Trikaya (three bodies) in Buddhism
The Trikaya doctrine is a part of the Mahayana Buddhist teachings about the nature of reality. Trikaya literally means “three bodies”. Although the Vedanta and Vajrayana traditions sometimes use a five body definition in their teachings, these are also commonly reduced to the Trikayas or “Three Bodies”. Each of the three kayas support different states of consciousness. The three bodies are:
Dharmakāya, the existential dimension of pure potentiality and creativity out of which everything and anything manifests. Dharmakaya is ground awareness, the ground of being. Dharmakaya is Being manifested as numerous beings. All beings are the manifestation of Being. Dharmakaya is not an entity but manifests infinite numbers of entities. It is the ground of experience referred to as Source in CPP territories of Source, being and self
Sambhogakāya, manifested from the pure ground of Dharmakāya, Sambhogakāya is experienced as the cosmological energies such as luminous archetypal forms and actions. These luminous archetypal forms and actions, manifest the ordinary reality which eventually becomes us, our world and our circumstances in life. The Sambhogakāya dimension is intrinsically immanent, and through the manifestation of archetypal immanence, transcendental experience becomes open. The Sambhogakāya is often experienced phenomenologically as the apparitional symbolic dimension of our existential experience. It is the experiential realm of being in CPP territories of Source, being and self
Nirmāṇakāya is the actual experience of our self in contextual situations. It is experienced as unfolding through time and space, as well as through the unfolding of our personal psychological experience. Nirmāṇakāya is the dimension of our ordinary life world, it is our being-in-the-world. In CPP it is the territory of self in Source, being and self.
Levels of Spiritual Practice
In the book Tasting the Essence of Tantra, Rob Preece mentions three levels of spiritual practice. According to Preece, these levels can be regarded as representing the evolution of spiritual practice the practitioner goes through. Each level of practice also represents a step of the evolution of Buddhist practice as a whole and the Schools that are traditionally affiliated with it. According to Preece, the first level of practice is the Path of Cultivation. It is the recognition of the practitioner that certain actions and deeds lead to suffering, and others cultivate and progress the practitioner in the right direction. The practitioner learns that certain things are wholesome and others are unwholesome. This stage brings the study of moral values. Some things are inherently right and some are utterly wrong. This level is very dualistic. Life is essentially a battle between Samsara and Nirvana.
The second level of practice is the path of transformation, which brings forth the understanding that all things have an innate pure nature as their deepest essence. These are the tantric and the alchemical paths in which every experience is regarded as the prima-materia for transformation. In this path the practitioner adopts an attitude of non preference towards their experience. No longer does certain states of consciousness are regarded as good and others as bad, rather there is an inclusivity of all mental states, emotional states and energetic states as the fuel that is needed to induce transformation. This level of practice still holds a subtle dualism in the form of a preference of the practitioner toward transformation. There is still a desire to heal or change something into another.
The third level of practice is the path of self liberation and non modification. This path includes the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions (Preece, 2018). It holds in it the awareness that since everything is primordially pure and empty, nothing needs to be changed. It is the Dzogchen realization of Rigpa, knowledge of the ground. The view in this path is that the basic problem we have is one of not recognising that all things are equal parts in primordial consciousness. Failure to recognize this basic truth results in ma rigpa, which is Dzogchen equivalent to ignorance. In this path one does not trouble itself with transformation, but rather do what is needed to cut through conceptual experience and touch directly into the non-dual nature which is at the essence of any experience.
The Path of Inclusivity and Embodiment Descent
The three paths do not necessarily have a strict linear progression from the first to the former. Once the evolutionary step toward further inclusivity has been taken, the different levels of practice become simultaneously co-existing. Each of the three levels of practice can be looked upon as putting emphasis on one of the three planes of human experience: the mental/causal, the feeling/emotional/energetic and the physical/material/gross. Over time, the capacity for clear awareness in each level of being evolves in a corresponding manner. So for example when I realize the empty nature of Rigpa at the level of Dharmakāya, The capacity for making an authentic moral act at the level of Nirmāṇakāya naturally expands.
