The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  INDESTRUCTIBLE MEDITATION

  Generally, there is so much tension and pressure in one’s state of being. You have a sense of working hard and taking a journey—and finally, you give up. You don’t exactly give up, but you begin to relax. That is when the attainment of enlightenment takes place. That attainment is called vajropama-samadhi, or “vajra-like samadhi.” Vajra means “indestructible,” upama means “like,” and samadhi means “meditative state”; so vajropamasamadhi means “indestructible meditative state.” In this case, vajra-like samadhi does not refer to the practice of meditation as such, but to a basic state of mind that is tuned in to a meditative state forever.

  The achievement of enlightenment is characterized as knowing and seeing. Knowing does not mean becoming a great scholar or a person who knows facts and figures. It means having a fundamental understanding of the world we live in, its basic principles, and how it functions psychologically. Seeing means knowing how to operate, or how to relate with that knowledge. You are able to see completely and fully. Those are the two characteristics of the enlightened state of mind—you know and you see. As a result of vajra-like samadhi, you are fully aware in relating with students or with your own behavior.

  In the earlier bhumis, you may have picked up the habit of trying to imitate buddha-like behavior. Because it is an imitation, rather than a real expression, that approach is somewhat distorted. It is a copy rather than the original, and at this stage, copying from the original has become an obstacle one has to overcome. You may have adopted an ethical and moralistic approach at the beginning as a means to develop high spiritual levels. But in the end, the ethical moralities of the bodhisattva’s discipline become obstacles to becoming enlightened. Concerns about how to handle your life, how to handle your emotions, how to be a perfect bodhisattva on the path have become a problem. Although you have achieved the necessary discipline of spontaneity, you realize that the means themselves have become a hang-up.

  The attainment of vajra-like samadhi, or indestructible meditation, overcomes the only remaining obstacle to the attainment of enlightenment, which is the hesitation and mannerism of concerns about ethics. Vajra-like samadhi is the way to cut through that final deception, that final layer of hesitation based on tradition and belief. In other words, the bodhisattva attains the final realization of enlightenment by cutting through the hesitations arising from their own discipline.

  FOUR QUALITIES OF VAJRA-LIKE SAMADHI

  Vajra-like samadhi has four qualities: toughness, stability, one flavor, and all-pervasiveness.2

  Toughness

  The first quality, toughness, means that vajra-like samadhi never surrenders. There is no confusion, veil, or obstacle that can overpower it. That quality of toughness is symbolized by the vajra scepter held by King Indra to defeat the asuras, or jealous gods.3 According to Hindu myth, this vajra was made from a half-human, half-god Hindu saint, or rishi, who meditated in a cave on Mount Meru. When he passed away and achieved oneness with the god Brahma, his body became the essence of adamantine. All his bones became super-diamond, the most precious stone one could ever find in the three realms of the world, and completely indestructible. Indra discovered this material and he made a weapon out of it, and the weapon and the material itself are both called vajra.

  Traditionally, a vajra has five points, but Indra made a vajra with one hundred points as a weapon to destroy the asuras, or jealous gods. In creating such a powerful weapon, he made three promises. First, he would never use it unless necessary. Second, once he decided to use it, the vajra would fulfill its purpose and destroy the enemy. Third, having destroyed the enemy, the vajra would return to its owner’s hand. His vajra was made in such a way that it closed its points when it was held by its owner. But when it was invoked as the destroyer of the enemy—when Indra held it and waved it and let it go—the vajra would spring out all its points, destroy the enemy, and come back.

  The vajra is powerful not only because it is made from extraordinary material, but also due to the spiritual power and energy of the meditator. It represents the idea of an independent intelligence that destroys confusion and returns to you. Buddhists have taken up the symbol of the vajra as a symbol of indestructibility. It has powerful meaning, especially in the vajrayana, which is named after that particular symbol.

