Prabhūtaratna
Buddhist · deity · mythic · deity
A BUDDHA WHOSE VOW IS A CONDITIONAL APPEARANCE: the stupa manifests whenever a particular text is recited, which makes him the only figure in this batch whose cult is triggered by an act of reading. The sources call him EXTINCT and still resident in the stupa, and the record keeps both without resolving them. TYPE deity IS THE NEAREST CATEGORY THIS SCHEMA HAS AND THE TRADITION DOES NOT USE IT. Buddhism does not regard a Buddha as a god; the devas this corpus already holds under the Buddhist key are, in this tradition's own view, unenlightened beings inside samsara, and a Buddha stands above them precisely by NOT being one. The record says so rather than letting the type field make the claim.
Domains
- witness to the Lotus Sutra
Sources
- Reference treatment: Prabhutaratna is the extinct Tathagata who resides in a stupa made of precious substances, revered in conjunction with Shakyamuni, and significant for having vowed that his jewelled stupa would manifest whenever the Lotus Sutra is recited.