The Dharma Body

Thich Nhat Hanh — Winter Retreat 2013–2014 Stillwater Meditation Hall, Upper Hamlet, Plum Village · 9 January 2014 · talk 16 of 24

Illuminates: the three meanings of the dharma body (dharmakāya) — the teaching (living vs. recorded Dharma) · our own practice (“practice body,” nourished daily, grown by conditioning / reinforcement) · the wonders of the universe giving Dharma talks (the rose, the bird) · the Buddha to the dying Vakkali: “you already have my dharma body” · letting go as the first practice that gives birth to joy — the parable of the cows (“your idea of happiness is a cow”) and the governor-monk’s “Oh, my happiness!” · concentration as the second source (“the joy of meditation as daily food”) · mindfulness as recollection · the four elements — letting go · mindfulness · concentration · insight — that generate joy and manage suffering · the second arrow and the art of suffering (mud → lotus).

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[Opening chant — French invocation to breathe and chant as one body, freeing us from the three complexes; then the chant to Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of deep listening, “who eliminates all suffering,” invoked as present here and now.]

Dear Sangha, today is the 9th of January, 2014. We are in the Stillwater Meditation Hall of the Upper Hamlet, in the winter retreat. Can you hear clearly?

The line of the morning verse

This morning one of the brothers chanted in English: “The Dharma body, bringing in morning light.” (In a sister’s translation — not literal, but good.) In Vietnamese it is very short: the Dharma body brightens in the morning — its meaning is the sun in the early morning, when the Dharma body shines brilliantly. “Bringing in morning light” works too. But first we have to understand what the Dharma body is that shines and spreads in the morning, that can bring more light.

Dharma body is the dharmakāya — in Chinese, fa-shen. The term has its origin in the time of the Buddha. Once the Buddha visited a disciple named Vakkali, who was very sick, about to die, and the Buddha asked whether he regretted anything. Vakkali said, “I regret nothing — only that I am too sick to climb Vulture Peak to listen to the Buddha’s talk and to look upon the Buddha.” And the Buddha said: “Dear disciple, my physical body is not important. You already have my dharma body. You don’t need to see my physical body.” From that time there were two terms: the physical body (rūpakāya) and the dharma body (dharmakāya). The physical body of the Buddha can deteriorate and be destroyed; the dharma body cannot.

The first meaning — the teaching, living and recorded

So the dharma body means the teaching body, the body of the Dharma — and this body is already transmitted to the students; everyone carries the dharma body in him or her. There are two kinds of Dharma. One is the living Dharma; the other is the Dharma that is recorded or written down — the CDs of spoken talks, the books of written Dharma. But these are not as good as the living dharma body: whenever we breathe peacefully, that is the living Dharma; when we walk in meditation and every step has peace and joy, that is the living Dharma.

The second meaning — our own practice

There is another meaning: the dharma body is our own practice. Each of us has a physical body; but if we are a disciple of the Buddha and we practice according to the teaching, then we have a second body — the dharma body — and our dharma body is our practice. Your practice-body is your dharma-body. If our practice is solid, we have more happiness, a good capacity to manage our suffering, a capacity to generate joy. So it all depends on whether our dharma body is solid or not.

In the morning, then, we practice so that our dharma body shines brilliantly. Early morning is a good time — students know we absorb a great deal then, while at the end of the day we are so tired that what we study does not come in. So in the morning my practice is strong, solid, shining forth — that is what the line means. And every day we have to nourish our dharma body so that it grows bigger. Is your dharma body big, or is it feeble, fragile?

If your practice is weak, it is not strong enough to make you solid, nor enough to create happiness and joy, nor enough to let you manage your suffering. So as a practitioner we nourish the dharma body so it grows every day. In winter the trees grow slowly, but in spring they grow fast — some nights the bamboo grows two inches; you see the shoot, and the next day it has shot up. (In the West they say springing — growing fast.) We have to make our dharma body grow that fast even in winter. When Thay walks, breathes, walks in and out, the dharma body grows; early morning is an opportunity for it to grow, even for thirty or forty-five minutes — and it is nourished too by walking meditation, eating meditation, washing the dishes, working. If we do not nourish it, consolidate it, reinforce it, the dharma body weakens.

