The teaching of the Trikaya, or Three Bodies of Buddha, is challenging. It may seem to be metaphysical speculation or surprisingly theistic for Buddhism. However, it offers a unique and valuable framing for the mystery of awakening, the palpable presence of the Ineffable despite its ungraspable nature, and the relationship of all phenomena to the Ineffable.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Evolution of the Teaching of Trikaya, or Three Bodies of Buddha
The Trikaya Teaching Evolves into a Description of Reality
The Trikaya in Our Direct Experience
What’s the Big Deal about Buddhas?
What’s the Big Deal about Bodies?
How Is the Trikaya Teaching Useful?
This is the sixth episode in my “One Reality, Many Descriptions” series, in which I discuss the central Mahayana Buddhist teachings about the nature of what I like to call “Reality-with-a-Capital-R.” In the first episode (229 – One Reality, Many Descriptions Part 1: Emptiness), I explained how there is, of course, only one Reality, but naturally there are many ways to perceive and experience it. Because the Reality in which we live is boundless and multi-dimensional, any description of it will be incomplete, like artistic portrayals of a beautiful sunset.
Nevertheless, Dharma teachers through the millennia have encouraged us to wake up to Reality-with-a-Capital-R by pointing us toward important aspects of it we may have not yet experienced or only intuited. So far in this series I have talked about the following teachings:
Emptiness, which points to the falseness of the self-nature we project onto all phenomena, including ourselves;
Suchness, or Thusness, which points to the luminous, miraculous quality of all things in and of themselves, which we perceive once we awaken to Emptiness;
Buddha-Nature, which celebrates the existence of all beings and things, without which there would be no awakening, and
The Two Truths of Absolute and Relative, which points to the way we perceive Reality as having two aspects: One, the dimension of space, time, causality, and differentiation, and two, the dimensionless dimension of right here, right now, along which there is only a single boundless, seamless Reality that is luminous with Suchness.
In the future I will explore the teachings of Mind-with-a-Capital-M, Interdependence, and Time-Being – again, simply alternative ways of describing a single Reality. In this episode I want to talk about a Mahayana Buddhist teaching I never expected to include because I never particularly resonated with it: The Trikaya, or Three Bodies of Buddha. (“Kaya” is the Pali word for “body.”) Recently, however, I personally connected with this teaching and have come to appreciate how it describes the palpable presence of the Ineffable despite its ungraspable nature, and the relationship of all phenomena to the Ineffable.
The Evolution of the Teaching of Trikaya, or Three Bodies of Buddha
Before I describe my current understanding of the Trikaya teaching, however, I want to give you some background on it. Bear with me – it may seem like the teaching is based in fascination with Buddhas as supernatural beings. To be honest, in some senses it is. However, I think the Trikaya teaching is useful at many levels, and I will get around to the Zen take on it. Even if you don’t relate to devotional Buddhism or are wary of metaphysical speculation, you may want to take note of the evolution of this teaching because certain questions early Buddhists were asking are deeply significant to our practice – even if they may not appear so at first.
