how many cycles of birth, death, and rebirth it may take.
Given the vast expanse of space and time between everything in the Universe and the innumerable numbers of beings it could manifest, it was implied that it would very unlikely for a person to meet a Buddha-Teacher in any of a million lifetimes. These impossible odds imparted to the Buddha’s disciples was that in this particular time and place, Sakamuni was to be treasured as the one who had come to lead this world with the light of his Buddhahood. According to the Infinite Wisdom Cosmology, the purpose of the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth was to manifest living copies of himself as Buddhas, each as a unique being and each similarly making additional Buddha-body copies, and on and on. Many in the audience realized this was a once-in-countless-lifetimes opportunity to be in the presence of the Buddha who came to transform the World of Enduring Suffering (Skt. Saha).
The range of scale across the Infinite Wisdom Cosmology included infinitesimal worlds. Here the Flower Garland Sutra declared each atom to be the site of a Buddha, and that infinite Buddha-centric atoms populated the microcosm throughout all time.
In every atom he sets up an enlightenment site . . ,
A Buddha appears everywhere,
in infinite lands; in each atom, too,
the realms therein are all infinite
in all (these infinite lands) he abides for endless eons . . . 136
Ancient Vedic seers had proposed that the entirety of large-scale Existence had emerged forth from “an infinitesimal spec,” a monad (Skt. Paramanu) described as a unit of dust too small to be considered a particle. As the Paramanu existed for less than a measurable length of time, it also represented the shortest possible increment of time. They further observed that two such monads formed one atom (Skt. Anu), described as a “grain of Heavenly Stardust.” Form could be as microcosmic as an Anu or as macrocosmic as a Universe.
In Sakamuni Buddha’s micro-scale Infinite Wisdom Cosmology, one Paramanu did not qualify independently as a Form of an
y kind. The two-part Anu formed the nucleus at the core of Existence. The smallest definition of Form in the Threefold Field of Existence was the Anu, a binary essence at an infinitesimal scale. Inherent in his articulation of structure was the thesis that nothing could exist in the Field of Form as a singular unit; all things in Existence, regardless of scale, had to be composite constructs—a temporary union of two or more related units. Therefore, there could be no absolute, no singular, wholly independent unit in a totally relational realm of Existence.
In regards to scale, the binary Anu was itself a relative measure. An uncountable number of Anu could fill the head of a pin, and an innumerable number could form a star. But for relativity to take place, Existence required there be more than one composite at any time, and required that each composite be made of no less than two constituent units, thus eliminating the possibility of an absolute anything.
Observing the changing nature of all things, the Buddha proposed the Doctrine of Perpetual Transience. Every entity constituted a composite relationship of elements for a limited period of time. Therefore, any manifestation by its very nature must be temporary, coming into being only when components bonded or composites engaged and ceasing to exist when the relationships could no longer hold together.
In the Buddha’s system of relational Existence the absence of an absolute Form did not preclude an underlying formless essence permeating all forms. This universal permeation was the infinite wisdom of a Buddha described as a Buddha’s Wisdom-body, a body of information that could not be expressed either in terms of existing or not existing.
This Buddha-essence at the core of everything referred to the presence of Perfect Enlightenment endowed in all temporal things. While this wisdom transcended existence, as it had no Form of its own, it was inseparable and indistinguishable from the manifestation of phenomena.
Although he was formerly the master stargazer of Esagila, a learned observer of the stars, and expert conceptual cosmologist, his Infinite Wisdom Cosmology proved that Sakamuni’s vision was of unfathomable scope and interactivity. Far ahead of knowledge in this time and for that matter for millennia to come, his Infinite Wisdom Cosmology confirmed that Sakamuni was the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth and that he was the most skilled shaman-seer ever to undertake distance viewing.
What he actually saw, however, was well beyond the physical realm of light-emitting celestial bodies, or their wondrous congregations in space, or the atoms that composed them. He saw layers of scale, dimensional folds, relative existence, and universal laws underlying the interplay in all that existed.
Through this enlightened view of cosmology, he provided a profound definition of a Buddha as the embodiment of infinite wisdom, able to manifest in whatever form was required for the purpose of advancing evolution. Simultaneously transcendent and transforming, the goal of Buddhahood provided the spark, engine, and vehicle of Life. This meant that everything without exception had to be enlightened in its essence—at every inflection point of Existence, everywhere, no matter its appearance or condition, across an infinite range of manifestations, regardless of time, space, scale, or dimension.
CHANGE
The Threefold Field of Form, Formlessness, and Desire provided a flexible mechanism upon which the world could exist. The concept of “world” in the Buddhist context referred to three features: condition, context and composition. The physical “world” was the biosphere of Existence (Skt. Gaya), but first and foremost it referred to a state of being defined by an emotional, mental, and spiritual condition.
Every phenomenon came with its own contextual world. Whenever the phenomena or the context changed so did the condition of existence. The condition of a world referred to one of many possible conditions at a particular point in time, and because it was conditional, it was changeable.
People experienced condition in relation to their environment. The world around them, the “contextual world,” consisted of various conditions, psychological, emotional, spiritual, or physical. For example, a joyful condition described a person’s “inner world” in the state of happiness, which could be expressed in any of the above ways.
Changes in one’s conditional state or contextual situation could change a person’s “world.”
The third feature of a “world” referred to its composition.
