Buddhism's Trikaya ... Yet another Trinity

[Dana Lomas]

How in my metaphysical explorations I've not come across the Buddha's Trikaya before, is yet another embarrassing admission of my philosophical omissions. However, now that I've encountered it, with a bit of imaginative and poetic licence, I can't help but see it as a kind of analog to other such Divine triunes, comprised of (1) a formless, boundless Consciousness/ (2) a locus (logos?) of subjective individuality/ and (3) some eros or bliss factor as its creative impetus, expressed as follows, only slightly rearranged:

1. The Dharmakāya or Truth body which embodies the very principle of enlightenment and knows no limits or boundaries;
2. The Sambhogakāya or body of mutual enjoyment which is a body of bliss or clear light manifestation;
3. The Nirmāṇakāya or created body which manifests in time and space

Is this just random coincidence, or some meaningful archetypal synchronicity? I also wonder if this can somehow be tied into Sat/Chit/Ananda, or Father/Christ/Holy Spirit, or other known Divine trinities ... All ideas and musings are welcome :)

[Ben Iscatus]

I confess, Dana, that I don't really understand the Sambhogokaya aspect.

Here's a trinity I understand better: Transcendant God, Immanent God and Ichabod.

Ichabod

 

Up on his throne

Serene, alone,

Sits the transcendent god;

Observing all,

The ruck, the maul

On every clump and clod.

 

Down on the ground,

Crawling round

Breathes the immanent god;

Where weevils, spice,

Stardust and lice

Commingle in the sod.

 

Between the two

A chasm grew

Which cannot now be trod.

They gaze across,

They feel their loss

And call it Ichabod.

On Wednesday, 15 November 2017 13:30:16 UTC, Dana Lomas wrote:

How in my metaphysical explorations I've not come across the Buddha's Trikaya before, is yet another embarrassing admission of my philosophical omissions. However, now that I've encountered it, with a bit of imaginative and poetic licence, I can't help but see it as a kind of analog to other such Divine triunes, comprised of (1) a formless, boundless Consciousness/ (2) a locus (logos?) of subjective individuality/ and (3) some eros or bliss factor as its creative impetus, expressed as follows, only slightly rearranged:

1. The Dharmakāya or Truth body which embodies the very principle of enlightenment and knows no limits or boundaries;
2. The Sambhogakāya or body of mutual enjoyment which is a body of bliss or clear light manifestation;
3. The Nirmāṇakāya or created body which manifests in time and space

Is this just random coincidence, or some meaningful synchronicity? I also wonder if this can somehow be tied into Sat/Chit/Ananda, or Father/Christ/Holy Spirit, or other known Divine trinities ... All ideas and musings are welcome :)

[Dana Lomas]

Ben ... That put a smile x 3 into my day -- is it one of yours? -- I'm also not sure about the 'bliss' aspect, unless that is where the mutual 'commingling' comes into play, which has been known to be the creative impetus that gives rise to offspring  :)  

[Mark Robert]

Ichabod....my God, Ben, is that yours? What a talent! 

Regarding the trikaya, that's a beautiful teaching with a lot of depth that I can't do justice to, but a tiny bit: one way to think about it is as describing different levels of experience of the same reality, which are always in union: gross/body/matter (nirmanakaya), subtle/speech/energy (sambhogakaya), and very subtle/mind/emptiness (dharmakaya). When some traditions talk about the same consciousness looking through every set of eyes (MAL perhaps) -- that would be the dharmakaya, the formless aspect. So the trikaya is sort of a Buddhist way of talking about what is "connected" or the same in all of us, while also pointing out what is unique, different, "selfness." The form bodies are unique to each individual manifestation, and they appear to evolve: the nirmanakaya in birth after birth, and the sambhogakaya as the subtle energy body that is also sometimes associated with a soul or dream body. But the essence is the dharmakaya, that which is to be realized...

[Dana Lomas]

Thanks Mark, as usual, for the edification ...  In this brief chat Ken Wilber would agree that there is at least a striking similarity between Christianity's trinity and Buddhism's trikaya doctrine. He doesn't get into a comparison with Sat Chit Ananda, but it would seem to be not too great a leap of faith to see therein another valid analog of a Divine Triune archetype -- speaking of which, Jung also had some insight and interpretation of the Trinity symbolism, linking it to an earlier Egyptian variation. It seems likely that there are others, even predating those traditions. 

[Scott Roberts]

I don't think this is the same triunity as Father/Logos/Spirit, since both Sambhogakaya and NirmanaKaya can be seen as two levels of form or manifestation. Similarly, Plotinus' emanation levels (Intellect, Soul, Matter) are all levels of form as distinct from the formless One. The Christian Trinity, on the other hand, says that the Three are all on the highest level. Here are my trinitarian equations:

formlessness, form, self-awareness (or unmanifest, manifest, self-consciousness, or ...)