Spiritual maturity has a descending order in the sense that the fuller it gets, the more inclusivity is brought to the grosser realms. We may become skilled in experiencing non-dual nature at the level of our mental faculties, but we may not be ready yet or have the capacity to be fully embodied and present during emotional states such as sadness, helplessness, anger or hate . We may also be still refusing to fully embody body states, such as sexual attraction or repulsion. We have not yet learned to distill the life affirming energies that are at the core of those states. This leaves a subtle duality in the form of maintaining a separation between the observer and the observed states, “mindfully” looking at these from the safe distance of the observer.
The Descending Journey into the Depths of the Psyche
I like to imagine the process of awareness descent as a journey into the ocean depths. In the beginning, the only thing we know about is a boat that is sailing on the surface of the ocean. This is the equivalent of Nirmanakaya or self. Looking at the ocean from the boat, we can only see what is above the water surface. We do our best to navigate the boat through the currents of the ocean and are suspiciously cautious about diving into the ocean. When we do take to plunge into the water, we initially encounter the surface currents, these are the unprocessed, lost and denied experiences that Chogyam Trungpa called the cloudy mind (Chogyam Trungpa, 2001). Our instinct may tell us that we better get back on the boat since is too troubling or hectic to stay in the water, but if we make it past this initial bumpy ride we cross the threshold between Nirmanakaya realm of self formations and into the deep waters of Sambhogakāya. In this place we are no longer in the zone of surface currents. We enter the deep waters of the seas where Immense mythological beings dwell. This realm is what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. Jung himself initially thought this dimension to be of only psychological and imaginative nature as well, but later in his work he came to regard this dimension as the archetypal ground of our collective being (Bauer, 2017). We come to consciously recognize our part in that world. Time moves on the scale of eons rather than days and years or lose its linear direction all together. It may be hard to imagine that it actually has a bottom somewhere, that it ever had a more fundamental beginning. Once we spend some time in the deep currents of the ocean, meeting all sorts of mythological creatures, it may start to dawn that this expansive territory has its cyclical nature as well. Extraordinary as it may be, it still contains the seed of duality. We then start to let go of the game of chasing form all together, be it gross or subtle ones. We let go of the very movement of striving and this allows us to settle and sink even deeper into the darkness of the depths, until there comes a moment that everything becomes suddenly illuminated. There is only the white light. What is experienced is the continuity of the light within and the light that is without, which is expressed through the singularity of Being. The knower and the known are realized to have always been one and the same. We have reached the ground of the ocean, Dharmakaya as the spaciousness that is at the source of all phenomena.
It appears there is no going further from this point, as the source of luminosity is the primordial emanation out of which all forms exist. By staying present on the edge of emanation we start to intuitively see that beyond it, is that which is unknowable. The pure light could have only come into existence from that which is before and beyond being all together, the non-existent ground of Emptiness. In Hebrew it is called the Ein (אין) literally “nothing”. In the words of the ancient Kabalistic text of Sefer Yetzirah (ספר יצירה), Book of Creation: “and before One what is there to count”. All that which exists is known to come from the womb of primordial Emptiness.
The Three Realms of Experience and the Inner Narrative in Client Work
When getting to know the client’s inner narrative we need to consider the three realms of human experience, the gross level, the emotional energetic level and the subtle level. These levels of human experience are reflected in Buddhist philosophy as the three Kayas. At a certain point in the development of the western psyche it became common to perceive body and mind as two separate entities. This is reflected in a tendency to engage with the client's inner narrative solely from the realm of the mind, as if it is a separate entity from the body and emotional energetic realms . As a matter of fact, the different realms could be seen as a reflection of the same inner structures through the gross to subtle manifestations, “as above, so below”. This is why it is conducive to engage with the healing qualities of awareness by engaging with the structure and movements of the narrative through all three realms of experience. Engaging with the inner structures in this multilevel way is not always possible and depends on the client's willingness and stage of the therapeutic process, but when conditions are ripe and the therapist can engage with the client on all levels, it allows the therapist to make a much wholesome therapeutic gesture.
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