The Relationship between the Form Body and the Dharmakāya

The relationship between the material body and the Dharma body: the material body is born of and held by the Dharma body; the material body cannot exist apart from the Dharma body. When the Dharma body is present, the material body has a lifespan, has warmth, has a conscious mind; when the Dharma body is absent, one is a dead person, a piece of wood. For the Dharma body to manifest and function, it must rely on the material body and the five aggregates in order to operate; apart from the material body and the five aggregates, the Dharma body cannot manifest, and apart from the material body and the five aggregates, one also cannot find the Dharma body. Nevertheless, the Dharma body can still exist; that is to say, the existence of the Dharma body does not depend on external conditions and can exist independently.

When the Dharma body exists alone, that is when an arhat enters Nirvāṇa without remainder: the five aggregates have all been extinguished, the manas has also ceased, and only the Dharma body—tathāgatagarbha—remains, existing by itself. At that time, even the Buddha cannot find that arhat, because the arhat's five aggregates no longer exist, and there is simply no such person as that arhat. The Buddha also cannot find the arhat's Dharma body, the tathāgatagarbha, because the Dharma body is formless and without marks, and there is no way to find it. Therefore, to seek the tathāgatagarbha, one must seek it within the activity and operation of the five aggregates; one must seek that unarising-and-unceasing Dharma body—the tathāgatagarbha—amid conditioned things that arise and cease; one must seek the tathāgatagarbha within bodily, verbal, and mental actions. This is the direction of Chan investigation.

The Dharma body is permanent. Within the realms of the six sense objects, He is without knowledge and without awareness; but among the dharmas outside the six sense objects, He does have knowledge and awareness. He knows sentient beings' karmic seeds and karmic conditions, and when the conditions are complete, in accordance with sentient beings' karmic seeds, He transforms and generates their bodies of the five aggregates. If one has created the karma of a human, He transforms a human form within the embryo; if one has created the karma of a man, He transforms a male form; if one has created the karma of a woman, He transforms a female form; if one has created the karma of an incomplete material body, He transforms a form with incomplete faculties among the six faculties; if one has created the karma of an animal, He transforms an animal form; if one has created the karma of a deva, there is no antarā-bhava, no need for entering the womb, and He directly transforms a deva form. He will not randomly create sentient beings' bodies of the five aggregates and their living environments; everything follows sentient beings' karmic seeds.

The Dharma body has awareness: He is aware of what the seven consciousnesses are going to do, and afterward He will transmit the consciousness-seeds of the seven consciousnesses, letting the seven consciousnesses operate, while at the same time He cooperates with the operation of the seven consciousnesses, accomplishing the functions of the five aggregates. The scope of what He knows is extremely broad. For example, when two people meet and do not know each other, He can transmit karmic seeds, causing both of them, or one of them, to perceive the karmic connection between them—feeling either affinity or aversion. When a sentient being's material body has matured in the mother's womb, He is aware of it, and then He will blow the karmic wind, causing the fetus to emerge from the womb. When a sentient being's lifespan is about to end, He also knows it; He also knows when He should depart from a person who is on the verge of death.

The Dharma body has all these and many other kinds of knowledge; therefore, the substance of the Dharma body is truly existent, yet sentient beings cannot see Him with the eye or hear Him with the ear; they can only become aware of Him through the eye of wisdom. Without wisdom, there is no way to seek Him out, no way to realize Him. The Dharma body is not a thing of the mundane world; He has none of the marks of the six sense objects of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharma. Yet He is a transcendent dharma; since He is a dharma, He has the functions and operations of a dharma, and having functions and operations, He is not nothing at all. He has His own mode of existence; He is not the mode of existence of dharmas of the three realms. Although this is hard to understand, one can only say this much—it is extremely difficult to explain any further. That "thing" which is not a thing is truly hard for people to understand and cognize!