In the centuries after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, Buddhists were very busy. Many different forms of Buddhism developed, along with many kinds of practices. Some practitioners were scholarly, some ascetic, and some focused on the Vinaya, or monastic code of conduct. Other were devotional and focused on veneration of relics of the Buddha which were usually enshrined in circular mounds or buildings called stupas. (I describe this development in Episode 82 –Early Indian Buddhism – Stupas and Devotional Practice.) In his article, “The Trikāya Doctrine in Buddhism,” Ruben Habito explains:
After the passing away of Gotama Buddha various strands of speculation arose concerning the mode of existence of the Blessed One. A central question underlying these would be: “What makes a Buddha a Buddha?” or, put in philosophical terms, “What is the essence of Buddhahood?” It is from these speculations that various view of the Buddha developed, leading to differing theories of buddhakaya [buddha body].[i]
Early Buddhists were wondering what to make of the three “Treasures,” “Jewels,” or “Refuges” of Buddhism – Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha – now that the historical Buddha was gone. When he was alive it was perfectly clear – go ask the Buddha for his teaching and guidance. According to the Pali Canon, when the Buddha died, he told his followers to “take refuge in the Dhamma” and emphasized that his physical presence was no longer necessary. That’s all well and good, but what, then, would refuge in the Buddha mean? There seemed to be something beyond the teachings (the Dharma) and the community (the Sangha) that it was important to remember and emphasize. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism puts it like this:
Since the physical body of the Buddha was subject to decay and death, was it a suitable object of refuge? In response to this question, it was concluded that the Buddha jewel was in fact a body or group (kaya) of qualities (dharma), such as the [traditional] eighteen unique qualities of a buddha. This “body of qualities,” the original meaning of dharmakaya, was sometimes contrasted with the physical body of the Buddha, called the rupakaya (material body) or the vipakakaya, the “fruition body,” which was the result of past action. With the development of Mahayana thought, the notion of dharmakaya evolved into a kind of transcendent principle in which all buddhas partook, and it is in this sense that the term is translated as “truth body.”[ii]
Later, Buddhists differentiated the rupakaya into two aspects – Nirmanakaya, the apparitional body, and the Sambhogakaya, or enjoyment body. The Dharmakaya was seen as the ultimate spiritual body which all buddhas had in common – formless, undifferentiated, timeless, and nondual. The Sambhogakaya was thought to be a body that bodhisattvas and buddhas could manifest due to their lifetimes of spiritual work, and it would be endowed with the special marks of a buddha and visible only to highly advanced bodhisattvas. This was the body manifested by buddhas when they transcended time and space (such as when Shakyamuni supposedly shows up hundreds of years after his death to preach a new Mahayana sutra). The Nirmanakaya was a physical body of a buddha projected into this world by a Sambhogakaya buddha out of compassion, so they could teach sentient beings.[iii]
A Tibetan text called the “Sutra on the Three Bodies” puts it this way:
Son of a noble family, the dharmakāya of the Tathāgata consists in the fact that he has no nature, just like the sky. His saṃbhogakāya consists in the fact that he comes forth, just like a cloud. His nirmāṇakāya consists in the activity of all the buddhas, the fact that it soaks everything, just like rain.[iv]
The Trikaya Teaching Evolves into a Description of Reality
Theories about the metaphysical existence and activities of superhuman buddhas may or may not seem relevant to your practice or understanding of Buddhism. It’s not my cup of tea, but I should acknowledge that there have been many Buddhists throughout time – and many Buddhists today – who have no problem including a supernatural vision of Buddhahood in their practice. In a lecture on the Trikaya, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi suggested, “The most important, the vital element for the idea of Buddha, was the super-human element. If Buddha was just an historical person, or one of the great sages, then Buddhism could not have survived for so long.”[v]
For those of us who prefer more down-to-earth teachings, it’s important to know that over time, in many forms of Buddhism, the Trikaya teaching became less focused on the deification of buddhas. In other words, the teaching wasn’t about the existence and activities of discreet entities in the universe who are separate from you and me. Instead, the Trikaya become a way to describe certain aspects of Reality-with-a-Capital-R. Buddhist scholar Louis de la Vallée Poussin wrote, “At first the Buddhas alone had three ‘Bodies;’ afterwards the whole universe was looked upon as residing in or made of the Bodies.”[vi] According to the Shambala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen:
In Zen the three bodies of buddha are three levels of reality, which stand in reciprocal relationship to each other and constitute a whole. The dharmakaya is the cosmic consciousness, the unified existence that lies beyond all concepts. This [is a] substrate, characterized by completion and perfection, out of which all animate and inanimate forms as well as the moral order arise… The sambhogakaya is the experience of the ecstasy of enlightenment, of the dharma-mind of the Buddha and the patriarchs, and of the spiritual practice transmitted by them… The nirmanakaya is the radiant, transformed buddha-body personified by Shakyamuni Buddha.[vii]
The online magazine Lion’s Roar offers a few additional things to these definitions that I appreciate. It says, “the three bodies, or kayas, of the buddhas are different manifestations of enlightened mind, and they are also the true nature of all sentient beings.” The Dharmakaya is “without form, substance, or concept of any sort, including existence and nonexistence… as it says in one Vajrayana chant, [it is] ‘nothing whatever but everything arises from it.’” The Sambhogakaya is “the bridge between the formless and the material… the realm of what Thinley Norbu Rinpoche called ‘nonmaterial spiritual reality.’” …Nirmanakaya is buddhas appearing in physical form out of compassion, and “buddhas can manifest in any physical form — not simply as spiritual teachers — in response to what beings need.”[viii]
The Trikaya in Our Direct Experience
9th-century Chan master Linji, or Rinzai, has this to say about the Three Bodies of Buddha:
The pure light of your heart at this instant is the Dharmakaya Buddha in your own house. The non-differentiating light of your heart at this instant is the Sambhogakaya Buddha in your own house. The non-discriminating light of your own heart at this instant is the Nirmanakaya Buddha in your own house.
