On a related theme, the nirmanakaya also relates to the facts of the physiological inertia and biological conditioning of the bodily aspects of the emotional life. The mind of a true arahat is extremely resilient, but the flesh works according to the same laws that were in place before.
The spacious mental resilience of an arahat has some positive consequences for physical life, but it does not completely transform it.
Thus, physical sensations associated with hunger, pain, tiredness, sexual arousal, nervousness, fear and all the rest are still intimate realities for the living arahat when they arise and are not inconsequential, though the points made above in the Karma model about seeing things arise and vanish still apply. The nirmanakaya includes issues of biochemistry and neurochemistry, and all of the issues of mental pathology that may go along with these.
The nirmanakaya bears out the truth so well articulated by Lao Tzu when he talked about dark and light containing one another and difficulty and ease complementing one another. No level of
enlightenment will allow one to just pick one’s favorite half of reality or humanity and eradicate the rest. This simply never happens and is not possible.
I think that everyone on the spiritual path should occasionally sit down with a piece of paper and list their favorite half of reality that they imagine or wish would be left if they got fully enlightened, and then list all the aspects of reality that they wish or “know” would vanish forever.
They should then list the things that they imagine would show up as a result of full realization that are not here now. The differences between these lists often point directly to what blocks the development of wisdom from clear acceptance and understanding of reality.
Even arahats and buddhas have a favorite half of reality as well as dreams about how things could be, so these dreams are not the problem. The difference is that highly realized beings understand directly that both the “good” and “bad” halves are of the nature of ultimate truth, including all thoughts about them, and this makes all the difference. These sensations flicker effortlessly and vanish, getting no 310
Models of the Stages of Enlightenment more nor less consideration than they are due. The point I am trying to make here is to include the sensations that make up your world in your practice, and don’t retreat into idealized fantasies of what realization will be like, though notice such sensations if and when they occur.
Lastly, the nirmanakaya relates to our “stuff,” our issues, our childhood traumas, our dark secrets. I have routinely mentioned that when doing insight practices one should try to see these things at the moment-to-moment level. However, one must also find a way to deal with our stuff in the traditional ways, or perhaps non-traditional ones.
Just do this work when not doing insight practices. While there are connections between these two types of work, they are often in direct conflict. Make time for the macroscopic, when we face and learn about how to live well in the world in terms of emotions, issues, conflicts, tears, joys, people, jobs and relationships. However, also make time during which you resolutely put all of that behind you, time when you stay at the level of flickering sensations. Unhealthy fixation on either perspective is guaranteed to cause problems.
Arahats also have a wondrous understanding of all of this that is unique to them and buddhas (though there may be hints of it at third path) called the “sambhogakaya.” They know that the full range of phenomenal reality and even the full range of the emotional life can be deeply appreciated for what it is. They see that the world of concepts, language, symbols, visions, thoughts and dreams is fundamentally the same as the world of materiality, that they both share the same essential nature from an experiential point of view. The first line of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning there was the word, and the word was God,” is a nice way to put it. For those who find this phrase too cryptic, I paraphrase it as: “From the beginning, concepts, words, dreams, visions, and the realm of thought have always been an aspect of ultimate reality.”
Further, in some strange way even the worst of the world has a richness of texture that can be deeply enjoyed, and a mysterious and sometimes awe-inspiring glory mixed into it, inherent in it. What they were looking for was permeating all the sensations without exception that had made up their world all along! What staggering irony this is, and what a silent joy it is to discover this at last. This is what is meant by 311
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“the bliss of Nirvana.” It is a more subtle understanding than the nirmanakaya and in some largely mysterious way does not contradict it.
Beyond even this, they also understand in real time what is meant by the dharmakaya, that somehow none of this is they, and that “what they are” cannot be fundamentally harmed, disturbed or affected by the world of phenomena in any way. The dharmakaya seems to
simultaneously pervade all of this, not be all of this, and be utterly beyond all of this. It seems to be permanent and yet unfindable, be empty and yet aware. Even this paradoxical language is hopelessly crude and from a certain point of view unnecessary, though an arahat would know directly what it is pointing to. This is what is meant by “going beyond birth and death,” “Samsara is Nirvana,” “the arahat is traceless here and now,” “True Self” and “no-self.” Interestingly, the nirmanakaya also relates directly to both “True Self” and “no-self.”
