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Chasing Maitreya A Survey of the Buddha

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Claire Villarreal


Buddhist Wisdom Texts, fall 2007

December 8, 2007


Chasing Maitreya


A Survey of the Buddha Maitreya Through Buddhist and Manichaean Writings


O bhikkhus, this bhikkhu Ratna is not an ordinary person; he is a future buddha; at the end of sixteen kalpas, he will become a great buddha like myself by the name of Maitreya.


For more than 2,500 years Buddhists from every branch of the Dharma tree have found comfort in the thought that no matter how bad things get here on Jambudvipa, someday the next buddha will come to this world-system and provide easy access to nirvāna for those fortunate enough to be his students. Perhaps not surprisingly, for nearly 2,500 years Buddhists have wondered what life at that time might be like, how much longer the world’s decline will last, and related questions about the end of Śakyamuni Buddha’s dharma and the beginning of Maitreya Buddha’s. This paper will outline the development of the identity of Maitreya, conditions in his future paradisiacal time, and the ways the Manichaean tradition appropriated the Maitreya myth to serve in their own narrative of the birth and death of the human world.


The Manichaean portion of Maitreya’s history will come almost a millennium after his “birth” into the Early Buddhist tradition, but his initial contact with the Iranian world may have come much earlier. There seems to be no conclusive evidence available on this subject, but scholars have speculated for decades that Indo-Iranian contact may underlie the origins of the Future Buddha. Maitreya appears in Northern Indian texts by the third century BCE and already seems to share some traits of Mithra Invictus. Arguments have also been made for a purely Indian origin, noting that the Jain tradition mentions such a figure as well.


Whatever forces may have helped to forge Maitreya, we can safely make two statements about his presence in the Buddhist tradition: It was early, and it was pervasive. Part of the explanation for his presence in all major schools of Buddhism is the appeal of his myth. Not long after the time of the historical Buddha, texts already attest to a prediction that the next being to achieve buddhahood will be the bodhisattva Maitreya. According to Pāli and Sinhala sources, after Śakyamuni’s teachings (the decline of which will be addressed below) have disappeared from the world, another prince (this time named Ajita) will be born to another set of royal parents, will renounce another kingdom, and will take up his seat beneath another tree in a tale corresponding closely with the myths surrounding Śakyamuni’s own enlightenment story.


Maitreya has thus already received his prophecy from a buddha that he will in the future become a wheel-turning buddha himself; this was considered a prerequisite for bodhisattva-hood in the Early tradition along with being able to attain nirvāna in one’s current life but choosing to renounce that option for the specific purpose of attaining buddhahood once the teachings of the current buddha have passed from the world. Because he meets these conditions, Maitreya is legitimated as the hope for the future regeneration of the dharma. Since Maitreya is believed to exist already and will be born into this world system at the proper time, where is he now? From very early in the tradition, Maitreya is described as abiding in Tusita, his own heavenly realm, until conditions in our world-system are right for him to take birth into it. Descriptions of his paradise are fantastic and alluring.


Descriptions in the Anāgatavamsa Desanā (the Sermon of the Chronicle-to-Be) of the time at which Maitreya will come are equally fantastic and “seem to reflect all of the wonders of the villagers’ imagination of heavenly existence…and constitute a direct antithesis to the life-style of the ascetic”:


At that time, Jambūdvīpa with all its [area of] ten thousand yojanas will be similar to the [paradisiacal] kingdom of Ketumatī, being as prosperous as a wedding house in season…. [M]en and women will wash and bathe in ponds with banks of white sands upon which stairs made of the seven types of gems lead down. These ponds will be frequented by swans and other birds and will always be covered by five types of water lilies. People will wear heavenly scents and creams, wreaths of divine flowers, selected ornaments…. They will enjoy the taste of heavenly-scented rice, sit and lie on comfortable beds with heavenly bedspreads, sleep while listening to music and watch the dancing of artists who resemble the artists in heaven…. They will be especially happy when they see their great wealth of cash, grains, elephants, horses, servants and laborers. As their minds will be full of happiness, they will enjoy this life full of luxury and comfort. None of them will suffer from the ninety-eight or ninety-nine types of illness nor from the two hundred and three accidents.


The Chronicle-to-Be offers instructions geared toward lay followers for attaining rebirth at the time of Maitreya, many of them emphasizing generosity in supporting the monastic order. Intensive practices such as performing certain types of meditations, ordaining, etc., are not required.