This trinity of the Buddha’s body is none other than he here before your eyes, listening to my expounding of the Dharma. You can come to this seeing only by not running and searching outside.
The scholars of the Sutras and Treatises take the Three Bodies as absolute. As I see it, this is not so. These Three Bodies are merely names, or props.[ix]
When Linji talks about “your own house,” he means your very body-mind. From the Zen point of view, the essence of this teaching is what it points you towards in your own direct experience. All teachings are tools – merely names, or props – for helping you awaken. No matter how complex or transcendent or profound a teaching appears, it’s simply one approach to describing Reality-with-a-Capital-R, or a way for you to awaken to or align with It. We can’t capture the essence even of one sunset no matter how many photos we take, paintings we make, or poems we write. Reality is boundless and ungraspable. And yet we manage to convey certain aspects of our experience to one another.
What, then, is the Trikaya teaching pointing to? It is no easy thing to explain! It feels very bold even to try and my explanation will inevitably be inadequate, but here goes.
There are three aspects of the Trikaya teaching to unpack. First, what’s the big deal about buddhas and how they manifest? Second, why are we talking about “bodies” when at least one aspect of the Trikaya has no form at all? Third, how is this teaching useful?
What’s the Big Deal about Buddhas?
Starting with the buddha question: Let’s start by saying we’re not talking about supernatural beings who reside in some formless realm and magically project themselves into physical forms (Nirmanakaya) when they want to teach ordinary beings, and appear as immaterial emanations (Sambhogakaya) when they want to impress advanced bodhisattvas. I have no reason to believe that happens, but neither can I prove it doesn’t. It just doesn’t matter to our understanding of the Trikaya.
A buddha is someone awakens to Reality and is thereby liberated from delusion and suffering. This naturally unlocks their compassion, and they spend their time benefiting others, particularly by teaching and helping them awaken as well.
What is buddha in our direct experience? We should drop even thinking about awakened people in the abstract. What is awakening? How is it even possible? If you are lost in delusion and bound by conditioning, who or what wakes you up? You think it is “I,” but upon careful examination that “I” can’t be found. When we calm the mind and truly let go, we realize this waking up business is part of a process much larger than our self-centered agenda, much larger than our body-mind, much larger than Buddhism itself. Something is unfolding and awakening itself. The Trikaya teaching is a description of this mysterious awakening process – in other words, how awakened beings manifest in the world.
What’s the Big Deal about Bodies?
Next, why are we talking about “bodies?” Usually, when we speak of bodies, we mean discreet physical manifestations that move. Animate living things have bodies. We also refer to celestial objects like planets as “bodies,” as they move in their orbits. Nirmanakaya is the manifestation of awakening beings in physical forms, so it makes sense that this is a type of body. What about Dharmakaya and Sambhogakaya? This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the Trikaya teaching to understand, but it’s also what makes the teaching special – what differentiates it from the other descriptions of Reality like Emptiness and Suchness.