How the dharma body grows — conditioning

The dharma body needs conditions to grow; it cannot grow by itself — we have to be active in making it grow. In education they speak of operant conditioning — we learn by conditioning. For example: when a non-practitioner hears the sound of the bell, it is just another sound; but for a practitioner in Plum Village, the bell is not just another sound — it is our habit that when the bell is invited, we have an immediate reflex: to stop all thinking — not by trying, and not because anyone asks us. We keep silent; if we are talking, we stop. At first it isn’t like that; normally others have to remind us. But staying in Plum Village for two or three weeks, we have more conditions to condition ourselves — everyone does it. When the clock chimes during a meal, people stop eating and return to the present moment, to see that they are alive, and breathe consciously. At first, to a newcomer, it is strange that everyone stops; but after a while it becomes familiar, a habit energy — we hear the bell or the clock and we stop, needing no one to remind us. That is conditioning: at first the bell (or the sight of someone walking mindfully) is a condition that helps us come back to ourselves; after a time it becomes a habit, and we continue to practice on our own.

If we do not continue, the habit energy becomes very weak, and our thinking no longer stops. This is why we need reinforcement and consolidation. Away from the Sangha we lose the conditions that reinforce our practice, and after three months we can easily lose it — the dharma body becomes weak. When we no longer have the bell, the schedule, the Sangha, but we continue anyway — because we need joy, we need to manage our suffering, and we are determined to practice even with no one to remind us — that is operant conditioning: we consolidate and reinforce our own practice.

The third meaning — the wonders of the universe

Later, in Mahayana Buddhism, the meaning of the dharma body became very different: it means the wonders of the universe — the purple bamboo, the white cloud, the singing bird; all are manifestations of the dharma body. When we look deeply at a leaf, a flower, a cloud, a river, the autumn leaves, we see they are wonders — and that they are all giving Dharma talks, on impermanence, non-self, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. When we look at a rose and listen deeply, we see the rose is giving a Dharma talk; the rose is the dharma body. So is the bird’s song — everything is giving a Dharma talk. The Buddha’s dharma body is always present; the Buddha never stops giving talks. In this Mahayana sense, every practitioner becomes a poet, an artist, for the dharma body is the inspiration for poetry — it is the beauty of the whole universe. So the dharma body is, first, the teaching; then the practice; and finally the wonders of the universe giving Dharma talks — and if we have ears, we can hear the Buddha teaching through the roses, through everything.

What the practice is for — generate joy, then help others

Our practice can be summarized as the practice of generating joy, happiness, and peace. We generate these three for ourselves first; only when we have them can we help another person do the same. A Sangha made of people who know how to generate joy, happiness, and peace is very helpful — and this is an investment. We can judge a family, a classroom, a community, a parliament, a hospital, a corporation by the quality of its joy, peace, and happiness: where these are present, the children of that family — and that organization — can serve the world. So first we learn so that our dharma body, our practice, generates joy, happiness, and peace for ourselves; then we can offer it to our family and to the larger system.

The dharma body also has the capacity to process suffering — first the painful feelings and strong emotions in us, which we must learn to manage. These are very concrete practices; a good practitioner can learn them in a single day — not from a talk or a class, but through the practice: that each step, each breath, can generate joy, happiness, and peace. We do not have to wait for spring for the dharma body to grow; it can grow right now, in winter.

The first source of joy — letting go

The way to train in joy, happiness, and peace rests first on the practice of letting go. Letting go brings joy and happiness — strange, but true. In Chinese it is “to leave behind.” This is found all through the sutras: if we cannot have joy and happiness, it is because we have not let go. We think that without some thing we cannot live; but if we can let it go, we can truly have joy. We have to be brave enough to let go.