One might wonder why special prayers and aspirations would be necessary in order to assure rebirth when Maitreya is active. After all, unless a given being has already attained nirvāna, surely she will still exist in the world system when Maitreya teaches. Naturally she would still exist in samsara in one form or another, but she could have the bad fortune to be an animal when Maitreya turns the Wheel of Dharma, or she could be in a hell realm, or even if she is once again human, she could live in an area where no one hears of Maitreya’s teachings. Making merit and strengthening intentions to take birth so as to be one of Maitreya’s disciples are thus high-value dharmic activities, especially for a lay audience who might feel that they had little chance of attaining nirvāna during the current unfortunate age (kali yurga).


Turning now from the Early tradition into the transitional period and thence into Mahāyāna proper, we find the bodhisattva landscape changing under Maitreya’s feet, so to speak. In Early Buddhism the number of bodhisattvas was very limited. The Buddha in his various rebirths as the bodhisattva, as portrayed in the Jātāka tales, was the primary bodhisattva of the tradition. The bodhisattva Maitreya was the only currently existing bodhisattva (now that Śakyamuni Buddha had attained enlightenment), but he still lived and taught in Tusita heaven. The number of bodhisattvas was thus extremely limited, and neither figure was held up as an archetype for the average practitioner to emulate. Not even the nirvāna-oriented monastics and virtuosi aspired to bodhisattva status, since doing so required a buddha to prophesy one’s eventual buddhahood.


However, in the Ugrapariprcchā we find not just monastics but laymen aspiring to bodhisattva status. Significantly, they aspire to full buddhahood someday but understand that as meaning buddhahood in order to bring their followers to nirvāna, not to the bodhisattva path which leads to buddhahood. But by the eighth century when Śāntideva writes his Bodhicaryāvatāra, Mahayanists had not only developed the bodhisattva-yāna but also the ekayāna, which assumes that in reality there is only one true Buddhist vehicle, the bodhisattva path leading to perfect buddhahood, the stages of which every living being will sooner or later tread—even those who have already attained nirvāna.


The Bodhicaryāvatāra can be taken as a paradigmatic Mahāyāna training manual for the aspiring bodhisattva, and its instructions vary considerably in some ways from the Ugra’s, which conform to earlier (but still not entirely Early) beliefs about the role of the bodhisattva, as discussed in my previous paper. For the purposes of this paper, however, the most relevant aspects of the Bodhicaryāvatāra are its opening of the path to its entire audience and its emphasis in the tenth chapter on making soteriological aspirations. In this case, however, one makes aspirations not for one’s own future rebirth into Maitreya’s pure land or into his time in

the human realm, but rather for one’s own eventual career as a celestial bodhisattva or a buddha. This is a major shift from the “phantasmagoric” portrait of a perfect life as a reward for good behavior designed to reach the average lay practitioner, for whom nirvāna, let alone buddhahood, seemed all but unattainable. And yet there is still an element of the fantastic in the unrestrained delight of the tenth chapter: “In this way, through my skillful deeds, may those in hell rejoice at beholding these clouds, bearing cool, sweet-scented breezes and showers of well-being, on which Bodhisattvas are revealed, with Samantabhadra at their head.” (10.15)


The difference between making aspirations for one’s own future enjoyment of the wonders of Maitreya’s time and/or realm and making aspirations to become the agent of such wonders for others is significant. One could speculate that it signals a shift from a narrative designed to appeal to villagers who assumed they had only a remote chance at nirvāna without the ideal conditions with which Maitreya is associated, to a narrative designed to inspire the serious monastic practitioner to work toward buddhahood despite the difficulty of achieving the goal. It is noteworthy that the element of the fantastic persists as the tradition changes and is re-contextualized into the bodhisattva-yānā.


 Thus Śāntideva assumes that complete buddhahood dedicated to the salvation of others is a realistic goal:  “In the same way as bygone Sugatas took up the Awakening Mind, in the same way as they progressed in the Bodhisattva training, so too I myself shall generate the Awakening Mind for the welfare of the world; and just so shall I train in those precepts in due order.” (3.22-23).  Of course, buddhahood takes three countless eons of constant effort, but it is—in the Mahāyāna—attainable nonetheless.


