According to the Nyingma School, the ultimate source of all buddhas is called Buddha Unchanging Light. This buddha is all-encompassing wakefulness, the realization of all the victorious ones throughout the three times without a single exception. This wakefulness is primordially beyond delusion, the original state of supreme and changeless great bliss that transcends the confines of mental constructs. It is also known as the dharmakaya Samantabhadra, the great forefather of all the buddhas.
The unceasing, natural expression of this wakefulness manifests as wisdom forms, free from obscuration. These wisdom aforms are Buddha Vajradhara, the victorious ones of the five families of sambhogakaya, and so forth who are endowed with the seven aspects of union. They can only be perceived by the great bodhisattvas on the ten levels.
The compassionate energy of the sambhogakaya buddhas appears as a magical display. This display is inexhaustible and unending, the incarnate emanations and the nirmanakayas of supreme enlightenment, such as Buddha Shakyamuni. This display of emanations appears unceasingly for as long as there are sentient beings to be benefited.
In this way all the infinite mandalas of the victorious ones in the ten directions and in particular in this Saha world-system, as exemplified by the thousand buddhas who successively appear during the Good Aeon, are of one identity in being the vast dharmadhatu of innate wakefulness. The magical display of emanations simply appears according to those who have the fortune to be influenced. Such buddhas are not ordinary people, who necessarily must attain enlightenment through traversing the path gradually.
If this is truly so, one might question the Mahayana sutras that say the Buddha first aroused the intent to attain supreme enlightenment, next he gathered the accumulations of merit and wisdom during three incalculable aeons, and finally he attained buddhahood while enacting the twelve deeds. The answer is that those Mahayana teachings were an exercise in expedient meaning for the benefit of ordinary disciples to communicate that each action yields a particular result.
Just like Buddha Shakyamuni, Padmasambhava was an emanation of all the buddhas. Padmasambhava appeared to convert the beings of the dark age, like the moonlight of compassion on the lake of the disciple’s faith. From this angle, the debates about whether he was born from a womb or appeared miraculously, whether he attained the level of an arhat, and whether he became enlightened within one lifetime or the like—all such refutations and affirmations are like a child trying to fathom the sky.
Most important and trustworthy are the words of the Buddha: “Rely not on the expedient but on the definitive meaning. Rely not on the conditioned but on the unconditioned. Rely not on the words but on the meaning."
The Lotus Born - Rangjung Yeshe Publications.
