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Doctrine

Buddhahood

Also Known As Full AwakeningOriginal Term Buddhatva
Salvation and Liberation

Buddhahood is the complete awakening of a buddha, and in the Mahayana it is set out as the destination of the bodhisattva path rather than as something one figure reached in the past. That is the point on which the Mahayana distinguished itself: earlier schools held out the arhat, one who is freed, while the Mahayana held that the freedom of a buddha is greater because it includes the capacity to bring others to it. The state is described through the three bodies, a body of truth that is what a buddha is, a body of enjoyment in which a buddha appears to advanced practitioners, and an emanation body in which a buddha appears in the world. Buddhahood is not the same as Buddha-nature: the nature is what is said to be already present, and buddhahood is its full expression.

Facts
Origins
Held By
All schools of Buddhism. The Mahayana sets buddhahood as the destination of the bodhisattva path rather than as an attainment reached once in the past. 1
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Theravada tradition generally holds buddhahood to be an extraordinarily rare attainment reached over countless lifetimes of preparation, historically achieved within this era only by Shakyamuni; Mahayana tradition holds buddhahood to be the universal destination of all beings via the bodhisattva path. 1
The Claim
The Claim
The state of complete awakening attained by a buddha, marked by the extinguishing of ignorance and craving and by omniscient insight into the nature of reality. 3
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 1Tradition: Mahayana
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 1
Doctrinal Category
Salvation and Liberation 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Buddha renders awakened one, from the root budh, to wake. The tradition distinguishes buddhahood from buddha-nature: the nature names what is said to be already present, and buddhahood its full expression. 2
Structure
Structure
Described through three bodies, the trikaya: a dharmakaya, which is what a buddha is; a sambhogakaya, in which a buddha appears to advanced practitioners; and a nirmanakaya, in which a buddha appears in the world. 1
Doctrinal category (class)
Last Things 4
Disputed
Point in Dispute
Whether buddhahood is open to every being without exception. The question was argued in China over the icchantika, a class of beings some Yogacara sources hold to be permanently cut off from it, against Tiantai and Huayan readings on which no being is excluded. 1
Learn More
The Three Bodies

The doctrine of the three bodies is how the Mahayana holds together two things that look incompatible: that a buddha is beyond all conditions, and that a buddha walked around northern India and had a bad back.

The dharmakaya, the body of truth, is what a buddha actually is. It is not a body in any ordinary sense but the unconditioned reality itself, identified with emptiness and with the nature of mind, and it is the same for all buddhas, which is why the tradition can say that all buddhas are one at that level.

The sambhogakaya, the body of enjoyment, is the form in which a buddha appears in a pure realm to advanced practitioners, adorned with the marks, teaching without interruption. Much of the visionary and iconographic material of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism describes buddhas at this level, which is why those figures are not treated as historical persons and are not thought of as inventions either.

The nirmanakaya, the body of emanation, is the form a buddha takes in an ordinary world, subject to birth, illness and death, adapted to what the beings there can receive. Shakyamuni is a nirmanakaya on this account.

Buddhahood so described is a greater attainment than that of the arhat, who is released from suffering but does not possess the full range of a buddha capacities. That comparison is the point at which the Mahayana distinguished itself, and the earlier schools did not accept the account of themselves that it implied.

Buddha-Nature, and the Argument Over Who Can Reach It

Buddhahood and buddha-nature are not the same thing and the distinction is easy to lose. Buddha-nature, tathagatagarbha, is what is said to be already present in beings; buddhahood is its unobstructed expression. The Ratnagotravibhaga sets out the classic account with a series of images: gold buried in filth, a treasure under a poor man house, an embryo in a womb, all of them things whose value is complete and merely hidden.

That doctrine created a difficulty the tradition argued about for centuries. If the nature is already present in everyone, then everyone will become a buddha, and the Lotus Sutra one vehicle teaching says exactly that. But some Yogacara texts sort beings into families, with those destined for the hearer path, the solitary buddha path and the bodhisattva path, and a class of icchantikas, beings said to be cut off from awakening altogether. The two positions cannot both stand as written.

East Asian Buddhism resolved it decisively in favour of universality, and the position that all sentient beings possess buddha-nature became standard there, with some Japanese schools extending it to plants and to the insentient world. Tibetan traditions kept arguing, and the dispute between reading the nature as empty of its own nature and reading it as empty only of what is extrinsic to it, the rangtong and shentong positions, remains a live division between schools rather than a settled question.

Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Buddhism, Religions
Gelug, Denominations

Buddhahood through the graded path culminating in tantra is this school's organizing goal, per its Lamrim curriculum.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Jonang, Denominations

Buddhahood is described as the uncovering of a reality already fully present, which follows from the other-emptiness reading.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Kagyu, Denominations

Buddhahood attainable within a single lifetime through tantric method is affirmed in this school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Karma Kagyu, Denominations

Buddhahood attainable within a single lifetime through tantric method is affirmed in this branch.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Mahayana, Denominations

Buddhahood as a goal open to all beings, not the achievement of one historical person, is this tradition's central claim.

Source Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal FoundationsPaul Williams
Nichiren, Denominations

Attaining buddhahood in this very body and present lifetime through the daimoku is this tradition's central claim.

Source The Writings of Nichiren (Gosho)Nichiren
Nichiren Shoshu, Denominations

Nichiren Shoshu holds Nichiren himself to be the true buddha of the latter age, the doctrine that separated it from the other Nichiren lineages and, in 1991, from Soka Gakkai.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Pure Land, Denominations

Rebirth in the Pure Land as the assured route to buddhahood is this tradition's central soteriological claim.

Source The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless LightLuis O. Gomez (translator and editor)
Rinzai, Denominations

Buddhahood is affirmed as reachable in this life through the koan curriculum under a teacher's examination.

Source Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: JapanHeinrich Dumoulin
Sakya, Denominations

Buddhahood attainable within a single lifetime through tantric method is affirmed in this school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Shingon, Denominations

Buddhahood attainable within a single lifetime through tantric method is this school's central claim, per its founder Kukai's doctrine of sokushin jobutsu.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Soka Gakkai, Denominations

Attaining buddhahood in this lifetime by ordinary lay people is the movement's central promise.

Source Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern JapanLevi McLaughlin
Soto, Denominations

Buddhahood is affirmed as realised in practice rather than after it, which follows from holding practice and realisation to be one.

Source Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: JapanHeinrich Dumoulin
Tibetan Buddhism, Denominations

Buddhahood attainable within a single lifetime through tantric method is affirmed across this tradition's schools.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Vajrayana, Denominations

Buddhahood attainable within a single lifetime through tantric method is this tradition's central soteriological claim.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Positions on This Question

Buddhahood in this very body (sokushin jobutsu), Beliefs & Restrictions

Buddhahood held to be attainable in this very body and this life, which is a claim about timing rather than a different account of what buddhahood is.

Jodo Shinshu, Denominations

Buddhahood is held in Jodo Shinshu, and Shinran's position is that birth in the Pure Land is itself the attainment of it rather than a further stage on the way to it.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Madhyamaka, Denominations

Buddhahood is held in Madhyamaka as the goal of the bodhisattva path.

Source Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal FoundationsPaul Williams
Nyingma, Denominations

Buddhahood is held in the Nyingma school as the goal, and the Dzogchen presentation of it as already present rather than produced is the school's distinctive account of what reaching it consists in.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Tendai, Denominations

Buddhahood is held in Tendai as the goal every vehicle is directed at.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Tiantai, Denominations

Buddhahood is held in Tiantai as the goal every vehicle is directed at, and the school holds it open in principle to every being and to beings in every realm.

Source Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai BuddhismBrook Ziporyn
Zen, Denominations

Buddhahood is held in Zen, and the school's characteristic claim is that it is realised rather than produced.

Source Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: JapanHeinrich Dumoulin

Related To

Buddha-nature, Doctrines

Buddha-nature is what is said to be already present; buddhahood is its full expression. They are not the same claim.

Sources
1. Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations
Paul Williams, Routledge, 1989
2. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2014entries on the three bodies, tathagatagarbha and the gotra schemeView the Source
3. The Foundations of Buddhism
Rupert Gethin, Oxford University Press, 1998View the Source
4. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism
John Powers, Snow Lion Publications, 2007View the Source
Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan
Levi McLaughlin, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2019
The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light
Luis O. Gomez (translator and editor), University of Hawaii Press, 1996
The Writings of Nichiren (Gosho)
NichirenView the Source
Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: Japan
Heinrich Dumoulin, World Wisdom, 2005
Ratnagotravibhaga (Uttaratantra Shastra)
Attributed to Maitreya, with commentary by Asangathe images of buddha-nature and its relation to full awakening

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