  Stability

  The second quality of vajra-like samadhi is stability. Vajra-like samadhi is unmoved by the wind of thoughts. There may be thoughts, but they are no longer confused thoughts. Therefore, they do not move as the ordinary wind moves; they just persist.

  One Flavor

  The third quality of vajra-like samadhi is one flavor. It is similar to a concept in tantra called rochik, which means “one flavor.” In this case, one flavor means that without confused thoughts, the mental approach becomes very direct and simple, highly open and spacious, in the style of the five wisdoms, or the five buddha-families. You could say that the different buddha-families have one flavor, which is the awakened quality.4

  All-Pervasiveness

  Fourth, and last, vajra-like samadhi is all-pervasive. At this level of spiritual achievement, you develop an enormous ability to comprehend all that is knowable, anything that is subject to confusion or clarity.

  THE THREE KAYAS

  Enlightenment means that you are not here and you are not there; therefore, you have achieved an understanding of something. You can call it consciousness, if you like, but it is not consciousness as a reference point—it is just being. That being manifests as the three kayas: dharma-kaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya.5

  Dharmakaya: Body beyond Reference Point

  At this point, we could say that a buddha actually sees their own world or the world in general—the entire world—from a nonreference point of view. They see that the world can exist without a reference point, that reference points are no longer applicable. When you possess such an enlightened view, you attain the dharmakaya, the body of nonreference point. Dharma means the “highest norm of the universe,” which is nonreference point. Kaya means “form” or “body,” and it refers to the achievement of that particular experience; so dharmakaya means “dharma body.”

  Dharmakaya has no categories; dharmakaya is simply being awake. It is the first achievement of a buddha, the first glimpse of vajra-like samadhi. Vajra-like samadhi means cutting through with a vajra blade or diamond sword. It means to cut through everything completely and thoroughly. It goes beyond the level of a tenth-bhumi bodhisattva’s vague vision of perfection. On the eleventh bhumi, you achieve the fullest cutting through—you cut through psychological and spiritual materialism, and you cut through the notion of perfectionism as well. You are able to see this and that as one—and at the same time there is also the clarity that this does exist and that does exist. However, their existence does not serve as a reference point, but more as the working basis for skillful means.

  The dharmakaya is referred to as a nonphysical body, and the remaining two kayas, the sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya, are known as physical bodies (Skt.: rupakaya). The dharmakaya does not have any background or connection to how, but only to what is. Only after that do you begin to have how and why and when to conduct activities. With the sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya, you begin to relate with the world and with conduct.

  Sambhogakaya: Body of Complete Joy

  Having already achieved the first glimpse of enlightenment and attained the dharmakaya state, a buddha would also experience something beyond that: a sense of vow, promise, and concern. Having gone through the constant struggle and discipline of practicing the bodhisattva’s work of compassion, this compassion brings the very predictable world of the sambhogakaya buddha. Sambhoga means “complete joy,” and kaya means “body”; so sambhogakaya means “body of complete joy.” The sambhogakaya is beyond any kind of inhibition. With the sambhogakaya, there is freedom to relate with whatever you have understood. Whatever you feel can be communicated or taught.

  When suddenly the bottom of the ba
rrel of the world drops out and you cannot hold on to anything, it is very shocking. In fact, it is remarkable that Shakyamuni Buddha took it so very lightly. However he did spend time recuperating from the hard work of the past ten bhumis, partly spacing out in the dharmakaya and partly planning the next move. After attaining enlightenment, it took Gautama Buddha seven weeks to finally grow the confidence to articulate what he had experienced. But there is a need for articulation. Once you are a buddha, you have to say something to the world. You have to do something; you have to proclaim. It is a process of growth.