Even though the Dharmakaya is not a thing at all, it is like a vast field from which everything in the universe arises. Without that field, that potentiality, nothing could arise. It is like space, which is similarly not a thing, but without which nothing could manifest. And yet this is just an analogy. Any label or comparison misleads. Dharmakaya is the Ineffable, the indescribable Is-ness we sense behind and within everything. Although it cannot be said either to exist or not exist, still it is not a void. Or, if it is a void, it isn’t a negative one. It contains the vast potential of all manifestation and therefore it is like the mother of all existence. Despite the ineffable nature of the Dharmakaya, we can feel its presence. This, I think, is why it is described as a body. Like physical bodies, it also has a kind of movement or function.
Of course, as soon as something comes into being, this is Nirmanakaya. You might think that, now that we’re talking about physical manifestations, the Trikaya teaching would be straightforward, but it’s not that simple. After all, Nirmanakaya isn’t just the phenomenal world, it’s a body of buddha. So, we’re still focused on the process of awakening. In what sense are you and I bodies of buddha? Without sentient beings there are no buddhas; without beings who need to awaken, without something to awaken to, there would be no awakening. You might say we are the raw materials of awakening, our very existence pointing to the Dharmakaya.
I found an article online by one of Chögyam Trungpa’s students that described a lecture Trungpa gave on the Trikaya. Apparently, it wasn’t very long. John Baker writes:
…there is another subtler way to understand the trikaya, and it is this understanding that Trungpa Rinpoche taught to us that winter day in 1971. He did it in this way.
Stepping to the blackboard, he picked up a piece of chalk and drew [a rough stick figure of a bird]. Then he stepped back and asked: “What is this a picture of?”
Of course, no one wanted to say the obvious, and there was an extended silence, until finally some fellow raised his hand and said, “It’s a picture of a bird.” Rinpoche replied, “It’s a picture of the sky,” and in those six words he taught the entire trikaya.
Rinpoche was introducing us to the most profound Buddhist description of reality, as it arises in the only place and time it ever arises: here and now. It is not a metaphysical explanation of reality; it is simply a description of what arises in the moment, now, the only time we ever have.[x]
The reality of a bird can’t be separated from the reality of sky, but is completely interdependent with sky. The drawing of a flying bird implies the entirety of the boundless sky around it. Similarly, Nirmanakaya is not separate from Dharmakaya. Every Form speaks of Emptiness, Emptiness speaks of Form. Deluded beings exist only because awakened beings exist, and awakened beings exist only because deluded beings exist. Because the truth is immanent in things, all things are helping us to awaken. All things are buddha.
Sambhogakaya is where the intimate relationship between Dharmakaya and Nirmanakaya becomes evident. Sambhogakaya is manifest the moment we pivot from our fixation on a picture of a bird to realizing we are looking at a picture of the sky that includes a bird, and we taste the momentary liberation from our limited ways of perceiving. The Dharmakaya shines through the Nirmanakaya. Sambhogakaya manifests in a moment of perfection while sipping our tea. It lives in the wonderful teachings and teachers which have brought us so much relief and joy, and in acts of pure compassion. Wherever things align to help wake us up, wherever the truth is evident, there is Sambhogakaya. Shunryu Suzuki put it this way:
When we want not just an emotional or romantic observation of Buddha, but, more sincerely, deeply, want to accept him as our teacher, it is necessary for us to know why he is Buddha. If we come to this point we must have a fuller idea than just that of an incarnated Buddha, or Sakyamuni Buddha, or Nirmanakaya Buddha. That is, we must know that Buddha is the Sambhogakaya Buddha and that the Sambhogakaya Buddha is the Perfect one, or Truth Itself. Truth Itself, when it is observed by people as a truth, may be a teacher; but even plants and animals, mountains and rivers, can be our teachers when we really have eyes to see them. When the idea of the historical Buddha has this kind of background, he will be accepted as our teacher in its true sense.[v]
Even though “Truth Itself” isn’t a tangible thing, we can perceive and experience its results. Therefore, the Sambhogakaya also has a “body” – a presence in our life, something very real.
How Is the Trikaya Teaching Useful?