With this change in the role of the bodhisattva from the Early tradition to the Mahāyāna tradition, the way Maitreya is portrayed also changes. No longer is he the only bodhisattva in the world system; there are countless celestial bodhisattvas, as the following passage from the Lotus Sutra illustrates: “[T]he earth of the thousand-millionfold countries of the saha world all trembled and split open, and out of it emerged at the same instant immeasurable thousands, ten thousands, millions of bodhisattvas and mahasattvas.”


If Maitreya is no longer unique in his status of bodhisattva—if, in fact, the very practitioner reading or hearing a given text might consider himself a bodhisattva—then veneration of Maitreya no longer rests on his status as the only buddha-in-training. Indeed, in the Lotus Sutra he appears as subordinate to Manjushri, who answers the questions Maitreya asks and informs Maitreya of his own previous life as the bodhisattva Seeker of Fame.


What benefit is there to downgrading Maitreya in this way? One possibility, suggested by Alan Sponberg, is that by portraying Maitreya as very much still in training, the Lotus Sutra offers encouragement to its bodhisattva-yāna-oriented audience, many of whom presumably had difficulty at times in pursuing the lofty goal of buddhahood. The Early Buddhist Maitreya is already all but enlightened; he simply awaits the proper circumstances on earth to begin his final lifetime. This classical Mahāyāna Maitreya clearly has some work left to do. And yet, despite Manjushri’s superior wisdom, Maitreya will be the next buddha to turn the Wheel of Dharma.


There are two other aspects of the Mahāyāna Maitreya to consider before we move into the overlaps between Manichaean and the Maitreya myth. First, there is the possibility of a committed practitioner’s direct encounter with Maitreya during this lifetime, and second there is the conflation of Maitreya with Amitayus/Amitabha.


Given the wonders of life with Maitreya—whether spatially or temporally speaking—practitioners have long sought to join Maitreya. Jan Nattier offers a four-fold categorization of possible combinations of either present or future and either “here” (i.e. on earth) or “there” (i.e. in Tusita) encounters with the bodhisattva.


…[N]ot all versions of the Maitreya myth describe or look forward to this encounter in the same way. Indeed, there are two major areas of disagreement: (a) where the encounter between Maitreya and the believer will take place (i.e., whether they will meet on earth or in the Tusita Heaven) and (b) when the encounter will occur (…whether the believer expects to see Maitreya during his or her present lifetime or at some time after death). Combining these two variables in all possible ways, we come up with four logically possible versions of the Maitreya myth:


Here/now: In this version of the myth, the believer expects to meet Maitreya on earth, during his or her present lifetime. Here/later: The believer expects the meeting to take place on earth, but at some time after the believer’s death (i.e., in a future rebirth).


There/now: In this “visionary” recension of the Maitreya myth, the believer strives for an immediate encounter with Maitreya, who is (according to the basic structure of the myth in all its versions) currently residing in the Tusita Heaven.


There/later: The believer may aspire to a rebirth in Maitreya’s otherworldly paradise, the Tusita Heaven, after this present lifetime. Of these four types of possible encounters with Maitreya, we will examine a case of an encounter “here and now” followed by one “there and now” in order to get a taste for how Maitreya impacted the living Buddhist tradition. The first story concerns an incident in the life of the Mahāyāna Chinese monk Hsüan-tsang (ca. 596-664 CE), famous for his pilgrimage to India, whose


boat was attackd by pirates, who attempted to kill him as a sacrificial offering to the ferocious Sivaite goddess Durga. Hsüan-tsang asked for a few moments’ respite so that he could prepare to enter nirvāna peacefully. Then, to follow his account as told by René Grousset, Hsüan-tsangmeditated lovingly upon the Bodhisattva Maitreya and turned all his thoughts to the Heaven of the Blessed Ones, praying ardently that he might be reborn there in order to offer his respects and pay homage to the Bodhisattva; that he might hear the

most excellent Law expounded and reach perfect enlightenment (Buddha-hood); that he might then redescend and be born again on earth to teach and convert these men and bring them to perform the acts of higher virtue, to abandon their infamous beliefs; and finally that he might spread far and wide all the benefits of the Law and bring peace and happiness to all creatures. He then…sat down in a posture of

contemplation and eagerly bent his thoughts up on the Bodhisattva Maitreya…. All of a sudden…he felt himself raised up to Mount Sumeru, and after having passed through one, two and then three heavens he saw the true Maitreya seated upon a glittering throne…surrounded by a multitude of gods…. Suddenly a furious wind sprang up all around them…beating up the waves of the river and swamping all the boats.’ As might be expected, the terrified brigands repented and threw themselves at Hsüan-tsang’s feet.


