“Yes, we have the Dharmakâya. This is the essence-body, the ground of all being, taking many forms, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, spirits, angels, men and even demons. It is impersonal, all-pervasive. It may be called the first person. The second person is the Sambhogakâya, the body of bliss. This is the heavenly manifestation of Buddha. The third person is the Nirmânakâya. This is the projection of the body of bliss on earth.”
Some identify this trinity with that of the Christian faith. While there is a resemblance, we should note that the first person of the Buddhist trinity would correspond to God as the absolute or the impersonal background of universal Being. The second corresponds to the glorified Christ and the third to the historic Jesus. There is no counterpart either to God the Father or to the Holy Spirit.
“Do you believe in the salvation of all beings?”
“Yes, all have the Buddha heart. All living beings will finally become Buddhas.”
Then turning to a friend of mine the speaker said: “What have you done in Buddhism?” The friend answered: “I have written and translated many books.” “I do not mean that,” he answered. “What work have you done?” The friend confessed that he had not done much else. Then he said: “Every morning when you awake, reflect deeply and profoundly upon your state before you were born. Think back to that state where your soul was merged with Buddha. Find yourself in that state and you will find ineffable enlightenment and joy.”
The sun was setting behind the Western hills. The blare of trumpets sounded on the city wall. Outside of the door was the whirling sound of Peking returning home from its mundane tasks and joys. We joined the rushing, restless crowd and still we felt the calm of another world. Has not Christianity a message of balm and peace for these sons of the East who are so sensitive to the touch of the eternal and sublime?
An important government official obliged to deal with many vexatious requests and demands declared: “I could not get through my day’s work, if I did not spend an hour every day in meditation, just as Buddha did when he became enlightened.” He was asked what he did when he meditated or prayed. “Nothing at all.” “Well, about what do you think?” “Of nothing at all. I stop thinking when I engage in religious meditation. Life makes me think too much. I should lose my sanity, if I did not stop thinking and enter into the ‘void’, whence we all came and into which we all are going to drop back.”
His Christian inquirer still was unsatisfied by the Buddhist’s description of his prayer life, and pressed further for details. “What happens when you meditate or pray?”
“Nothing happens, I tell you, except, that I experience a peace which the passing world cannot give and which the passing world cannot altogether take away. The secret of religion is simply to realize that everything is passing away. When you accept that fact, then you become really free. The Christian world seemed to have been tremendously impressed by the slogan of the French soldiers at Verdun, ‘They shall not pass!’ Perhaps the German soldiers did not pass just then or there. But the French soldiers themselves are all passing away. And everything in the world is passing away. What our Buddhist religion teaches us is: ‘Let it pass!’ You cannot keep anything for very long. And prayer or meditation is simply to practice yourself in that thought deliberately. Oh, it is a wonderful peace when you fully believe that gospel, and enter into it every day. Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity! Why worry? We do altogether too much worrying. To pray means simply to quit worrying, to quit thinking, to enter into the indescribably passionless peace of Nirvana.”