  Having removed your inhibition, what are you going to do? You can’t just say, “Come and look at me.” You have to be very skillful, particularly if you proclaim yourself as an enlightened person, for then you have a heavier burden. It is hard to present yourself to the world, so at the sam-bho-ga-ka-ya level it is very important to work with what are known as the five ways of teaching: (1) you choose a particular place to teach, (2) you know who you are as a teacher, (3) you know what you are going to teach, (4) you know what kind of audience you have, and (5) you know what time of the day you are going to teach. So the sambhogakaya involves a sense of relationship. You know the place, you know what kind of crowd you’re going to get, and you know what you are going to say. You do not just want to proclaim yourself, you want to proclaim the dharma—something other than yourself. Since you have no fear, you seem to know everything in the very highest sense. Fearlessness equals learnedness—you can churn out information, and you know how to handle things.

  Nirmanakaya: Emanation Body

  The last kaya is the nirmanakaya, the buddha who actually takes form as a human individual. Nirmanakaya buddhas are living people who relate with their students. They eat with them, sleep with them in the same jungle, and share their life with them. That is their function.

  Nirmana means “emanation” and kaya, again, means “body,” so nirmanakaya means “body of emanation.” It is the physical body that actually exists on earth as an emanation of the dharmakaya. It can be a human form or a representation.6 So there are two types of nirmanakaya buddhas: actual nirmanakaya buddhas like Gautama Buddha, and the buddhas represented by books, statues, and images. Historically, people first began to represent the Buddha in books, so what the Buddha said came first. What Buddha looked like and how he behaved were secondary, so images of the Buddha did not appear until the late Ashoka period.

  It is very moving to know that twenty-six hundred years ago, a person called Siddhartha became the Buddha. He actually did that, and he made an enormous impact and impression on people—so enormous that we still continue to follow his way and share his ideas. It is very powerful that somebody actually achieved enlightenment and went so far as to proclaim it, to teach, and to share his life with his students from the time of his enlightenment until his death when he was over eighty years old. Siddhartha showed us how to behave and how to handle ourselves with other people. He showed us that enlightenment is not a myth or concept, but something that actually took place. That is the basis of our conviction as Buddhists. And from that time onward, successive people have done the same thing. They have followed the same path and attained enlightenment.

  It is necessary for Buddhists to identify with that particular living situation, to see that it is real. You can visit Bodh Gaya and see the tree that the Buddha sat under when he attained enlightenment, and you can visit Sarnath where he gave his first sermon. They are very inspiring places. It is very powerful and important to identify with the historical Buddha, the nirmanakaya buddha who actually lived and walked on our earth. Many Buddhists do not pay much attention to Gautama Buddha, the present Buddha. We take for granted that somebody did this thing, and tend to be more concerned with what we have gotten from the Buddhist tradition than with who started it and what kind of lifestyle he had. I am not suggesting hero worship, but a humanizing of Buddhism. It is not a Superman story—it is the story of someone who lived where we do, on this earth. That person took a particular journey, and we are trying to follow his example. His impact has gone on continuously for twenty-six hundred years, and it is getting stronger. And the Buddha is supposed to be coming back constantly—driven by compassion to return, not as the Buddha again, or as a proclaimed buddha, but as a human being.

  Three Kayas as Individual Experience

  The three-kaya principle is based on the body, speech, and mind of an ordinary person. Simultaneously you have the dharmakaya version of yourself, the sambhogakaya version of yourself, and the nirmanakaya version of yourself. You can also look at an element such as water in terms of the three-kaya principle: basic waterness is like the dharmakaya, its wetness is like the sambhogakaya, and the fulfilling of its functions, such as quenching thirst and irrigation, is like the nirmanakaya. So you can apply the three kayas as a way of looking at one body from three different perspectives.

