Just as the sutra clearly indicates that the long-lived Buddha has a finite, if inconceivably long life, Zhiyi did not see the Lotus Sutra Buddha as virtually eternal. He initiated analysis of this Buddha in terms of the teaching of the three bodies of buddha, even though the three bodies (trikāya) teaching is not mentioned in the sutra itself. These three bodies are the historically manifested transformation body (nirmāvakāya), the blissful recompense body (sambhogakāya), and the ultimate truth or reality body (dharmakāya). Zhiyi saw the three as integrated in the Lotus Sutra, as he “interpreted Śākyamuni Buddha of the ‘Fathoming the Lifespan’ chapter as embodying all three bodies in one.”

Whereas the historically manifested body is affected by causality and the conditions of the world, for Zhiyi the Dharma body is unchangeable, revealing of perfect suchness beyond distinctions. “Since the dharma body is in accord with the principle of suchness, both its nature and appearance are eternally as they are, whether it is manifested or not as a Buddha; therefore it is not relevant whether it is measurable or not, that is, whether it has duration or not.” From the perspective of the Dharma body at least, the Lotus Sutra Buddha both incorporates and transcends each of the three bodies. For Zhiyi, “the three bodies are both permanent and impermanent, and are all three inherent in the Buddha of the Lotus Sutra: ‘One body is three bodies; it is not one, it is not different.” [Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity] Zhiyi “interpreted these three bodies as the attributes of a single, original Buddha, the Śākyamuni of the sixteenth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, enlightened since countless dust-particle kalpas ago. For Chih-i [WadeGiles transliteration of Zhiyi], the unity of the three was mediated by the recompense body, which he saw as central.” [Jacqueline Stone, Original Englightenment]

Zhiyi did not dissolve these three bodies or aspects of Buddha into one, but uses the three to celebrate nuances of the Buddha revealed in chapter 16. His emphasis on the recompense body expresses the important role of actual practice, with “buddhahood as a process, which has by definition a location in time and place.” We can see this body as most accurately conveying the inconceivable long-lived Buddha described in the sutra itself. The recompense body “represents a Buddha who has a beginning, and thus is finite before attaining enlightenment, but who becomes immeasurable, infinite, after his awakening. It exemplifies a Buddha who encompasses in himself both historical existence and universal principle: not an absolute Tathāgata who assumes for some time a phenomenal form and then goes back to his true nature, but a Tathāgata who is, at the same time, his true nature and his temporal manifestation.”[Lucia Dolce, Between Duration and Eternity] But while Zhiyi stresses this recompense body, he does so to show how the Lotus Sutra Buddha incorporates all aspects of buddhas.

For comparison of Nichiren’s view of the Three Bodies, see Nichiren Venerating the Eternal Śākyamuni