For example: we live in Los Angeles or Paris — noisy, polluted; we can never see the moon or the stars — yet people cannot let go of the city. We have wanted to come to Plum Village many times but could not, because we could not let go. Then one Friday a friend with a car convinces us to come; we get in, and after forty-five minutes we have left Paris behind, and we see the countryside, feel the breeze and the spaciousness, and it gives us joy — and that joy comes from being able to let Paris go. Some people struggle for years and never get here; but we are sitting here, which means we have the capacity to let go.

But what do we let go of? That is the question. We need to sit down with a piece of paper and write down the things we can let go. The hardest to release is our idea of happiness — each of us has an idea that we must have this or eliminate that to be happy: this house, this car, this person to live with; the communist is sure only the Marxist ideology brings happiness, the socialist that the economy does. Caught in an idea of happiness, we cannot let go — so we sit and look again at our ideas, because if we have not been happy, it means we were caught in some idea.

The cows — your idea of happiness

One day the Buddha was sitting with the monks in the woods, having a silent meal, when a farmer hurried by: “Dear monks, have you seen my cows? They all ran off this morning. Without my cows, how can I live? I think I will kill myself. And my sesame fields were all eaten by insects — I could harvest nothing. Without cows, without sesame, how can I live?” The Buddha said, “Dear friend, we have been sitting here more than half an hour and have seen no cows pass by — perhaps go the other way.” The farmer left, and the Buddha turned to the monks: “Dear monks, you are very lucky — you have no cows to lose. No cows, and no fear of losing them.” The point: if we have cows, we have to let them go. Our idea of happiness is a cow — and it is because of this idea that we cannot be happy. Your idea of happiness is the main obstacle to your happiness. The Soviet Union held its ideology for seventy years, certain it would make them strong, killing whoever opposed it — and that ideology was a cow they could not let go. So each of us has to sit down with a piece of paper and write the names of all our cows — our ideas of happiness, the things we struggle with but cannot release. Sometimes one page is not enough. If you let go of two cows, you are much lighter; if you let go of all of them, your happiness is much greater.

In the Buddha’s time there was a governor who became a monk, inspired by the Buddha and his monks. One night, in sitting meditation, he was so happy that he exclaimed, “Oh, my happiness! Oh, my happiness!” A monk nearby thought he must be regretting his lost position — the power, the soldiers, the money, the servants he had given up — and reported it to the Buddha. The Buddha called the former governor and asked him to share directly: “Did you say ‘Oh, my happiness’ in your meditation? Why?” He answered: “Dear Buddha, when I was a governor I had everything — soldiers to protect me, position, servants, great wealth — but I always lived in fear, afraid people would come to kill me and take it all. Now, as a monastic, I have none of those things — I let even the label ‘governor’ go — and in meditation I saw clearly that I have great happiness, great freedom, great non-fear, because there is nothing left for me to be afraid of. In that freedom I could not help but cry out, ‘Oh, happiness!’” Then the other monks understood: the happiness of this monk was not to get more, not to accumulate, but to let go. So the sutra says: letting go is the first practice for joy and happiness. When you become a monk or a nun, people say you are foolish — but in truth you are wise, because you have let go of everything, and so you are light, with no more fear, no more anxiety.

The second source — concentration

There is another practice: concentration also gives rise to joy, happiness, and peace. In meditation we have much joy, because with mindfulness, concentration, and insight we can generate joy in the body and let go of tension — lessening pain in the body, releasing tension in the mind, in our feelings and emotions. This is the art of meditation. In the Zen tradition they say concentration is food — “the joy of meditation as daily food.” A practitioner is nourished by joy, happiness, and peace, not by power, fame, position, or sex; with a strong meditation practice we can nourish ourselves and our loved ones.

Mindfulness is recollection

And within concentration there is mindfulness. In Plum Village we learn very clearly that mindfulness gives rise to joy, happiness, and peace — it is the source of them. This is not theory. When Thay sits on this platform and does these mindful movements, he does them not for health but for joy — the movements are not a means to an end; the very doing is the joy. Why we sit, walk, chant in Plum Village is not to get to happiness, but because the very sitting, the very walking, is the happiness — all due to mindfulness.