There are a number of interesting elements in this fragment of Hsüan-tsang’s story. First, Kitagawa tells us, Hsüan-tsang expected to be able to enter nirvāna at his death; yet his prayers are directed not toward that state of cessation but instead toward the Bodhisattva Maitreya with what is clearly a bodhisattvic orientation. He asks to be reborn in the “Heaven of the Blessed Ones” (we assume that the referent here is Tusita since his prayers are directed toward Maitreya) not in order to await Maitreya’s birth on earth but in order to

gather the conditions for buddhahood. According to basic Mahāyāna doctrine, a bodhisattva must accumulate skillful means and wisdom in order to accomplish the goal of buddhahood. “Pay[ing] homage” to such a high being as the Bodhisattva Maitreya and “hear[ing] the most excellent Law expounded” satisfy those two requirements. And most importantly, Hsüan-tsang’s motivation for wishing to take rebirth in

Tushsita is altruistic: he wishes to bring his would-be murderers and all sentient beingspeace and happiness.” In this brief story we find most of the major themes of bodhisattva training current in Mahāyāna Buddhism at this time—and this time happens to be shortly before the composition of the Bodhicaryāvatāra (ca. 685-763 CE), which Śāntideva compiled with access to the bodhisattva sutras of his day. Hsüan-tsang’s story, then, gives us a snapshot of one way the figure of Maitreya could be used by a mid-first millenium Chinese monk familiar with northern Indian Buddhist traditions.


Our next story also concerns the tribulations of a very committed monastic practitioner, Āchārya Asanga. Once again extraordinary circumstances bring about an encounter with Maitreya, but this time a here/now meeting occurs with the great bodhisattva appearing on earth to Asanga. After twelve years of apparently fruitless retreat undertaken in order to induce a vision of Maitreya, Asanga finally gives up his aspiration to meet the bodhisattva face-to-face and is walking down the mountain from his retreat cave. On the way down, he

notices a dog whose lower body is being entirely consumed by maggots. He stoops to help the dog, but then he realizes that if he picks the maggots up with his fingers, he will surely squash them. Instead, he closes his eyes and leans down to begin gently plucking the maggots from the dog with his tongue. But his tongue passes right through the space where the maggots should have been, and he opens his eyes in surprise. There before him stands Maitreya! When Asanga upbraids Maitreya for lacking compassion toward meditators and refusing


to show himself earlier, Maitreya explains that he has been with Asanga since the first day of his retreat, but Asanga’s mind was so obscured by delusion that he simply never saw Maitreya. However, the powerful compassion he felt for the dog and the bodhichitta which motivated him to try to help it destroyed enough of his defilements that he could finally see the bodhisattva who had been by his side all along. According to longer versions of this story, Maitreya instructs Asanga to carry him on his shoulder into the marketplace and see

whether anyone else notices a bodhisattva on his shoulder. When Asanga obeys, most people see nothing at all on his shoulder, and only one old woman sees him carrying a maggot-ridden dog. Following this episode, we are told, Asanga goes on to become Maitreya’s disciple, journeying to Tusita heaven to receive teachings which would become the basis for the Yogācāra school as well as profound teachings on the cultivation of compassion.


This story illustrates one possibility for the here/now quadrant of Nattier’s fourfold classification. As with the previous story, the content sheds light on one way Maitreya practice might have looked for a practitioner. This time the story is wholly Indian, but the protagonist is again a serious monastic who has devoted significant resources to his dharma practice. One obvious message of this story is that erudition (Asanga is an āchārya, after all) and extensive practice by themselves are insufficient if the motivation behind them is not one of compassionate concern for the well-being of others.


More directly relevant to the Maitreya narrative, however, is the role Maitreya plays when he descends to earth. This story clearly illustrates a fundamental difference between a Judeo-Christian/Iranian messianic figure and the future buddha, who is sometimes called a Buddhist messiah (often, one notes, by Western scholars). When Maitreya descends to earth in a form visible to his devotee, he brings no change to the existing political order, nor, indeed, does he affect secular life in any way.


