A Treatise on the Paramis
by Ācariya Dhammapāla | 1978 | 23,066 words
The work introduces itself as a treatise composed “for clansmen following the suttas who are zealously engaged in the practice of the vehicle to great enlightenment, in order to improve their skilfulness in accumulating the requisites of enlightenment.”...
Chapter XVI - What Is Their Fruit?
Their fruit is, in brief, the state of perfect Buddhahood. In detail, it is the acquisition of the form-body (rupakaya) resplendent with the multitude of meritorious qualities such as the thirty-two characteristics of a Great Man, the eighty minor marks of physical beauty, the fathom-wide aura, etc.; and, founded upon this, the glorious Dhamma-body (dhammakaya) radiant with its collection of infinite and boundless meritorious qualities -- the ten powers, the four grounds of self-confidence, the six kinds of knowledge not held in common with others, the eighteen unique Buddha-qualities, and so forth.[1] And so numerous are the Buddha-qualities that even a perfectly enlightened Buddha could not finish describing them, even after many aeons. This is their fruit.
And it is said:
If a Buddha were to speak in praise of a Buddha, Speaking nothing else for an aeon's length, Sooner would the long-standing aeon reach its end, But the praise of the Tathagata would not reach its end.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
Although the concept of the Dharmakaya came, in Mahayana Buddhism, to acquire a distinct ontological sense, as expressing the metaphysical identity of the Buddha's essential nature with the totality of particular existents, here the term dhammakaya is used simply to signify the collection of spiritual qualities which define the nature of a Buddha, without any ontological implications.