Submitted by Krishna Dhanya on
Buddhism is often presented as a tradition that denigrates the body and views sensual pleasure negatively, but arguably the opposite is the case. Buddhism recognizes the pervasiveness of suffering for embodied beings, but its techniques also promise rarified states of bliss that transcend any ordinary delights. In Pāli sources, instructions on how to attain advanced absorptions (jhāna; Skt. dhyāna) describe in rapturous terms the pleasures of successful meditation:
With the subsiding of thought and examination, he enters and dwells in the second jhāna, which has internal confidence and unification of mind … and has rapture and happiness born of concentration … Just as though there were a lake whose waters welled up from below and it had no inflow from east, west, north, or south, and would not be replenished from time to time by showers of rain, then the cool fount of water welling up in the lake would make the cool water drench, steep, fill, and pervade the lake, so that there would be no part of the whole lake that is not pervaded by cool water; so too, a monk makes the rapture and happiness born of concentration drench, steep, fill, and pervade this body, so that there is no part of his whole body that is not pervaded by the rapture and happiness born of concentration.7
Indian and Tibetan tantric traditions also focus on the body as an essential foundation for meditation practice. The tantras contain descriptions of a “subtle body” (māyā-deha) roughly contiguous with the physical body in which energies referred to as “winds” (prāṇa) and “drops” (bindu) circulate through channels. Meditators learn to visualize these components and control the movements of energies, which leads to actualization of blissful mental states, as well as increasing wisdom and attainment of the qualities perfected by buddhas. Even sexual activity is a factor in this practice: during orgasm, coarse levels of mind drop away and more subtle ones manifest, including the most fundamental aspect of consciousness, the “mind of clear light” (prabhāsvara-citta). For nonmeditators, this opportunity is wasted, but tantric practitioners learn to harness the mind and the energies of the subtle body in order to directly experience subtle mental states. Through this process, bliss becomes a component of the path, rather than something to be suppressed. Tantric sources claim that such techniques lead to far more rapid progress than is possible through exoteric practices. The final apotheosis of this training is attainment of the “rainbow body” (Tib. ‘ja’ lus; Skt. indracāpa-kāya), a form composed of pure light and energy, which is often described as arising from the cremated corpse of an adept after death.
John Powers