Types of Buddhas: Past, Celestial and the Five Tathagatas

By Tim Yu, Founder & Editor · Published 23 October 2026

Checked against the primary texts · How we check · Report a correction

The types of buddhas depend on the tradition. The Pali Canon distinguishes the fully awakened Buddha, who arises one at a time in a world, from the independent buddha (paccekabuddha), who awakens by himself without a Buddha’s omniscience; past buddhas and Maitreya are of the first kind. Mahāyāna sutras add buddhas of other worlds, such as Amitābha, and Vajrayāna the five tathāgatas.

Each tradition counts differently, so this page sorts the kinds by whose text they come from. For the great figures one by one, and for bodhisattvas, see buddhas and bodhisattvas. If you mean kinds of Buddha statue, such as seated, standing or reclining, or the hand gestures, see Buddha statue meaning and mudras. The jolly “Laughing Buddha” is Budai, a Chinese monk later revered as an emanation of Maitreya, not the historical Buddha: see why is the Laughing Buddha fat?

The types at a glance

Buddhas of the past

In the Pali Canon, Gotama is not the first buddha. In the Mahāpadāna Sutta (DN 14), a discourse of the Pali Canon, he tells his monks of six buddhas before him, counting back in eons:

The sutta then gives each one’s birth, tree, lifespan and disciples. The Sanskrit names are those of 84000’s translation of The Seven Buddhas (Toh 512, trans. Adam Krug):

The same sutta tells Vipassī’s last life as the pattern that is “normal” for one intent on awakening (on how to read its wonders, see the historical Buddha).

The Buddhavaṃsa, a verse book of the Khuddaka Nikāya, lengthens the line. SuttaCentral calls it “a late devotional text” and places it in a devotional literature of the second and first centuries BCE. Its chapters 3 to 26 give 24 buddhas, from Dīpaṅkara to Kassapa, and chapter 27 Gotama, so 84000 counts twenty-five. Chapter 28 names three more who shared a single eon with Dīpaṅkara: Taṇhaṅkara, Medhaṅkara and Saraṇaṅkara. With Gotama, that makes the 28 buddhas of Theravāda devotion. British Library manuscripts from Burma list them from Taṇhaṅkara to Gotama, and the Library’s Burmese curator, San San May, writes that “the auspicious ceremony of Buddha Puja is held to pay homage to the 28 Buddhas”. Dīpaṅkara is the buddha before whom the ascetic Sumedha, the future Gotama, made his vow; that story is told on bodhisattva vows and the ten perfections.

The idea is not peculiar to the Pali school. 84000’s introduction to The Good Eon (trans. Thomas Doctor) calls successive buddhas “a theme common to all Buddhist traditions”, with artifacts referring to past buddhas from as early as Aśoka’s time (third century BCE). It cites two Bahubuddhaka (“Many Buddhas”) sutras in the Mahāvastu of the Lokottaravāda, and a Gāndhārī scroll dated to the first century BCE that lists fifteen buddhas from Dīpaṅkara to Maitreya.

The fortunate eon: five buddhas or a thousand?

DN 14 calls our age the “fortunate eon” (bhaddakappa). Here the texts count differently, and neither count is wrong on its own terms:

• Pali Buddhavaṃsa 28 gives five buddhas for this eon: Kakusandha, Koṇāgamana, Kassapa, Gotama now, and Metteyya to come.
• Many other texts give a thousand (some give five hundred), and 84000 notes that many of these are not distinctly Mahāyāna texts. The Mahāyāna sūtra The Good Eon (Toh 94) names 1,004 buddhas for this eon, only four of them past. In 84000’s glossary to the Akṣobhya sūtra (Toh 50), Śākyamuni is the fourth and Maitreya the fifth.

In Tibet, 84000 adds, The Good Eon is read aloud by lamas on special occasions and kept on family altars.