  The dharmakaya is your nonphysical manifestation. You have a nonphysical aspect of yourself that others cannot see or communicate with. That basic state of being is ungraspable, but you know that it is within yourself and everybody else. You also possess a semigraspable state of being, or sambhogakaya, which is the communication between your nonmanifested and manifested levels. That semigraspable state is symbolized by speech, but it includes all forms of communication, such as physical gestures, facial expressions, and how you present yourself in all kinds of ways. Then there’s the nirmanakaya, which means that you actually have a body. Even if you are a great teacher or a buddha, you still have a body, and that body behaves more or less the same as other people’s bodies. The necessities of eating, shitting, wearing clothes, and combing your hair are basically the same as anybody else’s. So the three kayas are the subtle world, the direct world, and that which goes back and forth between the subtle and direct worlds in order to survive on earth.

  Nonattainment

  The eleventh bhumi is the bhumi of nonattainment. You do not have any paramitas to practice, and you are not concerned with the other shore or this shore at all. This particular bhumi no longer has the reference point of a journey. On the path of no more learning, the eightfold path is also in the form of nonattainment. To understand the idea of nonattainment, you need to get a feeling for the near purposelessness of this state of being, as opposed to the purposefulness of the bodhisattva.

  TEN DHARMAS OF NONATTAINMENT. The nirmanakaya buddha of the eleventh bhumi—the new buddha—attains what are called the ten dharmas of nonattainment.7 These dharmas are largely based on the three principles of discipline, meditation, and knowledge, and on the eightfold path.

  In terms of discipline, right speech becomes the speech of nonattainment, right action becomes the action of nonattainment, and right livelihood becomes the livelihood of nonattainment.

  In the area of meditation, right mindfulness becomes the mindfulness of nonattainment, and meditative absorption becomes the samadhi of nonattainment.

  At the level of knowledge, or prajna, right view becomes nonattainment view, right understanding becomes nonattainment understanding, and right effort becomes nonattainment effort. Those are the first eight dharmas of nonattainment.

  The ninth dharma falls outside the principles of discipline, meditation, and knowledge. It is the state of complete liberation, which is a pathless state. You are actually being liberated without bondage or binding factors related with your discipline, your learning, or your notion of saving sentient beings.

  The tenth dharma is perfect wisdom, or jnana. It is a state of hundreds of millions of awarenesses and interests and sense perceptions. You experience life with great interest, completely exposed and unchallenged, with no prohibitions. It is as if hundreds of jnanas spring out like the rays of the sun, touching every aspect of the physical world. But at the same time, that multiplicity of bodhisattva experiences has a feeling of oneness. There is a sense of complete energy, power, and understanding. You are no longer threatened, and you no longer have to keep a record of those millions of experiences. It is
like a hundred bowls of water reflecting one moon. It is like the sun, which has no desire to shine on every flower and every bit of greenery, yet the greenery and flowers still receive the sun’s rays. On one hand, you could say the sun is keeping a good record of its projection; on the other hand, the sun is completely careless. It does not care about anything at all, but simply by being the sun—the brilliant sun shining—it becomes a part of the spontaneity.

  Back to the Beginning

  The ten dharmas of nonattainment are inspired by the complete understanding of the four noble truths. It all starts with the truth of suffering. Everything else follows—the awful confusion and chaos and uncertainty and panic, and occasional hopes that something might be happening or something might not be happening. The minute you get back to this point, there is not much struggle. Even though it is the eleventh bhumi, it is the same “you” experiencing reality. You do not see a green world or a blue world, but you see a black-and-white world. Suffering is seen as a reality, as truth.

  On the eleventh bhumi, the four noble truths are not just truths in terms of ethical understanding and discipline, but they become wisdom, or jnana. You experience their absolute truth. You have actually understood at last what you began with as a student on the path of accumulation. You have made a complete circle, but in this case you have done it with more understanding. Previously, you were just tossed and challenged by the consequences of the truth, rather than understanding it as jnana, or higher truth. That process is very important; it makes the whole thing very real. In the end, you have not bypassed anything, but you are returning to the origin—to the source of your original inspiration at the level of the first path. Tantric scriptures say that you might feel enormously resentful that the journey was a complete put-on, a sort of pacifier. Nevertheless, you did make a journey, and you did get somewhere.