Father, Logos, Spirit

willing, thinking, feeling

Good, Truth, Beauty

I don't know how to align Being/Consciousness/Bliss with these, or if it can be.

[Dana Lomas]

Yes, I see what you mean Scott ... Although NirmanaKaya is more in line with the Christ aspect; and some interpretations do somehow correlate the Christ with the Logos, according to the following: 

"John also explicitly identifies the Logos with Jesus:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' "

Also, the 'chit' aspect of Sat-chit-ananda can also be interpreted as being equatable with Logos, as follows: cit (चित्) means "to form an idea in the mind, be conscious of, think, reflect upon"

In any case, I do see the correlation of the Father/Logos/Spirit Trinity with your own Triunity ... all very fascinating :)

[Scott Roberts]

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 1:20:12 PM UTC-10, Dana Lomas wrote:

Also, the 'chit' aspect of Sat-chit-ananda can also be interpreted as being equatable with Logos, as follows: cit (चित्) means "to form an idea in the mind, be conscious of, think, reflect upon"

Ah, then if Being were understand as "the power that produces beings", we have this alignment: Being: formlessness/Father, Consciousness: form/Logos,  Bliss: self-awareness/Spirit.

[Dana Lomas]

Ah, then if Being were understood as "the power that produces beings"

Yes, the alignment would appear to hold ... With some flexibility in the interpretation of the symbolism, it does make for other intriguing alignments, such as the notion of the 'virgin' birth in the Christ allegory, which to me speaks to the perpetual birthing of form from a pregnant void as being a creative imperative, with no point of origin or causation, once again rendering any suggestion of its absence from the prime point a rather moot point.  This would also be pertinent to your comment in the Plotinus thread regarding the origin of form.

[Ben Iscatus]

Dana, Mark, thanks for your comments. Dana -yes, a bit of consensual commingling is generally pleasant as well as inevitable! Mark, I see you appreciate rhythm and rhyme, which modern poetry has all but lost. Steven Fry, for one, bemoans this loss. But it still exists in modern popular music, whose subject matter is almost entirely about relationship problems (consensual commingling gone wrong). I see modern pop as a placeholder for 'Songs of the Future', which will have a broader and more meaningful subject-base.  The Ichabod poem, for instance, could be easily set to music (it took me 5 minutes to think of a suitable folk-like, almost hymn-like tune, and a musician could doubtless do better - I imagine the first verse sung by a soprano, holding the last note as the second verse is begun by a tenor, and then the third verse sung by both, repeating the final lines as a chorus).

I regret that I must agree with Mark about one thing (from a previous thread) though - there are some words that don't like rhythm or rhyme...and  "Sambhogakāya" is one of them ;

[Dana Lomas]

"there are some words that don't like rhythm or rhyme...and  'Sambhogakāya' is one of them"

Often associated with 'some bogus maya' ? :)

[Mark Robert]

The Sambhogakaya is a bit more obscure than the other kayas; it’s like the Holy Spirit in that way. (You don’t tend to hear a lot of talk about the Holy Spirit.) So here I’ll try to connect them, just my own speculation.

In general, the trikaya teaching is a way to explain a Buddha's experience of being. There is the apocryphal story of how the Buddha found his name. Seeing him shining brightly on the road, a man asked him what he was -- a god, a wizard, a man? “No,” said the Buddha, “I am awake." What did the man see? And what was the Buddha feeling?

Being/Sat/God/Dharmakaya can be understood as the formless groundless ground, the "empty witness" without attributes that is behind or primordial to appearances, as the Origin or Source. But that description is not complete because it lacks dynamism, intent, feeling tone, life. If we conceptualize God as solely that then the materialist's argument against Him has traction -- because how could such a complete nothing be effective in any way?  But the Dharmakaya, like the vacuum state, has an energy associated with it, the Sambhogakaya. You can get something from nothing because the actual nothing is more than the concept nothing. If the ground of being is not material, then “nothing” cannot be a mere absence of material. It is something else, with its own being. This energy can be understood as the natural expression of the fundamental emptiness itself, of its being.

The Holy Spirit is associated with this energy as the creative energy that impregnated Mary. This is how Jesus was both the son of man and God. God the Father, Dharmakaya, emanated a Son, Nirmanakaya, through the intermediary of the Holy Spirit, the Sambhogakaya. As an incarnation, a gross form in our dualistic world, Jesus was a Nirmanakaya (tulku/Rinpoche), but his Consciousness/Chit/Sambhogakaya was an energetic expression of the Father, the Dharmakaya.