There is something beautiful and yet tragic in this, a “dark comedy” as a friend of mine put it.
To even say that the dharmakaya is a very subtle understanding makes no sense, as the understanding of dharmakaya arises more from what is absent rather than a sense of the presence of something. On the other hand, the presence of everything bears witness to it.
All three understandings (the nirmanakaya, the sambhogakaya, and the dharmakaya) are accessible to the arahat at any time by the mere inclination towards them, which is to say these perspectives arise dependent on causes in their own time. They are three complementary perspectives on the same thing. It is like being able to see the validity of the perspective of all of the three people in the classic Taoist painting called “The Vinegar Tasters,” with Confucius and his laws for living in the world relating to the nirmanakaya, Lao Tzu and his deep
appreciation of life relating to the sambhogakaya, and the Buddha and his emphasis on Nirvana and going beyond suffering, birth and death relating to the dharmakaya. Most people think of this painting as a Taoist slam on the other two traditions, but I think that the deeper meaning is much more useful.
The teaching of the Three Ultimate Dharmas of materiality,
mentality and Nibbana that I articulated earlier is closely related to the Tibetan concepts of the Three Kayas or aspects of the fully enlightened 312
Models of the Stages of Enlightenment condition. The nirmanakaya relates to form, the sambhogakaya relates to the enjoyable, quiet and spacious peace of the fully enlightened mind that unifies the mental and physical into the same field of experience, and the dharmakaya relates to Nibbana.
Were only the nirmanakaya true, we could say that unitive
experiences are the answer and that we are the whole field of experience. Were only the dharmakaya true, we could say that transcendent “experiences” are the answer, that we create and know the whole field of experience, that we do not exist, and that we are the deathless or God. Neither of these frameworks can clearly explain things on their own, and so, as mentioned in the chapter called No-self vs. True Self, none of these descriptions really holds up to reality testing on its own.
Presenting the Three Kayas also allows me to continue to hammer relentlessly on the point about people wanting to find some spiritual reality other than this one. The huge temptation when walking the spiritual path is to try desperately to find a way to get the simple ease of the sambhogakaya and the indestructible, transcendent and deathless luminosity of the dharmakaya while secretly hoping that the down to earth, mundane, intimate, visceral, vulnerable, and often embarrassing nirmanakaya will just sort of crawl away and die or at least radically reform itself. The nirmanakaya is often treated as though it were the bastard stepchild of the fully enlightened condition, but you can’t have one without the others. Intimacy with reality is bought at the price of attaining transcendence beyond reality. Transcendence is bought at the price of attaining intimacy with reality. These inescapable facts should not be forgotten.
The all too common temptation of those who advertise and sell spirituality is to sing the praises of the sambhogakaya and dharmakaya while trying to gloss over the profound yet down to earth implications of the nirmanakaya. Buyer beware! If enlightened beings didn’t feel the fullness of their humanity and the ordinary world, compassion for themselves and others would be completely impossible. From a Tibetan point of view, it is because enlightened beings progressively lose their artificial defenses against the nirmanakaya that they have no choice but to be bodhisattvas, which brings us nicely to our next model…
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THE IMMORTALITY MODELS
The Immortality Models are significantly more prevalent in Tibetan Buddhism than the other strains, thought they also appear in Pure Land Buddhism and are found elsewhere. While all strains of Buddhism on the one hand categorically deny immortality as the goal based upon the standard tenants of Buddhist logic, plenty then turn around and sell immortality like used car salesmen. So many Buddhists want to be up in the Heaven called Nirvana as empty yet separate beings who don’t exist and yet live forever as Bodhisattvas saving the world.