One buddha at a time

Why is there only one buddha in our world now? The Pali Canon states the rule in a single line:

MN 115:14 states the same rule, in a list of impossibilities that also holds the clause discussed on can a woman become a Buddha?. “Solar system” is Sujato’s rendering of lokadhātu, which 84000 renders “world system”. How large a lokadhātu is under this rule, the suttas quoted here do not say.

Early Mahāyāna did not drop the rule. A note to 84000’s translation of the Akṣobhyavyūha (trans. Tenzin Bhuchung) points to “the doctrine of the early Mahāyāna, whereby there cannot be more than one fully awakened buddha present in any given world system at the same time”, citing the scholar Jan Nattier, and in the sutra Śāriputra tells the Buddha that bodhisattvas awaken “alone, not in pairs” (6.72). The many buddhas of its sutras teach at the same time, but in other world systems of the ten directions. (For how many worlds the cosmology allows, see how many worlds are there?)

Independent buddhas (paccekabuddha)

Between the teaching buddha and his disciples stands a third figure, the independent or solitary buddha (paccekabuddha). The Mahāparinibbāna Sutta lists four people worthy of a stupa: “A Realized One, a perfected one, a fully awakened Buddha; an independent Buddha; a disciple of a Realized One; and a wheel-turning monarch” (DN 16:5.12). The Isigili Sutta (MN 116) says that five hundred independent buddhas once lived on Isigili, the “seer-swallower” hill near Rājagaha, and the Buddha recites their names.

The Abhidhamma, a later layer of the Theravāda canon, defines the difference in the Puggalapaññatti (2.1). Paraphrased: both kinds awaken by themselves to truths not heard before, but only the fully awakened Buddha attains omniscience and mastery of the powers (balesu vasībhāva, which B. C. Law’s 1924 English renders “mastery over the fruitions”). For the comparison with the arahant, see arahant, Buddha and bodhisattva.

So the canon itself distinguishes two kinds of buddha. Later Theravāda adds a third, the disciple who awakens by hearing a buddha teach (sāvaka, the arahant). That threefold division is of awakening (bodhi): a disciple’s, an independent buddha’s and a fully awakened Buddha’s. Nyanatiloka’s Buddhist Dictionary says it “is of later origin” and, in this form, occurs neither in the canonical texts nor in the older sutta commentaries; the closest the canon comes, he notes, is a verse of the Treasure Store Sutta in the Khuddakapāṭha, “a verse sutta which is probably of a comparatively later period”. The three are set out on what is enlightenment?

In Mahāyāna sutras the pratyekabuddha’s path is one of three vehicles, and the Lotus Sutra folds all three into one. In 84000’s summary (trans. Peter Alan Roberts), “there is but one yāna, the Buddhayāna”, and the names śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha and bodhisattva exist “because of the differences among beings”.

The buddha to come

Theravāda and Mahāyāna alike expect Maitreya (Pali Metteyya), foretold in DN 26 (“the Blessed One named Metteyya will arise in the world”) and named in Buddhavaṃsa 28 as the fifth buddha of this eon; 84000’s glossary places him in Tuṣita, awaiting rebirth as the next buddha. His texts, his heaven and the Laughing Buddha are on Maitreya. The Lotus Sutra adds more: in its sixth chapter the Buddha prophesies that his disciple Mahākāśyapa will become the buddha Raśmiprabhāsa.

Buddhas of other worlds: the Mahāyāna sutras

A buddhafield (buddhakṣetra) is, in 84000’s glossary, “the field of activity, or particular world system, in which a specific buddha resides”, and there are “innumerable such pure lands” in Mahāyāna cosmology. The Japanese reference JAANUS notes that some buddhas came to be tied to directions: usually Akṣobhya or Bhaiṣajyaguru in the east, Amitābha in the west.