…[T]he materials we have explored here raise some question as to whether Maitreya can properly be described as a messianic figure…. Whatever the original meanings of the term “messiah” in [[[Wikipedia:Judaism|Judaism]] and Christianity], the word has come to signify a religious figure who not only is designated as the successor of earlier prophets, but comes to inaugurate a wholly new era as well. This, in the vast majority of cases, Maitreya does not do. The canonical texts are unanimous in stating that Maitreya will not personally bring about the Golden Age; rather, he will appear when that era has already (and gradually) come into being.


What he brings instead is an addition to the dharma resources of his day. In fact, following the narrative of the Maitreya/Asanga meeting, the innovations which formed the foundations of the Yogācāra school came to be called the Third Turning of the Wheel of Dharma. Maitreya, as the next Wheel-Turning Buddha, is the ideal mythic figure to introduce such an innovation, though this instance of his “participation” in history is of course not taken to be the coming of Maitreya Buddha.


Having briefly sketched the outlines of the Maitreya myth and his potential functions in the world, we turn to make a similarly brief sketch of Mani and his self-understanding in order to examine the Mani-Maitreya overlaps in the Manichaean texts of the Turfan find. Mani was born in 216 CE to Pattēg and Mariam, both of royal descent. Mani’s father had a vision at a local temple (possibly Buddhist) in which a loud voice told him three times to give up meat, wine, and intercourse with women. Pattēg therefore renounced his princely lifestyle


and joined a Jewish-Christian baptismal sect influenced by gnostic ideas, most likely a group of Elchasaites. Mani’s father’s story sounds remarkably similar to Śakyamuni Buddha’s story and thus to Maitreya’s own story as well. Any speculation concerning the historicity of Mani’s origins and childhood is well beyond my current knowledge. His successes with the ruling classes of Iran (and an Indian kingdom as well) are well attested, appearing in both Coptic and Arabic sources, lending some credence to the historicity of his princely descent. Yet one cannot help but wonder whether a biography with such obvious overlaps with both Jesus’ and the Buddha’s early lives might have been massaged by well-intentioned disciples.


From the time he was four, then, Mani was part of this group whose defining features seem to have been their emphasis on dietary purity and frequent ritual ablutions. Evidently they ate only fruits and vegetables which they had grown themselves, but even before his break with the group Mani refused to participate in their agricultural practices because of the pain they inflicted on the earth and on the plants they harvested for food. Also during his early years Mani had visions of his Heavenly Twin, who, we read in the Cologne Mani Codex (CMC), revealed to him the secrets of heaven and earth, protected him, and instructed him not to share his revelation with the others

until he reached maturity. According to the CMC, however, Mani experienced growing tension with his childhood religious group as he waited to bring his good news to the world. In one passage, one of the Baptists has ordered the young Mani to come with him to gather firewood, but Mani refuses to harm the date-palm tree which was the Baptist’s intended victim. The tree then speaks to Mani: “‘If you keep the [[[pain]]] away from us (trees), you will [not perish] with the murderer.’ Then that Baptist, gripped by fear of me, came down from it in confusion, and fell at my feet and said: ‘I did not know that this secret mystery is with you…. Guard this mystery, tell it to no one, lest someone become envious and destroy you….’”


Finally, at age 24, Mani received permission from his Heavenly Twin to begin his ministry. Mani’s teaching can be summarized according to his phrase “the two principles” and “the three times:” The principles of Light and Darkness are currently engaged in a struggle over the particles of Light trapped in this world of darkness; in the first age of the world Light and Darkness were separated, but when they became mixed (initiating the second age) this human world was created with all its miseries, and the Manichaean’s task is to help the gods remove all the Light from this world in order to bring back the perfect separation of the two principles, ushering in the third age.


For Manicheans, as for Buddhists, a prerequisite for release was, first, the knowledge of the true nature of the world and, second, the experience of the world and performance of one’s duties in it based on that liberating knowledge. Thus some less perfunctory summary of Mani’s cosmogony is required, since the elaborate myth he created (and apparently continually modified during the course of his teachings) underlay all aspects of his soteriology. In the Manichaean beginning, there was Light and there was Darkness, with the Father of Light or Father of Greatness over the Realm of Light and Satan as the King of the Dark Realm. The Realm of Light was harmonious and well-ordered, while the Dark Realm was chaotic and bestial.


