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What is the Buddha? A teaching on the 3 KayasBy H.E. Tai Situpa On May 15th Buddha Jayanti, the feast of the birth and enlightenment of the Buddha is celebrated in India as a public holiday. One of the events commemorating that day in Delhi this year was a lecture given by the Tai Situpa at the India International Centre on the nature of the Buddha. The following is an excerpt from this talk.
What is Buddha? This is a very difficult subject, because there isn’t a word that can explain what is Buddha, and we will never know what Buddha really is until we are Buddha, As a principle of Buddha Dharma, Buddha means an attainment which is the highest, most profound and ultimate realization. The Buddha means that which is the ultimate realization of everything. How far can the progress and development of a living being go? This development can go until the being becomes Buddha, and anyone who attains the realization that we call Buddha is Buddha. Buddha means the ultimate realization, the ultimate achievement. As you all know, I am a follower of Tibetan Buddhism, which is what people call it now. In the past it was known as Vajrayana, the ultimate teaching of the Buddha. This teaching describes Buddha and explains Buddha as having 4 bodies. In Sanskrit it is called the 4 kayas. These are Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya and Svabhavikakaya. Dharmakaya, the first one, is the ultimate aspect of the Buddha which nobody can describe totally, nobody can see, nobody can hear and nobody can imagine. That is the Dharmakaya. Dharmakaya has a relationship with Dharma. Dharma in Tibetan is cho. Cho means everything. It doesn’t mean black and white; it doesn’t mean teachings of Buddha that are written on paper. The cho means the essence of everything. Now when we say Dharmakaya, it means the ultimate mind of Buddha that is the essence of everything. We all have ideas that great masters and bodhisattvas can see the future, they can see the past. If you attain realization of your ultimate potential, the ultimate of your mind, if you have that realization you have everything, and there is no difference between past, present and future, and nothing can be hidden. This Dharmakaya nature is there in all of us even, if we are not direct emanations of Buddha. We call it Buddha nature. Any sentient being, if they have the opportunity, we can call it karma, to do whatever is right and meaningful and if they have the opportunity to avoid whatever is wrong, then they have the opportunity to be Buddha because the ultimate for them is Buddhahood, we call it Buddha nature, Tathagatagarbha. In the impure, the relative sense, as an ordinary sentient being who is not enlightened—as myself and as many of you—the Buddha nature is there as ultimate of our mind. We can just feel it. How? When we say “I” our concept is very limited, very small. We say “I, Situ” or “I, Richard” or “I, Dipak” or “I someone-someone” but this isn’t accurate because that name was given after your birth, not even during your birth, and sometimes even quite a few months or quite a few years afterwards, and we can be certain that it is not who we are, and that the name is very superficial. We know that. Then we go beyond that and we call this flesh and blood and bone body “I”. But if we really think deeply, that is also not wide enough, that is also not correct. Ultimately, there is not such thing as “I” but relatively there is, indeed, but this relative “1” is our mind. That is who we are. Our personality, our self—that is who we are, relatively. When we look at this mind not with this “I” but deeply with our understanding, intellect and feeling, then this mind does not have anything which is solid. You cannot catch mind and you cannot lock mind and mind is not physical, and so we call it empty, nothingness. But mind isn’t just nothing, it is there, it can think, it can understand, it can feel, too. So the mind in all of us is nothing, which is solid but is also not something, which is not there. It is there. We call it emptiness and clearness. The unity of the emptiness and clarity, that is the mind. If we just relax and try to calm ourselves down by not thinking of anything important, then we will experience a kind of serene state. Then we can have a tiny glimpse of this mind. Relatively; that is the seed and essence of Dharmakaya, and when you totally attain that aspect it is what we call Dharmakaya, what is really Buddha.
Sambhogakaya means the manifestation of that Dharmakaya for the benefit of all sentient beings. The reason Buddha attained enlightenment is for this purpose. If it is not for the benefit of all sentient beings it is not Buddha. Sambhogakaya is a certain level of enlightenment but not ultimate enlightenment. It is an aspect of the highest level of being. You may have seen pictures of deities with many arms. These are representations that symbolize the Sambhogakaya. It is the manifestation of Dharmakaya for very highly realized beings. That is what the Sambhogakaya is. It can be explained in 5 pure qualities. The pure quality of the place, the pure quality of the time, the pure quality of the master or teacher, the pure quality of the disciple, and the pure quality of the teaching. The pure quality of the atmosphere is the body, the physical appearance of the Sambhogakaya. You may call it Pure Land. When you are talking about deities you say this is the Pure Land of such-and-such deity. The Pure Land of the deity and the physical aspect of the deity are inseparable, they are one in the same because it is all manifestation. The pure quality of the time, is the unity of the three times. We call it timeless time, because the past, the present, the future have no separation, they are one. As philosophy we can only understand this very roughly because we can only realize this when we attain a level where we can really experience Sambhogakaya. In order to gain a philosophical understanding of timelessness - the ultimate of time, we can ask: where is past? Where is the future? If we think about it in a superficial way we see there is past because of last year, there is present because of this year, and there is future because of next year. But when you try to break it down to the shortest length of time that is only present, which is closed to the past and closed to the future, that is the relative aspect of the pure quality of time. And the ultimate aspect of that pure time is the time of the Sambhogakaya. In the teachings often there comes the concept of’ permanence, and you know that in Buddhist teachings there is nothing that is permanent. When you say a deity or a kind of realization is permanent or ultimate, what you really mean is that it is beyond time. The pure quality of the teacher or master, which is the Buddha, is all the