Buddha was similarly a Nirmanakaya, an incarnation or embodiment of the Dharmakaya. At the level of expression or message or transmission of the Buddha, we speak about bodhicitta (awakening-mind). Bodhicitta is known for its compassionate warmth, but it is rooted in the absolute being-knowledge of the Dharmakaya, which is utter absence of limitation, restriction, or suffering. Bodhicitta is symbolized by a lotus, which begins in the mud and then sends a shoot up through the water, blooming in a pristine, stainless flower.

The Sambhogakaya is especially related to symbol. Normally we think of symbols as pictures that we invent to refer to actual objects. But it would appear that there are natural symbols that are not merely conceptual fabrications that illuminate gross objects, but those which naturally arise directly from the Dharmakaya as expressions of its qualities.

At a deeper (that is, more subtle) level than their Nirmanakaya manifestations, both Buddha and Jesus are symbolic expressions of the Dharmakaya, though in different ways. Where the Sambhogakaya of the Buddha was a presence of profound peace, scintillating intellect, and a glowing, blissful brightness, Jesus was like a bolt of lightning that connected Heaven and earth, a shocking transmission of knowledge. The beginning of Valentinus' Gospel of Truth states it this way:

The gospel of truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing him by the power of the Logos, who has come from the Pleroma and who is in the thought and the mind of the Father; he it is who is called "the Savior," since that is the name of the work which he must do for the redemption of those who have not known the Father. For the name of the gospel is the manifestation of hope, since that is the discovery of those who seek him, because the All sought him from whom it had come forth. You see, the All had been inside of him, that illimitable, inconceivable one, who is better than every thought.

Think of how different the conditions were where Jesus taught. The Buddha appeared in a place and time uniquely suited to his transmission, and he found his place immediately as a culmination of existing teachings. On the contrary, Jesus, while a fulfillment of prophecy, was both a great joy but also a terrible affront to those who "did not know the Father." 

So where is bliss in all this? This is the feeling-tone of the energy of this transmission, which is beyond merely feeling good. The fact that we don't associate bliss with crucifixion gives some clue to the special meaning of that word as it applies to the Sambhogakaya. This special meaning becomes most clear when we add the fourth Kaya, the Svabhavikakaya, which is the union or experience of them all together, and also the essence, the single meaning. That meaning is pristine purity: The profoundly simple, ever-fresh, brilliant isness of form, which never impedes the infinite, spacious peace of being. The crucifixion is a testament to the difficulty of living that view and also shows that it is possible.

[Dana Lomas]

Love it Mark, truly beautiful ... You somehow managed to eloquently express what I could only nebulously intimate ... deep gratitude :) 

[Ben Iscatus]

I reckon Mark is on the road to describing the Tao in words. I knew it could be done :))

The thing I never got about the Holy Spirit aspect is that it is supposed to replace the Son, or be a placeholder for his return, so in a sense is not a separate third person.

[Dana Lomas]

Well, I'm currently happy to rest with its expression in words being "true enough" :)

[Dana Lomas]

Further pondering the symbology of the Christ allegory, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I have known this Holy Spirit of bliss while amidst the experiencing of the deep suffering of grief, which seems to be indicative of its integral presence, even as That Which Experiences (the Father) self-conceiving/experiencing its emanations as the Christos of form, then manifests as the 'crucifying' of that form. It was certainly a powerful message that its creative impetus is never not present, and its forms never not reborn.

[Mark Robert]

Thanks guys for your kind comments and reflections. It's great to be able to participate in this community with its many views and talents. Ben, I'd love to hear Ichabod set to music! And Dana, I hope to add something about the "crucible" when I have some more time, particularly about the Sambhogakaya as it pertains to mandalas, buddha fields, and bodies of light. Unfortunately my writing time will soon be taking a hit... we're packing for a return to the States and I'll be jumping back into full time work. We will see!

[Dana Lomas]

Best wishes Mark, on the revamped experiential adventure ... It would be great to read your ideas on the 'crucible', whenever time permits. This here experiential adventure will probably be around for at least another dog-age. :)

[Dana Lomas]

This chat between Tom Campbell and Eric Cunningham, a professor of history and director of Catholic studies, offers another insightful take on religious/spiritual symbolism, archetypes, metaphors, iconography, allegory, etc, as well as the role and onus of teachers in conveying their underlying essential message. While not specifically mentioning or discussing the idea of the 'Trinity', it nonetheless does apply to all such representations and models as being powerful teaching tools, insofar as they are not interpreted as being literal dogma, wherein the essential message is missed, and even mis-used. Such productive meetings of minds are occasions for renewed hope that at least some academic circles are not adverse to taking the blinders off.