This initial period of separation of the two principles ended when “the Dark had beheld the Light, [and] it wanted to partake of it.” In order to protect the Realm of Light, the Father of Light went into battle by


issuing forth from himself a divine power that assumed charge. He first “called forth” the Mother of the Living, who then evoked the deity “the First Man….” Equipped with five divine powers that appear either as his “sons” or his “arms”—that together constitute “the Living Soul,”…the sum of “the five elements of Light” (Ether, Wind, Light, Water, and Fire)—the First Man went into battle. He offered himself up as a bait for the powers of Darkness, in order to satisfy their greed temporarily and destroy them in the long run. The Dark forces consume the First Man and his five sons, assimilating the Light within them, and this is how the age of the mixture of Light and Dark came to be. This period—when the Father of Light evoked the Mother of the Living who in turn evoked the First Man—was the First Creation.


The Second Creation was considerably more involved. It began with the First Man unconscious and defeated in the Realm of Darkness, in response to which the Father of Light evoked a series of deities, the last of whom produced five sons who were to be “instrumental in forming and holding up the cosmos.” One of the deities evoked by the Father of Light, the Living Spirit, “sent a ‘Call’ from the lowest boundary of the World of Light to the First Man lying in the depths. He heard this ‘Call’ and responded with an ‘Answer.’” The First Man, having been roused from his unconscious state by the Call from the other world, was now in a position to receive salvation. The Living Spirit, together with his five sons and the Mother of Life…descended to the depths to receive him and lead him up to the World of Light…. The fate of the First Man thus highlights the basic potential for salvation in every soul, whose five “limbs” are of the same substance as the five sons of the First Man.


The task of the Living Spirit after resuscitating the First Man was to create the world as a mechanism for the liberation of the Light still captured…by the forces of Darkness. That Light is referred to cumulatively as “the Living Soul” (or “the Living Self”)…. Out of [the slain bodies of the powers of Darkness], the Living Spirit fashioned eight earths (layers of the world) and ten heavens (skies) which were stacked one on top of the other…. From the pure elements of redeemed Light, the Living Spirit fashioned the Sun and the Moon; from the light particles still infested with hylē [[[Wikipedia:matter|matter]]] and hence not so pure he made the stars. Furthermore, he created three cosmicwheels,” of fire, water, and wind, which would serve in future to purify Light redeemed from the cosmos and send it up to its original place.


The Third Creation begins when the Father of Greatness evokes the Third Messenger to extract further Light trapped in the evil world of matter. Accounts become somewhat jumbled at this point, with slightly conflicting versions, but essentially the Third Messenger manifests to the male demons in extremely beautiful female form, causing them to “spill their seed,” which contains the Light they had consumed. The Third Messenger appears to the female demons in an extremely beautiful male form, causing them to miscarry their demon fetuses, which contain slightly less Light than the male demons’ seed. The demons,


driven by sexual lust, …united with each other and brought forth the five kinds of living creature…. [T]he Third Messenger then called forth “the Column of Glory,” …[which] as a path for the saved Light particles…allows them to ascend to the Sun and the Moon, which are referred to as “palaces,” “chariots” or “ships of Light,” that transport this Light to the World of Light beyond the cosmic spheres, or skies, more specifically to the New Paradise. This Paradise had been created by the Great Builder of the second creation…to serve as a place of rest for the gods engaged in battle, and as a first haven for the Light Elements (saved souls)…. The Living Spirit now set the world into motion, which caused the passage of day and night and of the various seasons.


At this point, the sun and moon assume their purificatory functions, the Moon filling with Light filtering up from the world as it waxes and then passing it on to the Sun as it wanes. There are further elaborations on this phase of the creation, but essentially the Manichaean world is now in order—but it is not yet populated by humans. Their creations happens as follows: The demoness Āz (lust) feared that soon all the Light would be filtered from her dark world, so she “caused two demon-animals…to devour the issue of other animal-like demons, in order to ingest their light. Then, incited further by Āz, they mated and thus engendered man, who was made after the images of the Third Messenger and the Maiden of Light [the male and female forms of the Third Messenger] which the demons had seen on high.” The human body, then, was created by demons to contain the divine Light of which the soul is composed; this Living Soul is often “likened to gold covered by dust,” (an image which will resonate with Buddhists familiar with the Maitreya/Asanga-initiated third turning of the Wheel of Dharma.)


