Tag Archives: Sambhogakaya

A Most Glorious Buddhafield

The author of the Book of Revelation remains veiled in mystery, although scholars mainly concur that he was a Jewish-Christian prophet living in Asia Minor as an exile on the isle of Patmos in the closing years of the first century. It largely forecasts the end of an age, not unlike our own which began in 2012–an age of constant tribulation. I have chosen the translation from the New Jerusalem Bible–most faithful to the Greek text. read more

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Namen

  1. The constructing of appearances (nimitta) created by delusion is the characteristic mark of Paratantra (dependence) knowledge; the giving of names to those appearances [regarding them as real individual existences] is characteristic of the imagination.
  2. When the constructing of appearances and names, which come from the union of conditions and realities, no more takes place, we have the characteristic mark of perfected knowledge (parinishpanna).

This is in reference to the five-dharmas: name, appearance, discrimination, right knowledge, and suchness. False-imagination gives rise to discrimination, declaring such ideations as child, soap, etcetera, thus given a name-appellation. What follows is an appearance that is declared after the naming. In short it’s all an exercise in control—once something is named, one has the power over it. Much like during exorcisms when the priest-exorcist demands the demon give its name, after which it can be dispelled. Ultimately, though, the Lanka teaches that by “Right-Knowledge”, “when names and appearances are seen as unobtainable owing to their mutual conditioning, there is no more rising of the Vijnanas, for nothing comes to annihilation, nothing abides everlastingly.” Afterwards, what remains is quiescent-suchness. The Lanka encapsulates all this as such: read more

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The Realm of Suchness

(Hakeda)

  1. THE ESSENCE ITSELF AND THE ATTRIUBUTES OF SUCHNESS, OR THE MEANING OF MAHĀ

A.The Greatness of the Essence of Suchness 

[The essence of Suchness] knows no increase or decrease in ordinary men, the Hīnayānists, the bodhisattvas, or the buddhas. It was not brought into existence in the beginning nor will it cease to be at the end of time; it is eternal through and through.  read more

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The Three Bodies of the Tathagata

(Yampolsky) 

“Good friends, you must all with your own bodies receive the precepts of formlessness and recite in unison what I am about to say. It will make you see the threefold body of the Buddha in your own selves. ‘I take refuge in the pure Dharmakaya Buddha in my own physical body. I take refuge in the ten thousand hundred billion Nirmanakaya Buddhas in my own physical body. I take refuge in the future perfect Sambhogakaya Buddha in my own physical body.’ (Recite the above three times). The physical body is your own home; you cannot speak of turning to it. The threefold body which I just mentioned is within your own self-natures. Everyone in the world possesses it, but being deluded, he cannot see it and seeks the threefold body of the Tathagata on the outside. Thus he cannot find the threefold Buddha body in his own physical body. read more

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