Note 116 — Chapter X · THE DOCTRINE OF TRIKÂYA.

Modern Mahâyânists in full accordance with this interpretation of the Doctrine of Trikâya do not place much importance on the objective aspects of the Body of Bliss (Sambhogakâya). They consider them at best the fictitious products of an imaginative mind; they never tarry a moment to think that all these mysterious Tathâgatas or Bodhisattvas who are sometimes too extravagantly and generally too tediously described in the Mahâyâna texts are objective realities, that the Sukhâvatîs or Pure Lands[116] are decorated with such worldly stuff as gold, silver, emerald, cat’s eye, pearl, and other precious stones, that pious Buddhists would be transferred after their death to these ostentatiously ornamented heavens, be seated on the pedestals of lotus-flowers, surrounded by innumerable Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, and would enjoy all the spiritual enjoyments that human mind can conceive. On the contrary, modern Buddhists look with disdain on these egotistic materialistic conceptions of religious life. For, to a fully enlightened soul, of what use could those worldly treasures be? What happiness, earthly or heavenly, does such a soul dream of, outside the bliss of embracing the will of the Dharmakâya as his own?