Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 24-minute talk, Khensur Rinpoche clarifies a foundational puzzle: Buddha Śākyamūni was not a sentient being, but an emanation of an enjoyment body. He traces how a practitioner who attains Buddhahood manifests an enjoyment body, then emanates a form body to teach ordinary beings—since the enjoyment body itself cannot directly benefit them. This principle extends across the universe’s innumerable worlds. Rinpoche contrasts two paths to Buddhahood: the sūtra path, requiring three incalculable eons to accumulate positive potential and purify obscurations, and the tantra path, which accomplishes this in three years, one month, and fifteen days. He discusses the 32 signs and 80 marks of enlightenment and explains why both pure and impure emanation bodies exist, grounding the tantric principle that method precedes result.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-08-10 – Side 3 – KR.MP3
UUID: 00310204-a64b-41cc-8c54-b520ce3fbda0
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Ornament of Clear Realization
Date: 1989-08-10
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~847
So the the the the Sangye Śākyamūni, Buddha Śākyamūni. Buddha was not a sentient being. Was never a sentient being. Buddha Śākyamūni was an emanation of an enjoyment body. Now within the continuum of this enjoyment body there was a being, a sentient being who attained Buddhahood, who attained that enjoyment body.
So there was a sentient being who attained Buddhahood, attained that enjoyment body, who emanated an emanation body, which was Buddha Śākyamūni. Buddha Śākyamūni then, having been emanated, went on for the sake of sentient beings to display the 12 deeds of how to become a Buddha. Take ourselves as an example. We graduate through the various paths, up through the various paths. We get to the end of the continuum of being a sentient being.
In the next moment we attain Buddhahood. At that point we attain an enjoyment body. But this enjoyment body is not suitable to teach ordinary sentient beings. So being an enjoyment body we emanate a body, which is an emanation body, in order to teach ordinary sentient beings. This emanation body appears to take rebirth and goes through the various 12 deeds of the Buddha for the sake of displaying and teaching the sentient beings.
When when the when when Śākyamūni Buddha passed into Parinirvana. In the So the being attained Buddhahood achieved an enjoyment body. In order for it to benefit ordinary sentient beings, emanated an emanation body. This emanation body, as Buddha Śākyamūni, went on to enact the various deeds of a Buddha and taught the Dharma for the sentient beings. When those students no longer had the there were no students which could directly have the ability to directly perceive that emanation body, then the enjoyment body withdrew that emanation body because it was of no benefit any longer.
These students could no longer have the ability to perceive that emanation body. So it simply withdrew. The enjoyment body withdrew that emanation body. So the, you know, the enjoyment body, it was again emanated in another land in order to benefit other sentient beings. One.
10. 10. 100. Thousand. 10,000.
100,000. Million. 10,000,000. There’s a billion. There’s a billion.
There’s There’s a billion worlds within our universe. From beginning to the end, So there’s two different traditions according to sūtra and according to tantra. According to sūtra it takes an extremely long time, according to tantra it can be done very quickly. It takes three countless eons to accumulate the necessary positive potential. So we have to know it takes these three countless eons in order to gain the positive potential which is necessarily the empowerment to be able to abandon the obscuration.
Without abandoning the obscurations, we cannot attain Buddhahood. So we need to collect the two accumulations of positive potential. We do this once in each incalculable eon. So it takes one incalculable eon to collect the first accumulation on the path of accumulation and preparation. That takes one incalculable eon.
Then on the path of seeing and meditation, over these two paths there are 10 grounds. And it takes one incalculable eon to collect the accumulation, traversing the first of the seven grounds. And then it takes an incalculable eon to accumulate the positive potential to traverse the remaining three grounds, the eighth, ninth, and tenth. So it takes three incalculable eons. But at tantra you can go very quickly.
You can do it in three years, one month, and fifteen days. So the ornament has eight chapters. In the eighth chapter we take up the qualities of the Buddha and so therefore we take up the qualities of the emanation body and the enjoyment body. And these all 32 signs and 80 marks are listed there, so we’ll come to those. So Buddha Śākyamūni displayed the 32 signs and 80 marks.
And so we can’t say that just any ordinary being could see Buddha Śākyamūni, those who had enough merit. They weren’t highly realized. They just had enough merit to be able to meet with Buddha Śākyamūni. So they were able to perceive these signs. So it would take someone with some high degree of positive potential.
So the first is the actual generosity, actual giving. The second is the recollection of generosity. Yeah, you notice it says, Recollecting, remembering again and again the generosity. So the first is the perfection of actually giving. The second is the recollection of giving.
So these first six, the perfection, are from the point of view of practice. That is generating the mind, the mind of generosity, the mind of ethics as opposed to simply recollecting generosity, which would be the last, which would be the twelfth. Yeah. So there’s So there’s both at the level of sentient beings, are both pure and impure emanation bodies. You don’t have to attain the wisdom truth body to attain an emanation body.
So in the tantra there is wisdom and method. The method is the attainment of the emanation body. And so the method exists before the result.