activity of that being manifested spontaneously without any effort. How it has to manifest, that is the way it will manifest. That is the ultimate aspect of the teacher. In our current situation as human beings we have subject and object. The ultimate level of the subject is the pure teacher or master. And here is where the student or disciple comes in. In the Sambhogakaya, who is the disciple? Who is the object of the Sambhogakaya? It is the bodhisattva, who attains at least realization of the first level, up until the tenth level, just before becoming Buddha. That is the pure quality of the disciple or the student of the Buddha Sambhogakaya. And the pure quality of the teaching? The teachings of the certain people may be wonderful, but it is Sambhogakaya that is the ultimate truth because this is the ultimate of the interrelationship between teacher and student, subject and object. This interdependence is in everything, and the ultimate of that interrelationship is the ultimate truth because that is the essence, which is explained in the 5 pure qualities of the Sambhogakaya. It is a little bit complicated, because it is very deep philosophy. I will try to clarify it by using the example of our bodies, which we all know very well. We know that our body is not only bone, flesh and blood… and that is all. It is not all. There is energy there. It is very interesting. It seems complicated because there are so many things which we cannot see and to which we cannot point to, but yet they are there. For instance, when something goes wrong with our physical bodies, we know. We may have some problem which none of the doctors can cure. Still the sickness is there though none of them can find it through any of their examinations. Yet you know that there is something, which you cannot see and which you cannot really point out. This physical energy is based on the 5 elements. Which makes up where we live and what we are made out of. Fire, water, earth, air and space. These 5 elements are related to a series of emotions: desire, anger, ignorance, jealousy and pride, which are called the 5 poisons. They are so called because in the way that poisons can kill us, kill our bodies. These five things can kill our development, can destroy us. Because of that we call them poisons, and yet all this impurity can be developed or purified by controlling our energy, atmosphere, attitude, etc. So on the impure level, that is the relative Sambhogakaya, but when you purify this totally the essence is the Buddha Sambhogakaya. Now the third aspect, the Nirmanakaya. Nirmanakaya is the manifestation Sambhogakaya, which is in turn a manifestation of the Dharmakaya. Let us say that the Nirmanakaya is a manifestation of both Dharmakaya and Sambhogakaya, and this manifestation of Buddha is beyond concept. It just arises spontaneously. If Buddha manifested by wanting to manifest as such-and-such at a certain time to a certain people, that may be wonderful but it is not Buddha at all. With so many beings suffering and so many problems existing in the world, the question arises naturally why didn’t Buddha solve them? If he is the Buddha and these are sentient beings that he has come to benefit, and he has the power to do it, then why doesn’t he? The Buddha manifestation does not come as a prearranged plan on the Buddha’s part, but it comes according to the capabilities of the beings. Buddha’s quality and essence is manifested for everyone and, more than that is in everyone as Buddha nature. Those who are capable and ready will receive it, those who are not capable and not ready will not receive it, and each person who is able to receive this manifestation of Buddha will do so on a different level, their own level of capability. There is a Tibetan poem which may be translated “The King of Gods may make rain for eons, yet a poor person who puts his pot upside down will never get a single drop.” That is the way. If you have openness to the truth, truth is there always for you, but if you don’t believe it, if you don’t live with it and live within it, then how will you get it? That is how Buddha manifests as Nirmanakaya. An example for us of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha is Buddha Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha, who attained enlightenment in Bodhgaya and who gave teachings in Lumbini and who passed away in Kushinagar 2528 years ago. The Nirmanakaya includes 5 things, the body, speech, mind, knowledge and activity of the historical Buddha. We refer to the Buddha Sakyamuni as our example, but he is not the only one. The three bodies of Buddha, then, can he compared, in a way to some references to Christ in old Christian dialogs. He is called the universal Christ, the mystic Christ, and the historical Christ. Dharmakaya is something very closely associated with the term universal, which is ultimate. Sambhogakaya is something like mystic because it is a manifestation of the Buddha but it is difficult for us to relate to it directly. The Nirmanakaya is historical because it is a person who really becomes Buddha historically. And this Buddhahood is not only limited to one person. The beginning of a Buddha is, for example, when we take the Bodhisattva commitment to the enlightenment mind, when we really commit ourselves with the motivation that may be stated: “May I attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.” That is the beginning. Everything starts from that, from having the desire that I may be able to do everything meaningfully and beneficially for myself and for others. Then for others only. And then really doing it. This step-by-step development may take hundreds of centuries, but there will be gradual steps forward, and by developing this way you attain the total realization that is the ultimate achievement of the motivating principal which inspired you. When Buddha becomes Buddha everything is for the benefit of others, spontaneously. We have a deity, which you may know, called Avoloketeshvara (tib. Chenrezig), with 1000 arms and 1000 eyes. On each of the many palms of the hands of Avoloketeshvara are eyes. It is a very peaceful manifestation. We have a saying that the 1000 hands signify the universal monarchs, the 1000 eyes signify the Buddhas, and the meaning is that Buddha can and will manifest into billions upon billions of galaxies as billions of Buddhas for the benefit of billions of beings without any limit of time. Finally, the Svabhavikakaya, which is the realization of Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya together, without distinction from each other. The three are inseparable yet still retain the individuality of the three aspects of the manifestation of the Buddha.
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Sherab
Ling, Himachal Pradesh, India
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