When I stand and lift my arms, don’t think I am only lifting my arms — I am lifting my mindfulness as well. I see clearly that many monks of my generation, who studied at the same university, have died; a few are still alive but in wheelchairs — yet I can still do this, and that gives great joy. That is mindfulness as recollection. [Thích Minh Châu], who translated the Pali canon, can no longer do this; my best friend can no longer do this, needing two assistants to move — but I can, and recollecting this lets me be happy. Once I had a lung infection — a virus that made my lungs bleed, so that breathing was difficult and it was hard to be happy while breathing; after treatment my breathing became much better. So when I breathe for you, all I need is to remember the time my lungs were infected, and then my breathing becomes truly delicious. Joy and happiness can come immediately; it is not difficult — all it takes is mindfulness. The young here have good legs to jump and climb, two bright eyes, good lungs — and if they are not happy, it is a pity, for the old can no longer jump or climb. It takes mindfulness to recollect that we are still young and whole — and then we can have joy all day. It is up to you. If you cannot be happy, it is because you lack mindfulness.

The fourth element — insight

Insight also brings joy and happiness. Every one of us has insight: we know a certain thing is not worthy of our pursuit, our concern, our time and energy, our struggle — and yet we still pour ourselves into chasing it, because we are not wise enough to make use of our insight. With insight, we can let go easily. The reason you can’t let go is that you don’t use your insight: you know that if you get caught you will suffer, yet you get caught anyway — like a fish that knows there is a hook in the bait and bites all the same. We all have insight, but we let the hook catch us; the more we practice, the more mindfulness and concentration we have, the greater our insight. There is “the sister who adorns herself with insight,” “the sister who adorns herself with concentration” — we have mindfulness, concentration, and insight, but we don’t use them, and so we get caught in difficult situations and patterns of behavior. We have to learn to make use of these elements — letting go, mindfulness, concentration, and insight — whether or not anyone reminds us.

The four elements also manage suffering

With these four elements we generate joy, happiness, and peace — and we can also manage our suffering with them. Our sufferings are often not big, but because we don’t know how to manage them they look big. Most people in society do not know how to manage suffering; when it arises they avoid and run away through consumption and forgetfulness — turn on the TV, pick up a book, open the refrigerator, call a friend — all kinds of distraction so as not to feel the suffering. That is running away, and the suffering, merely covered over, continues to grow until it explodes and can no longer be escaped. But the Buddha taught clearly that we can manage suffering with these four energies. The first step is to use mindfulness, concentration, and insight to recognize and embrace the suffering — like a mother tenderly embracing her baby, so the baby suffers less. The second step is to look deeply into the suffering, to understand and transform it into something positive — using the mud to grow the lotus. Suffering is beneficial; a practitioner knows how to make use of it, and so suffers less. Two people in the same situation: one suffers enormously, the other much less, because the second knows how to manage his suffering.

The art of suffering — the second arrow

What does it mean to know how to suffer? First, do not let the second arrow strike. The Buddha taught that when someone is hit by an arrow there is pain; but if a second arrow strikes the same spot, the suffering is ten times greater — and the second arrow is our anxiety, our reaction, our imagination, our fear, all magnifying the pain. With a small physical or emotional pain we should not exaggerate it — imagining we have cancer, that we are about to die — because the fear makes the pain grow far bigger; that enlargement is the second arrow. So we stay calm, recognize the pain for what it is, and do not let anger and fear inflate it. The second step is to be present — to recognize, manage, and embrace the suffering; using letting go, mindfulness, concentration, and insight, we suffer much less while another might suffer ninety-five percent. This is the art of suffering — the companion to the art of happiness. And we can go further: using suffering to cultivate compassion, understanding, and love — as the mud grows the lotus.

It has been an hour and ten minutes. Today is dry, so we can enjoy walking meditation — please make every step in joy and happiness, making use of our lungs, our bright eyes, our good legs. We have so many conditions to be happy. Practice so that your dharma body grows stronger — and do not let it become weak and feeble. Even in a winter retreat, two months have already gone; we need to learn and grasp these practices well — to generate joy, happiness, and peace through letting go, mindfulness, concentration, and insight, and to manage our suffering with these same energies.