A world was made of combinations, themselves parts of interconnected and integrated composites. For example, a person’s body was a “world” formed of a collection of biological systems, and they, in turn, were a “world” composed of cells, organs, fluids, limbs, thoughts, and so on, scaling down infinitesimally, ad infinitum into “worlds within worlds.” From a different perspective, that same person was a constituent part of a family “world,” and it, in turn, was part of a culture, territory, solar system, and so on, ad infinitum.
As long as a “world” held together, when its constituent parts or circumstances changed, the condition of that entire world would need to change. Conversely, if a composite could no longer hold together, “its world” would cease to exist and require a renewal of interactions to manifest again. In any case, when the condition, context or composition of a “world” changed, its state would undergo a process of renewal.
The Buddha’s Infinite Wisdom Cosmology defined a dynamic “world of worlds” in perpetual transience. Within this dynamic cosmogony of constantly transforming worlds underlying the experience of Existence, the Buddhas had mastered the skill of manifesting, composing, reconditioning and reconstituting worlds of various unstable conditional states into Buddha-worlds.
The built-in changeability of the Universe would support the Buddhas in their effort to employ an evolutionary route in the development of beings toward higher consciousness. Their goal would be to lift the “world” to a state of infinite wisdom while attempting to navigate through the ever-changing conditions of suffering. Buddhas, each possessing the wisdom of Universal Truth (Buddha-Dharma) perpetuated this vast journey, guiding living beings from lower to higher conditions, and transmuting primitive composites to more advanced ones.
For this reason Buddha-Teachers designed enlightening ways by which disciples might advance through the gates of liberation to free their minds from a world bounded by time, space and scale:
There was a gateway to liberation (from the bounds of time) named: “Showing in an Instant Both the Formation and the Decay of Past, Present, and Future Ages throughout Space” . . .
There was another gateway to liberation (from the bounds of space) named: “Ability to Make Various Bodies Appear by Mystic Powers Throughout the Boundless Cosmos” . . .
At this assembly, where we see a Buddha sitting (as a bright star), so it is also (that we see a Buddha sitting) in every atom; A Buddha’s body has no coming or going, and clearly appears in all the lands of Existence . . . The realm of a Buddha has no bounds (as to scale). In an instant the cosmos is filled (with Buddhas) and in every atom (Buddhas) set up an enlightenment site. Thus, all things (at any scale) embody the mystic displays (of enlightenment) as they manifest.137
Sakamuni’s audience had been left to contemplate the implications of such a flexible, scalable, interchangeable, and boundless universal super-structure endowed with enlightenment throughout time, space, and scale.
ENLIGHTENING BEINGS
Across the Universe the numerous Buddha star-systems were fertile ground for the appearance of Enlightening Beings (i.e., Bodhisattvas). The Flower Garland Sutra introduced these advocates and practitioners of infinite wisdom. Enlightening Beings dotted the cosmic landscape, everywhere adopting life-sustaining or life-enhancing activities and roles. They were dedicated to following Buddhas across time and space. They took on efforts to support Buddhas in advancing life and its evolution across the Universe.
To become a Bodhisattva required multiple numbers of lifetimes of internships under the tutelage of a Buddha learning to use Buddhist compassion for the development of others. All across the Universe they honed their skills i
n stages, selflessly dedicated to inspiring others towards enlightenment with no regard for their own reward.
In the early stage of the Infinite Wisdom Cosmology, following the Buddha-stars, Enlightening Beings manifested as celestial bodies, such as population-bearing worlds (i.e., planets), or providers of light at night (i.e., moons), or interplanetary carriers of precious elemental Stardust. To illustrate this, whereas a star like the Sun would produce the sunlight essential to life, an Enlightening Being would manifest as a living planet, like Earth. In mythic terms, the Sun, Earth, and Moon constituted the partnership of a Buddha with a pair of celestial Bodhisattvas.
Egyptians imagined that a host of celestial entities, like a comet, asteroid, meteor, meteorite, or other free celestial bodies, were carriers of Stardust originating from stargates, bringing to Earth the star-born seeds of elemental life. Similarly, the Enlightening Beings embraced a selfless role devoted to seeding, fostering, and advancing life throughout the Universe. They first appeared at the launch of the evolutionary process to prime the pump for advancement and later manifested as biological forms to aid Buddhas in promoting the proliferation and advancement of living beings until they awakened to their inherent Buddha-wisdom.
Vast multitudes of beings, beyond any bounds mindfully receive the protection of the One-Who-Comes. The turning of the proper Dharma Wheel reaches all Such is the power of Vairochana’s realm.138
The form of manifestation a Buddha would take could be simply the one most expedient to the need at hand. Buddhas could appear as stars for the purpose of sparking the elements needed in the Universe for the eventual development of communities of beings. At various points in the evolving cycle of existence, a Buddha may appear in whatever form was required to foster the forward evolution of life.
Following the logic of such an unfolding drama, when the time was ripe for it, Sakamuni Buddha manifested in human form for the sake of setting humanity on the course toward Enlightenment. And just as Enlightening Beings always assisted Buddhas throughout the Universe, according to this cosmological treatise, it would be reasonable to assume that he too could expect them to join him. These individuals in human form would selflessly dedicate themselves to the practice of liberating humankind from sorrows through their active compassion—facilitating the advance of wisdom for the alleviation of suffering wherever they find it.
