Why So Many Buddhas

Yakushi, Amitābha, Kannon, Jizō, Mahāvairocana. As you visit the temples of Japan, you meet the names of many buddhas.

There is a clear reason for this. The key is the teaching of "one buddha per land" (ichibutsu ikkokudo): in one world, there is one buddha.

Over the long years after Śākyamuni passed away, Buddhism divided into these two streams. The first, sectarian Buddhism, is the older stream, which keeps and hands down a form close to the early teaching. Theravāda Buddhism, practiced today in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar, is its main representative.

The other, Mahāyāna Buddhism, arose a little later and aspires to save all living beings together. It reached Japan by way of China and the Korean peninsula, and the Buddhism of the temples where we pray today is this Mahāyāna Buddhism.

Sectarian Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhism both inherited this rule in the same way.

Why, then, is one buddha enough? The old sutras set a buddha beside a king: just as two kings do not rule one realm side by side, two buddhas do not exist together. The Questions of King Milinda also answers that if two buddhas appeared at once, disputes would arise among their disciples over "your buddha" and "our buddha." To guide one world, one buddha was thought to be enough.

If you count one world, there is one buddha. If you count countless worlds, there is a buddha in each of them, and the buddhas too are countless.

This difference in the number of worlds separated a Buddhism that looks to Śākyamuni alone from a Buddhism that looks to countless buddhas, beginning with Amitābha and Yakushi.

The buddha present in this world now is Śākyamuni alone. This view does not teach that buddhas are present in other worlds. Śākyamuni was born in India some 2,500 years ago and attained awakening. Sectarian Buddhism hands down the teaching of this one buddha, Śākyamuni.

This "one world" is very large. A world with Mount Sumeru (Shumisen) at its center, ringed by continents and seas, is counted as one small world. A thousand of these, times a thousand, times a thousand again, make a great trichiliocosm (sanzen daisen sekai): one billion small worlds.

This whole great trichiliocosm is the land of a single buddha. Its billion small worlds are taken together as one land, called a buddha-field (ichi bussetsu).

The great trichiliocosm in which we live is called the Sahā world (Shaba). The buddha who guides this world, its teaching lord (kyōshu), is Śākyamuni. "In one world there is one buddha" means that Śākyamuni alone is responsible for this entire vast world.

Sectarian texts state this view clearly. The southern Theravāda in the Kathāvatthu (Points of Controversy), and the northern Sarvāstivāda in the Nyāyānusāra, both reject the claim that "buddhas are now present in other worlds as well." Since the world is this one only, the present buddha is Śākyamuni alone.

Each of the countless worlds is the size of a great trichiliocosm, and each has its own buddha. Mahāyāna held that Śākyamuni is present in our Sahā world, Amitābha in the Land of Bliss (Gokuraku) far to the west, and Yakushi in the Pure Lapis Lazuli world (Jōruri) far to the east.

Here is the answer to our opening question. The buddhas we meet at Japanese temples are each, originally, the lord of a different world. Amitābha is the buddha of the Land of Bliss, Yakushi of the Pure Lapis Lazuli world, and Akṣobhya (Ashuku) of the eastern world of Abhirati (Myōki). Because their worlds differ, there is no contradiction in their being present at the same time.

Why, then, can we worship the buddhas of other worlds at temples here in the Sahā world? Because the buddhas of other worlds appear in this world in provisional forms to save its people. This is called manifestation (jigen). So Amitābha and Yakushi, while being lords of other worlds, work for us now as the principal images before our eyes.

The Mahāyāna sutras describe these countless buddhas. The Sukhāvatīvyūha (Muryōju-kyō) teaches the Land of Bliss, the Yakushi Sutra teaches the Pure Lapis Lazuli world, and the Lotus Sutra teaches the eternal Śākyamuni.

The leading example is Vairocana (Birushana) of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Kegon-kyō). Also called Rushana, this buddha is the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji in Nara. He is taught to be the buddha whose body is all the countless worlds.

The pedestal of the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji depicts this buddha's world. On each petal of the great lotus on which the Great Buddha sits, Mount Sumeru and the heavens are finely engraved. This is the world taught in the Brahmā's Net Sūtra (Bonmō-kyō). According to that sutra, a thousand Śākyamunis appear on the thousand petals surrounding the lotus pedestal. On each petal are ten billion lands, and in each land one Śākyamuni becomes a buddha ("one flower, ten billion lands; one land, one Śākyamuni"). The rule of one buddha per world holds here too. And all those countless Śākyamunis are the body of the one Rushana ("Rushana is the original body").

Esoteric Buddhism calls this buddha Mahāvairocana (Dainichi Nyorai). "Dainichi" renders Mahāvairocana, "the great Vairocana." If all worlds are taken together as one world, the buddha present there is also one. That buddha is Mahāvairocana. Mahāvairocana has as his body the whole of the worlds, the Dharma-realm (hokkai), and expounds the teaching unceasingly, in every place and at every time.

The Sūtra of Contemplating Samantabhadra (Kanfugen-gyō) says, "Śākyamuni is called Vairocana, pervading all places." The true body of the buddha that fills the Dharma-realm is called the dharmakāya (hosshin). Mahāvairocana is this dharmakāya buddha. The form Mahāvairocana shows in response to our world is called the responsive body (ōjin), and that is Śākyamuni. The Śākyamuni before us and Mahāvairocana are two forms of the same buddha. Kōbō Daishi Kūkai understood the Rushana of the Avataṃsaka in a new light, as the dharmakāya buddha who himself expounds the teaching.

Amitābha, Yakushi, Mahāvairocana, the historical Śākyamuni: there is no contradiction in enshrining them together in one temple. Japanese Buddhism stands on the Mahāyāna view that "there are as many buddhas as there are worlds."

On the Shikoku 88-temple pilgrimage, the principal image differs from temple to temple: Yakushi, Mahāvairocana, Kannon, Jizō. To go from one to the next, worshipping each, is also to walk within the Mahāyāna teaching that "there are as many buddhas as there are worlds."

Byodoji is a temple of the Kōyasan Shingon school and Temple 22 of the Shikoku Pilgrimage. The Shingon school reveres Mahāvairocana, who pervades all worlds, as the source of all buddhas. Mahāvairocana is the buddha who unites every virtue in one; this is called fumon sōtai, the all-encompassing whole. Byodoji enshrines as its principal image Yakushi of the eastern Pure Lapis Lazuli world, the buddha who expresses one of those virtues. This is called ichimon betsutoku, one gate with its particular virtue.

Kōbō Daishi also taught attaining buddhahood in this very body (sokushin jōbutsu): becoming a buddha just as one is. We are connected with Mahāvairocana from the very beginning. Joining the hands, reciting mantras (shingon), and turning the heart toward the buddha: these acts of body, speech, and mind are called the three secrets (sanmitsu), and it is taught that through the practice of the three secrets, awakening quickly appears.

This answer was originally part of the teaching on the Buddha's wisdom. The Buddha distinguishes what is possible from what is impossible. "Two buddhas in one world is impossible" was counted among the impossible things.

The phrase goes back to very old sutras close to Śākyamuni's own time. It survives in almost the same words in the Pali sutras handed down in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, and in the "Sūtra of Many Elements" (Takai-kyō) of the Madhyama-āgama (Chū agon-kyō) translated into Chinese. It is an answer shared by all of Buddhism from before the division into sects. As we have seen, the later divergence concerned one point only: the number of worlds.

First, the Sarvāstivāda, which flourished in the north, set out with reasons why two buddhas do not appear at the same time.