Kalachakra - Adi Buddha

 

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the Adi-Buddha is the "First Buddha" or the "Primordial Buddha. Another common term for this figure is Dharmakaya Buddha.

Vajradhara, the main Adibuddha, depicted in the Sarma schools.

The term emerges in tantric Buddhist literature, most prominently in the Kalachakra. Adi" means "first", such that the Adibuddha was the first to attain Buddhahood. Adi" can also mean "primordial", not referring to a person but to an innate wisdom that is present in all sentient beings.

In Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, the term Adibuddha is often used to describe the Buddha Samantabhadra (in Nyingma), Vajradhara, or Kalachakra (in the Sarma schools). 

In the Nyingma (ancient) School

A painting depicting Samantabhadra in union with his consort, Samantabhadri.

In the Nyingma School, the Adi-Buddha is called Samantabhadra in Sanskrit, In Tibetan it is called Kuntu Zangpo. In the Nyingma tradition,  art often depicts Kuntu Zangpo as a naked blue Buddha. According to Dzogchen Ponlop:

The color blue symbolizes the expansive, unchanging quality of space, which is the ground of all arisings, the basis of all appearances, and the source of all phenomena. The absence of robes symbolizes a genuine reality beyond any dualistic, conceptual, or philosophical clothing. That is the dharmakaya Buddha: the genuine body of absolute truth. 

 In the Nyingma school's Dzogchen tradition, Samantabhadra ("All-Good") is not a God but "our timeless Pure Perfect Presence beyond cause and effect."  In Nyingma, Samantabhadra is also considered to be the source of all Dzogchen teachings.

Adi Buddha - Vajradhara

The Kunjed Gyalpo Tantra calls Samantabhadra the "All-Creating King" (Tibetan: Kunjed Gyalpo), because all phenomena are said to be manifestations or displays of Samantabhadra. According to Namkhai Norbu (A Tibetan Buddhist master of Dzogchen), this does not mean there is some being called Samantabhadra that creates the universe; instead, what it refers to is that all things arise from "the state of consciousness of Samantabhadra, the state of Dharmakaya." In this sense, Samantabhadra is seen as a symbolic personification of the ground or basis in Dzogchen thought.

Namkhai Norbu explains that the Dzogchen idea of the Adi-Buddha Samantabhadra "should be mainly understood as a metaphor to enable us to discover our real condition." He further adds that:

If we deem Samantabhadra an individual being, we are far from the true meaning. In reality, he denotes our potentiality, which, even though at the present moment we are in samsara, has never been conditioned by dualism. From the beginning, the state of the individual has been pure and always remains pure; this is what Samantabhadra represents. But when we fall into conditioning, it is as if we are no longer Samantabhadra because we are ignorant of our true nature. So what is called the primordial Buddha, or Adi Buddha, is only a metaphor for our true condition.

In the Longchenpa's Treasure Trove of Scriptures, explains that Samantabhadra—one of the most common Dzogchen names for the state of original buddhahood—is nothing other than the primordial, innate awareness that is naturally free, even before any notions of "buddhas" or "sentient beings" have emerged.

In Dzogchen thought, there are said to be five aspects of Samantabhadra. Longchenpa explains these as follows:

• Samantabhadra as teacher: "Means that all Buddhas, while residing in the forms of the Sambhogakaya and the Dharmakaya in Akaniṣṭha, promote the welfare of all sentient beings through sending forth countless emanations to all the distinct realms of those to be guided.
• Samantabhadra as ground: "Is the Dharmata of all phenomena — suchness. This is also called "Samantabhadra as nature". 
  
• Samantabhadra as adornment: "The appearance of all phenomena, which are self-arising as the play of the bearers of the nature of phenomena, This consists of all that is completely pure, in that its nature is illusory.
• Samantabhadra as awareness: "self-arising wisdom, the sugata heart," i.e., the Buddha-nature described in the Uttaratantra.
• Samantabhadra as realisation: "The fundamental, basic nature. Through realising it well, the eyes of freedom are found. This is also called "Samantabhadra as the Path."

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Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious Bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease

But increase further and further.

Dedication of Merit

By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migratory from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

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