While there are lots of good points in the Bodhisattva Vows, this is yet another case of bait and switch where the results will be a bit more down to earth than most people are bargaining for. However, many Buddhists are so brainwashed into the ideal of becoming Amazing Super Beings that they readily give up the notion that they could really understand anything in this lifetime in exchange for the dream that some zillion lifetimes down the road they may get to be Spiritual Superstars. However, as their mentality can be essentially like people who have bought into some weird cult, I don’t recommend trying to convince them otherwise, as it generally just pisses them off. Just do your practice, take care of your own understanding, and then see what you can do from there.
Now, as before, there is some weird truth to the immortality models on two fronts. First, from a technical point of view, what is traditionally called the Dharmakaya, Deathless, Nirvana, Tao, Void, Buddha Nature, etc. is indestructible, timeless, etc., but this is because it is not anything specific. This has already been discussed, and simply stated, from this point of view the notion of death or impermanence simply does not apply. The flip side of this, that of the ordinary, transient world, Nirmanakaya, etc., is that causality rings on indefinitely. This is an interesting way to look at things, and a very practical, insight-oriented way.
From the point of view of time, cause and effect, things ripple out into the universe like drops of water cause ripples in water. This process, that is to say the world and us, has always been empty. If we are anything, it is a pattern of rippling sensations arising from causes and effects and leading to causes and effects. Thus, we send ripples of 314
Models of the Stages of Enlightenment whatever and however we are out into the causal future. If we are enlightened, that is one aspect of what ripples out into the patterns we call time, and these ripples go on without definable end. Teachings of reincarnation are getting at this point in their somewhat problematic way. Thus, we see that there is something to the Immortality Models, but they are not very helpful for doing insight practices except to help one appreciate causality. I think they are much more useful for training in morality, despite their obvious paradigmatic problems.
One great traditional analogy goes as follows: If you lit a candle, then lit another candle with that candle and then blew out the first one, what is transmitted? This is causality without a permanent entity, resonance without continuity, an artificial but useful recognition of a pattern, and nothing more.
THE TRANSCENDENCE MODELS
Related to the Immortality and Bliss Models, we have the
Transcendence Models. These essentially promise that you will have the best of both worlds: you will get to be in the world while not of the world, be able to enjoy all pleasant things while being immune to pain and difficulty, and thus live in a protected state of partial, selective transcendence. A lot of people try to emulate such a state in their practice: when presented with suffering they either look away from it or try to make their attention so wide or vague that they don’t notice it, and when pleasant things arise they try to hang on to those experiences and expand them. While such a perfectly natural thing to do, this is the exact reverse of insight practice, and yet they may deeply feel that this is practicing for the transcendence they have been promised.
As stated earlier, the predictable and obvious truth is that transcendence is bought at the price of a very deep, direct intimacy with life, all of life, both good and bad. Similarly, this deep intimacy with life is bought at the price of transcendence. While everyone nearly automatically looks to the good side of both, few consider that realization brings a deep, direct experience of all that is painful and also the reluctant understanding of how empty and ephemeral pleasure is.
One must be careful here, and I don’t advocate buying into either extreme. Our ordinary lives have all this already, so don’t look for something that is different from what is going on. Instead, look into your 315
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life as it is and see the Three Characteristics of it directly, instant by instant. This is the gateway to the answer to the strange paradox that all this is pointing to.
THE EXTINCTION MODELS
On the flip side of the Immortality Models, and somewhat contrary to the Transcendence Models, we have the Extinction Models. These are essentially a promise that insight practices will either have you never be reborn again or will make you non-existent somehow in some ordinary sense. The first basic flaw in these models is that they presume an entity to which these things can occur, which from an insight point of view is already a problem. Insight practices at their best presume emptiness as always having been the case, and so to posit that there is something that was reborn flies directly against their root premises.
Thus, the notion that there is someone who either will not be reborn again or will somehow cease to be (assuming they were “being” before), is absurd and doesn’t belong in the language of ultimate wisdom.
However, page after page, Buddhism promises that there will be no more coming into any state of being, no more rebirth, no more self, and that somehow this will get someone off of the wheel of suffering.