Akṣobhya, “the immovable” (JAANUS; 84000 renders the name “unperturbed”), has no separate page here. In the Akṣobhyavyūha (Toh 50, trans. Tenzin Bhuchung) a monk earns the name by his firmness in his bodhisattva resolutions and keeps it as a buddha. His field, Abhirati (“Joyful”), lies a thousand buddhafields to the east. 84000 reports what appears to be a related Akṣobhya sutra among the Bajaur scrolls, dated to the first two centuries CE. JAANUS says his early cult declined, “probably because of the greater popularity of Yakushi”, the Medicine Buddha, “also associated with the eastern quarter”, before he revived in esoteric Buddhism around the seventh and eighth centuries.

Two other figures have their own guides:

• Amitābha reigns in Sukhāvatī, which the shorter Sukhāvatī sutra (Toh 115) places in the west, past “one hundred thousand myriad buddha realms”. See also the Amitabha Sutra and Pure Land Buddhism.
• The Medicine Buddha lives, in his sutra (Toh 504), in the world Vaiḍūryanirbhāsa, as many buddhafields to the east as there are grains of sand in ten Ganges rivers.

Vairocana is a different kind of figure. In the Avataṃsaka Sutra, says Peter Alan Roberts in his introduction for 84000, various buddhas are manifestations of Vairocana, who is “the fundamental buddha who is the source of countless manifestations” of Śākyamuni. The Chinese Brahma Net Sutra (Fanwang jing) gives the picture in verse: its buddha, 盧舍那 (Lushena, which JAANUS explains as a short form of Vairocana’s name), sits on a lotus pedestal ringed by a thousand petals, each holding a Śākyamuni. In the YMBA English, “Each flower supports a hundred million worlds; / In each world a Sakyamuni Buddha appears.” The canon attributes it to Kumārajīva; the scholar Pei-ying Lin, cited on bodhisattva vows, counts it among the apocryphal scriptures composed in China. It shares the Avataṃsaka’s picture of Śākyamuni as a manifestation of Vairocana. The Great Buddha of Nara, at Tōdaiji, is a Rushana image: JAANUS gives its dedication as 752 and notes that fire has twice damaged it and most of what stands today is restored.

The five tathāgatas of the Vajrayāna

In the Vajrayāna, five tathāgatas are arranged in a circular mandala. HAR’s Jeff Watt traces them “primarily” to the Yoga and Anuttarayoga tantras and their ritual texts, and calls them the Direction Buddhas, the Tantric Buddhas, or the Five Buddha Families, with Vajrasattva as a sixth family. One labelled example of each scheme:

Read the columns as separate traditions. HAR calls the colours “generally consistent although there are exceptions”, and for Tibetan mandalas associates Akṣobhya with the east, Ratnasambhava with the south and Amitābha with the west. Even in Japan, the four buddhas around Mahāvairocana “differ somewhat” between the two mandalas (JAANUS): the Taizōkai (Womb) has Ratnaketu, Saṃkusumitarāja, Amitāyus and Divyadundubhimeghanirghoṣa, with Amitāyus (Amida) in the west in both.

Arrangements vary by tantra. 84000’s Avataṃsaka introduction says that in the higher tantras Vairocana “still retains his position as the central buddha in the five-buddha-family system”. JAANUS, however, notes that in late tantric mandalas Akṣobhya sometimes replaces Vairocana at the centre, and HAR calls Akṣobhya “a relatively minor figure in the Sutras” but “of major importance in the Tantras”. In the first two classes of tantra, Kriyā and Caryā, HAR counts only three families: Tathāgata (Śākyamuni), Padma (Amitābha) and Vajra (Akṣobhya).

How old are they? As a set, with families and a centre, the five are tantric; HAR says they “only exist within the context of Tantric literature and the directional structure of a mandala”. Some members are older. Akṣobhya and Amitābha are sutra buddhas, and JAANUS dates the earliest group of four direction buddhas to the Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra (ca. 4th century), with the five emerging “particularly in Esoteric teachings (ca. 7th century)”.

