Introduction
Quintessential to understanding Buddhism, in all its myriad flavors, is the concept of Dharma, a term that originated somewhere in the ancient Indus valley civilization long before the birth of Hinduism and Buddhism, and long before India was India. In the hymns of the Vedas, the term was used to refer to a governing balance and stabilizing force of the universe, through which all existence was held together in perfect, unifying, harmony. Since then, while the term has acquired additional meanings, this aspect of the term has stayed intact. In early Buddhism, the term Dharma was so important to the theological interpretation of spiritual experience that it was established by the Mahāsāṃghika — a group of devoted Buddhists that contributed to the rise of the Mahāyāna school – as the most fundamental aspect of reality.
The Mahāsāṃghika understood two sides of our experience of reality — our sensory experience and another type of experience that could not be directly described because it was beyond our ability to comprehend rationally. To bridge the gap between these two types of experiences —one mundane and another “spiritual,” they used metaphors to relate the sensory world to the spiritual world — the “inner” world we inhabit in deep meditation. The Buddha was a man, Siddhartha, who awakened to the true nature of existence, or became “enlightened,” but, more importantly to them, it was the notion of an enlightened being that was most important – the archetypal nature of Buddhahood — rather than the physical form of a person. Thus, “Buddha” became a symbolic “celestial” essence with particular qualities, qualities which a meditator could not only comprehend through meditation, but could inhabit directly while in meditation. Meditation takes us into a realm of consciousness quite distinct from our daily lives of activity, which is why a degree of asceticism is required to enter its domain. We must turn off the faucet which feeds our sensory inputs in order to discover the foundation upon which those senses are constructed.
Language evolves in response to our needs and experiences in daily life, so language naturally presents substantial limitations when it comes to describing spiritual experience — it’s something language wasn’t intended for. How can spiritual experiences be accurately conveyed through language to someone who has not had those spiritual experiences? Ultimately, they can’t. The best we can do is use metaphor, simile, and analogy to liken one thing to another and hope it touches that part of the mind not conditioned by language. Even though these literary techniques inevitably fall short in conveying the understanding of spiritual experience, it’s nonetheless a tool we can use to point toward a way of seeing and interpreting our lives in a broader context than we’re accustomed.
For the Mahāsāṃghika, the Buddha became a celestial being with three defining “bodily” attributes: a fundamental Natural Law, or Dharma-body; bliss and ecstasy, or Saṃbhoga-body; and transformation and creation, or Nirmāṇa-body. In Mahayana Buddhism, these are referred to as Dharmakāya, Saṃbhogakāya, and Nirmāṇakāya, respectively. Collectively, they are known as the Trikāya, or Three Bodies of the celestial Buddha.
There are many different interpretations of these terms, as a quick Google search will inform, but their value to practicing Buddhists is to provide seeds for meditation. Contemplating the attributes of a celestial “perfect” being, or Buddha, is a common, though advanced, practice among Chan monks and nuns in China. While some people will muse ad nauseum about the meaning of the Trikāya, sometimes in ways that are incomprehensible, their transformative effect on meditators is their great gift from the early Mahāsāṃghika. What are these attributes of the celestial Buddha and how might we work with them in our practice?
The Dharmakāya
The Dharmakāya, or Buddha-body, is the most important of the three kāyas as the other two — the Nirmāṇakāya and the Saṃbhogakāya — manifest from it. The earliest encounters of the term come from the Prajñāpāramitā sutracollection, some of which were composed as early as 100 BCE. These sutras were important sources for the Yogācāra, or yoga practice school, which formed the originating basis for Chinese Chan.
Dharmakāya is the all-enveloping essence of reality. It is invisible to our senses and our thoughts yet can be brought to awareness during deep meditation. Metaphorically, it’s often referred to as Emptiness, the Void, the Tathāgata (the Buddha used this term to refer to himself as “one who has arrived at suchness”), Anatman (not-self), Atman (True Self), and “the true nature of all things.” Qualitatively, the Dharmakāya is described as "inscrutable" (impossible to interpret), "immeasurable" (without boundaries, limitless), "not apprehended" (impossible to comprehend), “unmanifested” (without form), and “flux” (flowing).
Rather than try to explain the dharmakāya with more linguistic trickery, describing the effect that encountering the Dharmakāya has on those who experience it may help clarify why it’s such an important term in Buddhism.
