Vairocana — “the Illuminator,” the Great Sun Buddha — is the supreme cosmic Buddha of the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions: the primordial, all-illuminating Buddha who embodies the dharmakaya, the very body of ultimate truth, and from whom all other Buddhas emanate. He is the radiant centre of the Buddhist cosmos, the Buddha as the eternal principle of enlightenment itself.
The Universal Illuminator
Vairocana’s name means “belonging to or coming from the sun,” the “Illuminator” or “the one who is like the sun.” He represents the dharmakaya — the “truth body” of the Buddha, the absolute, formless reality of enlightenment that underlies all things and from which all phenomena and all Buddhas arise. He is not a historical teacher but the cosmic, universal Buddha, the embodiment of sunyata (emptiness) and of the all-pervading light of awakening. In the Five Wisdom Buddhas (the Dhyani Buddhas), Vairocana most often occupies the centre, the source from which the other four radiate.
The Great Sun of the East
Vairocana rose to supreme prominence in East Asian Buddhism. In the esoteric (Shingon) Buddhism of Japan he is Dainichi Nyorai, the “Great Sun Buddha,” the central and supreme Buddha of the entire cosmos, of whom all other Buddhas and deities are aspects. The colossal Great Buddha (Daibutsu) of Todai-ji in Nara is an image of Vairocana, one of the largest bronze Buddhas in the world. In Chinese Buddhism he is Pilushena, and his image presides over many of the great temples. He is the Buddha of the centre, associated with the colour white, the element of space or ether, and the wisdom of the dharmadhatu, the realm of ultimate reality.
The Body of Truth
To contemplate Vairocana is to contemplate the ultimate nature of reality itself — the truth that the enlightened mind perceives, the radiant emptiness and luminosity that is the ground of all existence. In the great cosmic mandalas of esoteric Buddhism, Vairocana sits at the centre, surrounded by the other Buddhas and bodhisattvas who are his emanations, the whole forming a map of the enlightened cosmos. In Vairocana, the Mahayana and Vajrayana gave form to the supreme principle of Buddhahood — the Great Sun, the Illuminator, the cosmic Buddha who is the body of truth itself, the radiant ground from which all the Buddhas shine forth.