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What is a Buddha?
A Buddha is any being who has become awakened to the ultimate truth of life,
one who perceives the true entity of all phenomena, and who leads others to
attain the same enlightenment. In India the word Buddha was originally a common
noun meaning "awakened one," but in Buddhism it is used to mean one
who has become awakened to the ultimate truth of life. In Hinayana the word
means one who has entered the state of nirvana, in which both body and mind are
extinguished. Provisional Mahayana generally teaches that one becomes a Buddha
after eradicating illusions through aeons of austere and meritorious practices,
gradually acquiring the thirty-two features of a Buddha. The perfect teaching of
the Lotus Sutra views the Buddha as one endowed with the three virtues of
sovereign, teacher and parent, who is enlightened to the truth of all phenomena
and who teaches it to the people in order to save them from suffering. In
Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, the Buddha of the Latter Day of the Law is the
original Buddha eternally endowed with the three properties and the three
virtues, who appears in the form of a common mortal and expounds the Mystic Law.
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