Why not “dhyani buddhas”? The label is common in English books. HAR’s list of caution words says dhyāni (“meditation”) is “incorrectly applied by Western writers” to these buddhas, whom Tibetan calls the Conquerors of the Five Families (gyalwa rig nga) and early Tibetan literature the Five Symbolic Buddhas. JAANUS speaks of the Five Wisdom Tathāgatas (gochi nyorai).

Tantric theory also widens the word: per HAR, meditational deities such as Hevajra count as buddhas, and Tārā is “a female buddha”.

The primordial buddha

Tibetan Buddhism also speaks of a primordial buddha, and here the schools differ (see the four schools). In the Nyingma school it is Samantabhadra (Kuntu Zangpo), “representing the Dharmakaya” in HAR’s words, typically shown blue-black and naked, in meditation, embracing his consort Samantabhadrī. HAR stresses that this buddha and the sutras’ bodhisattva Samantabhadra are “unrelated”. In the Sarma (New Translation) schools, from the eleventh century on, it is Vajradhara, the “secret, or inner, form” of Śākyamuni, who emanates the five buddhas in the Anuttarayoga tantras. In the Nyingma view Vajradhara is an activity emanation of Samantabhadra.

One buddha, three bodies

A Mahāyāna doctrine, associated with the Yogācāra school, offers one way to relate these kinds: the three bodies (trikāya). Asked by the bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha whether the Tathāgata has a body, the Buddha of the Sūtra on the Three Bodies answers with three similes:

The sutra goes on to sort them by who sees them: the dharmakāya is what is seen from the Tathāgata’s side, the saṃbhogakāya what bodhisattvas see, and the nirmāṇakāya what ordinary devoted beings see. The translators add that the doctrine “has tended to be associated with the Yogācāra school”, though the terms dharmakāya and rūpakāya (“form body”) are found in sutras such as the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā.

The frame maps onto some of the types above. The nirmāṇakāya, in the translators’ words, is the physical form “that can be seen by any sentient being”, as Gotama was in our world. In Nyingma depictions, per HAR, the five buddhas are in “sambhogakaya appearance”, youthful and jewelled, while Samantabhadra is in dharmakāya appearance.

Tibetan teaching also uses the frame to sort the figures themselves. In an essay reproduced by Himalayan Art Resources (“Enlightened Beings”, © 1975), Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche writes: “There are three types of buddhas: nirmanakaya buddhas, sambhogakaya buddhas, dharmakaya buddhas.” His main nirmāṇakāya buddhas are the “buddhas of the three times”: Dīpaṅkara, Śākyamuni and Maitreya. “Sambhogakaya buddhas are the yidams.” His two dharmakāya buddhas are Samantabhadra for the Old Translation (Nyingma) school and Vajradhara for the New. That is one modern teacher’s sorting: HAR’s comparison of the two buddhas offers, as one explanation of Vajradhara’s garments and jewellery, that he is in “Sambhogakaya appearance”.

None of the Pali sources on this page teaches the three-body scheme, though the Aggañña Sutta lists “the embodiment of principle” (dhammakāya) among the “terms for the Realized One” (DN 27:9.6): an epithet, not the later doctrine. For what it means for the question of the Buddha’s divinity, see is the Buddha a god?

How the traditions differ

• Theravāda: buddhas who arise one at a time in this world, from the seven of DN 14 to Metteyya, plus independent buddhas.
• East Asian Mahāyāna: buddhas of other worlds, Amitābha foremost in the Pure Land schools; and Vairocana behind Śākyamuni in the Avataṃsaka and the Brahma Net.
• Tibetan Vajrayāna: five tathāgatas in mandalas, and a primordial buddha, Samantabhadra (Nyingma) or Vajradhara (Sarma).
• Japanese esoteric Buddhism: two great mandalas centred on Mahāvairocana, with partly different buddhas around him in each.

For the figures one by one, return to buddhas and bodhisattvas.