The Trikaya Doctrine in Buddhism

Abstract

The trikaya doctrine in Buddhism is a Mahayana development which has been noted as a possible point of with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In order to determine whether such a comparison is warranted or not, a close examination of its historical background (diachronic analysis) as well as a look into its theoretical structure (synchronic analysis) is needed. In this paper we shall present in broad strokes (for a more detailed discussion see Habito 1978) the historical development and the theoretical structure of this doctrine of the threefold-body of the Buddha in an attempt to understand better the soteriological dimension of Buddhism from within the Buddhist tradition itself, trying to recover the religious context from within which this doctrine arose and developed. Such an understanding will enable us to guard against facile attempts at which merely deal with concepts in similarity or dissimilarity and which thus miss the fundamental significance of the reli- gious doctrine being considered.