Sambhogakaya

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The Sambhogakāya (Sanskrit: "body of enjoyment", Tib: longs.sku) is the supramundane form that a fully enlightened Buddha appears in following the completion of their career as a Bodhisattva. This body is an ideal form, similar to that seen in Buddhist iconography and in trance sadhana such as the Kye-rim (Tibetan) and Dzog-rim (Tibetan), of a human figure manifesting all of the thirty-two marks of a Buddha. The place where the Sambhogakāya body appears is an extra-cosmic realm called Akaniṣṭha, similar to but perhaps distinct from the Akaniṣṭha that is the highest realm of the Śuddhāvāsa devas.

The Mindstream (Sanskrit: citta santana) as the Sambhogakaya links the Dharmakaya with the Nirmanakaya.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Sambhogakaya in Chan Buddhism

In the Chán (禪) (Jp. Zen) tradition, the Sambhogakāya (Chin. 報身↔baoshen, lit. "reward body"), along with the Dharmakaya and the Nirmanakaya, are given metaphorical interpretations. In the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, Chan Master Huineng explains samboghakaya as the state where one's thoughts are always good:

"Think not of the past but of the future. Constantly maintain the future thoughts to be good. This is what we call the Sambhogakāya.

"Just one single evil thought could destroy the good karma that has continued for one thousand years; and just one single good thought in turn could destroy the evil karma that has lived for one thousand years.

"If the future thoughts are always good, you may call this the Sambhogakāya. The discriminative thinking arising from the Dharmakāya (法身↔fashen "Truth body") is called the Nirmanakāya (化身↔huashen "transformation body"). The successive thoughts that forever involve good are thus the Sambhogakāya." (Ch.20)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Snellgrove, David (1987). Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (Vol.1). Boston, Massachusetts: Shambhala Publications, Inc. ISBN 0 87773 311 2
Snellgrove, David (1987). Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (Vol.2). Boston, Massachusetts: Shambhala Publications, Inc. ISBN 0 87773 379 1
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch translated by Philip Yampolsky