Meditation takes us into a realm of awareness where we detach completely from our sensory inputs. We disconnect not only from our senses of touch, taste, smell, etc., but also from normal mental activity (the mind is considered a sense in Buddhism). This is not to say that our mind stops, or that physical sensations stop. Instead, we become fully and completely detached from them — they are no longer an aspect of conscious awareness. What’s left is the Dharmakāya – the Void. Returning to the normal physical world the first time we come out of this state of meditative absorption results in a profound shift of perspective: attachments to the sensory realm are not only forever severed, the sensory realm takes on a dream-like quality. What we had thought of previously as real now seems illusory, like a dream.
In Chinese Buddhism, the first brief glimpse of the Dharmakāya is referred to as wù 悟, or awakening to our True Essence, or Buddha Nature. This term was translated into English as enlightenment by Max Müeller in the late 19th century and later popularized by D. T. Suzuki, a Japanese scholar of the early 20th century. The idea of enlightenment has subsequently been grossly misconstrued and misunderstood. Because the concept defies rationality, many people who write about it invent meanings from their imaginations of what they think it is rather than from their experience of it – experience they haven’t had.
Wù is a transforming experience because it shifts the basis of our understanding of reality away from ourselves to that from which our sense of self is constructed. Though this underlying principle is not yet fully recognized, the first glimpse of the Dharmakāya makes us aware that our sense of self is illusory, as is all else we experience in the phenomenological word. Adjusting to this new way of seeing takes time and continued effort, or cultivation; and if we apply ourselves to regularly attend to this new shift in perspective, it soon becomes normalized. The dharmakāya is aptly called the Void because it’s empty, or void, of all the “stuff” of our normal lives. When we empty ourselves of ourselves, what’s left is pure, uncompromised, awareness, devoid of obstructions.
As we continue exploring the Void, we see the physical world, as experienced through our senses, as something that sits on top of something else that gives rise to it. Even though that “something else” is indescribable, we recognize its existence: that is, the Void is not “nothing.” Spending time in this space during meditation is extremely engaging. Physiologically, our brains become highly in-phase across hemispheres, as demonstrated by numerous fMRI studies of advanced meditators. In this state, we may have extremely vivid visions of archetypal forms, often referred to in the sutra literature as Buddha Lands, or Buddha Fields.
Inspiration for much of the Mahayana canon has come from meditators’ experiences in the Void. For example, the Pratyutpanna Sūtra explains that through visualization meditations, a meditator can visit Buddha Fields, or “Pure Lands” where they have direct access to the wisdom (Dharma) of the Buddha – the Dharmakāya. In this way, the meditator can listen to Bodhisattvas preaching the Doctrine and “… retain, master, and preserve those dharmas after hearing them expounded” (see Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, the Doctrinal Foundations, p. 40).
As human beings, we are confined to our physical bodies, so it’s natural, when meditating, for the brain to continue doing what brains have evolved to do — process information. When our sensory systems are off-line, what’s left to process are the remnants of genetically inherited material — those psychological “forces,” or instincts, that have enabled us to survive for millennia. These are the forces from which we experience love, hate, fear, jealousy, lust, etc. They are also the forces that make us form attachments with our partners, children, and parents, as well as all other types of attachments. In this deep state of meditation, we engage directly, and consciously, with these elemental forces, forces which Carl Jung referred to as psychological archetypes, in the sense that archetypes are elemental essences. When we experience them visually, we call them visions. Visions, in contradistinction to dreams, seem as real to us as the lamp on the table across the room – perhaps even more so. And unlike dreams, which vanish from memory when we awaken, visions remain vivid in our minds, sometimes for months or even years after the visionary experience. It’s not surprising that, when someone versed in Buddhist theology and practice experiences this unusual mental activity, they will naturally interpret their experiences in the Buddhist theological contexts familiar to them. Buddhism does not have a monopoly on such experiences, just a unique way of interpreting them. Alternate, yet sometimes remarkably similar, interpretations of visionary experiences can be found throughout the historical record of our species from people in nearly all cultures and religious heritages.
NOTES
For an in-detph look at the Mahāsāṃghika, see Mahāsāṃghika Origins: The Beginnings of Buddhist Sectarianism, by Janice J. Nattier and Charles S. Prebish
For information on fMRI studies of meditators, see, for example,
Regional Brain Activation during Meditation Shows Time and Practice Effects: An Exploratory FMRI Study, E. Baron Short, et. Al.
Case Study of Ecstatic Meditation: fMRI and EEG Evidence of Self-Stimulating a Reward System, Michael R. Hagerty, et. al.
Neural correlates of meditation: a review of structural and functional MRI studies, Rui Ferreira, et. al.