The Trikaya in Zen

[This is a raw, unedited excerpt from my forthcoming book on Zen.]

A major difference between Zen and Dzogchen is their respective understanding of and attitude toward the Trikaya, the Buddhist Triple Body (Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya). Whereas Zen deemphasizes the Trikaya, often to the point of ignoring it, Dzogchen emphasizes it, using it to explain Enlightenment. Because Zen is a sutra-based tradition, built upon the Prajnaparamita Sutras, Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika, and Yogacara, it reduces everything to emptiness and/or Mind, which it conflates with the Dharmakaya. Hence, it has little use for the Sambhogakaya and the Nirmanakaya, which it considers superfluous to the Enlightenment project. Dzogchen, on the other hand, incorporates tantric concepts and practices that involve Energy, which, sans the Trikaya doctrine, cannot be properly explained and integrated.

Because Zen all but ignores the Energetic dimension of Enlightenment, Zennists have no real understanding of the Trikaya. I’ve read dozens of Zen texts in the past five decades, and not a single one satisfactorily explicates the Trikaya.

Heinrich Dumoulin (1905–1995) was one of the world's leading scholars of Zen and the author of several books on the subject. Yet, in his Zen Buddhism: A History, long considered the standard work on the history of Zen Buddhism, he only once, in a single paragraph, elaborates on the Trikaya. He writes:

“The full expression of this new [Mahayana] Buddhology is contained in the doctrine of the three bodies of the Buddha, one of the central tenets of the Mahayana. This systematic ordering of diverse and contradictory aspects of Buddhist vision was given a final form at a rather late date, in the philosophical school of the Yogacara. The first of the three bodies is commonly referred to as Apparitional Body (nirmanakaya). Later schools distinguish here between the complete apparition of the Perfected One (for example, of Sakyamuni) and partial manifestations (as in the case of the great Buddhist spiritual teachers). Second is the Enjoyment Body (sambhogakaya), the idealized, perfected form of the Buddha that invites personification (especially known and revered in this respect is the Buddha Amithabha, Jpn., Amida). Finally, there is the Cosmic Body of the Buddha (dharmakaya), which is none other than the absolute and consummate reality of the Buddha.”

Dumoulin’s description of the Trikaya reflects his spiritual ignorance. If Dumoulin, a Jesuit theologian, understood the Trikaya, he’d know that it’s the same Triple Body as the Christian Trinity. The Dharmakaya is the “Father,” the Supreme Being-Consciousness; the Sambhogakaya is the “Holy Spirit,” Blessing/Blissing Clear-Light-Energy; and the Nirmanakaya is the “Son,” the immanent Dharmakaya.

Although Enlightenment can be described in monadic terms--as simply awakening to, and as, the Dharmakaya, or Mind—it is my contention that only a triadic, or trinitarian, description can adequately explain the Buddhahood project. Just as the Trinity was a necessary development in Christianity to make clear how a transcendent God becomes an immanent Son, Man, or Christ, likewise the Trikaya emerged in Buddhism to clarify and elaborate how unmanifest Mind translates into a manifest Buddha, or Nirmanakaya.

In Reality, there is only the Dharmakaya, which is timeless, spaceless Mind, or Consciousness. But when the immutable Dharmakaya “moves” as dynamic Spirit, or Light-Energy, which en-Light-ens bodhisattvas, transforming them into Buddhas, then it is appropriate to describe this “action” of the Absolute as the Sambhogakaya, meaning the Dharmakaya in its phase or dimension as Divine Power. And when the Dharmakaya, as the Blessing Power of the Sambhogakaya, unobstructedly radiates through a human medium, it is right to describe the en-Light-ened form-body as a Nirmanakaya.