Where is the utility in conceiving of the process of awakening as involving three buddha bodies? As with all Buddhist teachings, if you don’t find it helpful, you don’t need to worry about it. This is just another way to describe Reality-with-a-Capital-R, emphasizing a particular aspect of It. There are many other teachings, and I practiced for 30 years before becoming interested in the Trikaya!
The usefulness of the teaching, as I see it, is how it highlights the mystery of awakening and points us far beyond our small self’s agenda. Beings arise from the undifferentiated potential and awaken to their true nature, Empty and luminous with Suchness. Their identity with that undifferentiated potential drives them toward awakening, but it is not just about that which is separate and imperfect disappearing back into the void. The Original Source puts forth manifestations as if it is Its purpose.
Describing the Dharmakaya, in particular, as a “body” points toward our human experience as we approach the Ineffable. We refrain, as much as possible, from confusing ourselves with labels and descriptions, and yet it is not enough for the human heart to think only in negative terms. In his article, “The Trikāya Doctrine in Buddhism,” Ruben Habito suggests that the Dharmakaya came to be seen as a sort of “Personal Absolute” (capital P and capital A). He explains:
Thus in the notion of dharmakaya we can see the merging of the traditions regarding the Buddhist absolute as impersonal, formless emptiness on the one hand, and as personal, possessed of wondrous attributes, and in constant dynamic activity towards the enlightenment and salvation of all living beings on the other.[i]
You might say that Dharmakaya as is close as Buddhists get to a God. To continue with a theistic comparison, Nirmanakaya is our way of acknowledging we’re God’s creation, and Sambhogakaya is the manifestation of God’s love and concern for us. But these analogies carry a lot of implications that don’t apply if you take them too seriously. I find them helpful only because I was raised in a Judeo-Christian culture and theistic concepts are more familiar to me, in some ways, than Buddhist ones. Personally, I have no sense of a God – or Dharmakaya – which has any human characteristics whatsoever (such as a comparable but larger consciousness, or an agenda, or emotions), but at the same time I also get a powerful sense that neither is the Dharmakaya simply an impersonal void. I appreciate how Buddhism manages to describe and ennoble this complex human experience.
Endnotes
[i] Ruben L. F. Habito. “The Trikāya Doctrine in Buddhism.” Buddhist-Christian Studies, vol. 6, 1986, pp. 53–62. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1390131. Accessed 18 Apr. 2025.
[ii] Buswell, Robert E. Jr., and Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014.
[iii] Fischer-Schreiber, Ingrid, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Michael S. Diener (Michael H. Kohn, Translator). A Concise Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen. Boston: Shambala Publications, 2010. (Original copyright 1991.)
[iv] The Sutra on the Three Bodies. From the 84,000 website: https://84000.co/translation/toh283#UT22084-068-017-53
[v] Suzuki Roshi Lectures on the Trikaya. Wind Bell Vol. VIII, nos. 3-4, Spring 1969. https://www.cuke.com/Cucumber-Project/lectures/transcripts-new-2012/trikaya.html or https://www.cuke.com/pdf-2013/wind-bell/69-03-04.pdf
[vi] de la Vallée Poussin L. XXXI. Studies in Buddhist Dogma. The Three Bodies of a Buddha (Trikāya). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1906;38(4):943-977. doi:10.1017/S0035869X0003522X
[vii] Fischer-Schreiber, Ingrid, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Michael S. Diener (Michael H. Kohn, Translator). A Concise Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen. Boston: Shambala Publications, 2010. (Original copyright 1991.)
[viii] Lion’s Roar A-Z: https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism/three-kayas/
[ix] Schloegl, Irmgard. The Zen Teaching of Rinzai. Berkeley, CA: Shambala Publications, 1975. PDF: http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Translations/Teachings_of_Rinzai.pdf
[x] Baker, John. “The Three Bodies of the Buddha: Report on Trungpa Rinpoche’s Class at CU Boulder, Winter 1971.” The Chronicles of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche website: https://www.chronicleproject.com/the-three-bodies-of-the-buddha/
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