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The Meaning of ‘Mind-made Body’(S. manomaya-kāya, C. yisheng shen 意生身) in Buddhist Cosmological and Soteriological systems

Lee Su Mi 1

1동국대학교 불교문화연구원

Candidate

ABSTRACT

The ‘mind-made body’ (S. manomaya-kāya, C. yisheng shen 意生身) is seen as a subtle body attained by a Buddhist adept during meditative practice. Previous research has elucidated this concept as having important doctrinal significance in the Buddhist cosmological system. The Pāli canonical evidence shows that the manomaya-kāya is not merely a spiritual byproduct of meditative training, but also a specific existential mode of being in the system of the three realms. Studies of the manomaya-kāya to date, however, have focused mostly on early Pāli materials, and thus do not encompass theoretical development and soteriological significance of this notion in later tradition. As a beginning step to fill this gap, this article explores the meanings of the manomaya-kāya represented in the Śrīmālādevī Sūtra and the two treatises of the Ratnagotravibhāga Śāstra and the Foxing lun, which are doctrinally based on the Śrīmālādevī Sūtra in their discussion of the manomaya-kāya. Through the observation of the manomaya-kāya in these Mahāyāna texts, this article seeks to demonstrate how the concept is used in the broader cosmological and soteriological system of Mahāyāna tradition. For this purpose, I first review the meanings of the manomayakāya in early Buddhist texts and then observe the cosmological and soteriological meaning of the notion by analyzing the theoretical connection between the three Mahāyāna texts.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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