Meanwhile in the Realm of Light, the Third Messenger called forth Jesus the Splendor, also called the Great Nous, who serves as a gnostic teacher and discloses for Adam and Eve the origin of the world and of their own souls. This Jesus figure would then reappear at times in human history to refresh the message of the means to liberation. “The work of all great religious founders and apostles, including Zoroaster and the Buddha, is ultimately that of the Great Nous [that is, Jesus the Splendor]….”


At last we have laid the foundation to discuss the Manicheans’ appropriation of the Maitreya figure. It is this last aspect of Mani’s teaching—that one personified energy has visited humans as the founders of the major religions of Mani’s Iranian world—that makes him such a fascinating subject from a Buddhist point of view. As mentioned above, Mani’s spiritual milieu in his formative years included Jewish-


Christian, Zoroastrian, and to a lesser extent Buddhist beliefs. As Manichaeism spread, both during Mani’s lifetime and afterward as his disciples carried his message abroad, it developed into three distinctive forms: Christian-flavored in the Greco-Roman West; Zoroastrian-flavored in the central, Iranian region; and Buddhist-flavored in the Silk Road states and China. Mani’s disciple Mār Ammo took his teachings to the East, where the Sogdians accepted them and spread them along the Silk Route. These same Sogdian merchants were also


responsible for the spread of Buddhism to this area and into China, so it is hardly surprising that the two religions’ documents have been found in similar regions and that there should have been such great overlap between the terminology and iconography of the two. Much of the Maitreya imagery and language of the Eastern Manichaean texts seems to have come from later interaction between Manicheans and their

Buddhist neighbors, but Mani himself opened the door for these interpretations with his doctrine of successive prophets from the Realm of Light. By identifying himself as one of these, he validated identifications of him with the other figures in this series, particularly when this series is itself called “the buddhas.” The following passage from a Turkic hymn of praise to Mani illustrates how Manicheans portrayed their teacher as a buddha:


[Oh, Teacher of] the original [[[doctrine]]] of the noble Jesus! [We are prepared] to worship you with a reverent mind. Oh, my respected and renowned Father, [My] Buddha Mani!...

The living beings in the five states of existence You freed from ignorance. You endowed them with wisdom,

Leading them toward Parinirvāna…. After the [four] Buddhas, you descended And attained truly incomparable Buddhahood. You redeemed myriads of living beings And saved them from dark Hell.


Once that step was taken toward syncretism, it was a small step to the following passages taken from a Parthian and Persian hymn to Mani: …Master Maitreya,…God Christ,…Savior, God Mār Mani!... From Paradise the gate was opened and we were overcome with joy: the Lord Maitreya has come; Mār Mani, the Lord, (has come) for a new Bema!...


Buddha Maitreya has come, Mār Mani, the Apostle: he brought “victory” from the righteous God (the Father of Light). I would honor you, oh God! Grant remission of my sins, redeem my soul, lead me up to the New Paradise!

These two samples of Manichaean Maitreya language illustrate the syncretism characteristic of the religion: Mani is rarely just Mani. To speak of Mani is to invoke a web of intermeshed figures from various traditions. Thus one version of the Manichaean Mani-Maitreya figure paints Mani as the most recent in a series of enlightened teachers in some contexts, the fulfillment of the Buddhist prophecy regarding the buddha-to-come. The other version will be discussed below. This form allows Manicheans to claim that Buddhists had lost the meaning of Śakyamuni Buddha’s original teachings, and Mani had come to fulfill Buddhist prophecies and renew the Buddhadharma.

This narrative maintains the internal logic of both religions. Manicheans accepted previous teachers as Apostles of Light or (in their sense of the term) buddhas. Thus Śakyamuni Buddha would have had Mani in mind specifically (in the Manichaean world) when he foretold the decline of the dharma and the coming of a new teacher to turn the Wheel of Dharma again, bringing fresh teachings to the world. Since the dharma was on the decline anyhow, it would be only natural that Mani’s teachings would sound different in some major ways from the Buddhist sutras.


From the Buddhist side, given the commonly accepted decline narrative, and given the Manichaean propensity to accommodate Buddhist terminology as well as certain significant overlaps in worldview, Mani’s claim might not sound entirely artificial. The basic worldview from which his teachings originated, however, had elements that would have been difficult to reconcile with canonical Buddhist views. Chief among these dissonant teachings would have been the Manichaean belief in a creator god, in concepts of innate good and evil, in a very limited system of rebirth or karma, etc.


The second Manichaean version of Maitreya is identified not with Mani but with Jesus the Judge who is to return at the end of time. This figure is much more tenuously connected with the Buddhist Maitreya. The Jesus/Maitreya figure’s role in Manichaean eschatology is to enter the mixed realm of Light and Darkness once most of the Light has already been purified out of it. At that point he will redeem all remaining salvageable Light and then cause the collapse of the remaining Darkness into one mass, thus completing the return to the world’s original state of complete separation and ushering in the third time.


At this point, some more detailed discussion of Buddhisteschatology” is in order. In a Buddhist context, eschatology takes on a slightly different meaning from the Iranian-driven Manichaean (and Jewish-Christian) model. Whereas in the Manichaean model the world progresses through a more linear model of time through the first period of separation, the middle period of mixture, and the final period of permanent return to separation, the Buddhist model of time consists of undulating world-cycles. According to most versions of the


Maitreya myth, by the end of the current age society will become so degenerate that humans will live only ten years, the teachings of Śakyamuni Buddha will disappear completely, violence will decimate the population, and then the few survivors will recognize the depths to which they have sunk and determine to improve themselves. Following this low point they will improve their behavior, as a result of which their quality of life will gradually improve until at last their lifespans reach ca. 80,000 years (sometimes the number given is 84,000) and their living conditions resemble those of the gods. At that point Maitreya will descend from Tusita heaven to assume his final rebirth and become a wheel-turning buddha.


The role of Maitreya Buddha is thus quite dissimilar from a “messianic” image in the sense of a figure who will overturn the existing world order and bring justice, judgment, a period of righteousness and heavenly rewards for those who have followed a given set of teachings, or any other such wondrous state. Maitreya comes to earth once conditions here are already ideal (due, in many versions of his myth, to beingsown virtue and also to the reign of the cakravartin, or Wheel-Turning king). What he brings is not a new world order but the same old dharma that every buddha has brought to this world-system. In a sense, this is the true Buddhist parallel to the Manichaean return at the end of time to the conditions prevalent at the beginning: not that time itself has a destination but that the innovator, the new Wheel-Turning buddha, teaches the same thing every buddha has taught.


Perhaps the most important aspect of the Buddhist Maitreya to emphasize in this context is that he plays no active role in the political process leading up to the establishment of the ideal world. A baptismal sect like the one in which Mani was raised might have placed its hopes for their world’s improvement on a messianic Jesus figure, and Zoroastrianism had the figure of Šaošyant, but the Buddhist had no incentive whatsoever to try to hasten Maitreya’s arrival.

For one thing, Maitreya would only arrive once the world had already descended to barbarous conditions and then risen to a blissful state. For another, in order for Maitreya to enter the world system, Buddhism would have to disintegrate entirely and disappear from the world. For yet another, Maitreya’s return was never immanently expected: some estimates of his arrival put him 5.6 billion years out. Whatever typological similarities may have existed between the figures of Jesus the Judge and Maitreya, their functions in their respective religious systems were dissimilar in many significant ways.


Having emphasized the differences between the Buddhist and Manichaean Maitreya figures, it seems fitting to turn in the end to an area of deep overlap between these traditions: buddha nature. Klimkeit mentions a Chinese Manichaean hymnscroll in which the Manichaean term for the spark of divine Light within a person was translated with the Chinese term for buddha nature. This translation resonates with this paper’s exploration on two levels.

First, it is another example of Manichaean appropriation of a Buddhist concept, and second it shares at least two tenuous overlaps with Maitreya: Maitreya’s disciple Asanga was credited with introducing into Buddhist philosophical discourse a particular emphasis on the luminous nature of śūnyatā, emptiness; and Maitreya was later conflated with the buddha

Amitayus/Amitabha, the Buddha of Light. Maitreya, then, could serve as a metaphorical point of deep contact between the two religions. Somewhere in the mind of the ancient Chinese scholar who was heir to an already-assimilated Buddhist tradition, as he translated that Manichaean text into Chinese, the natural phrase for “divine Light” was “buddha nature.” From such moments of gnosis—situated temporally at the meeting of Manichaeism and Buddhism and spatially where the Silk Road poured into the Middle Kingdom—was born a new system of interlocking religious symbols which took as its foundation not one religion or another but the explicit recognition of the contact points between them.


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