by Christopher Key Chapple
sarvam deham cinmayam hi jagad va paribhavayet
yugapan nirvikalpena manasa paramodayahWhen an aspirant contemplates, with mind unwavering and free from all alternatives, his whole body or the entire universe simultaneously as of the nature of consciousness, he experiences Supreme Awakening. 1
This article will investigate various interpretations of the body given in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina religious traditions. The notion of “cosmic body,” wherein the human body is seen as a metaphor for the totality of existence, will be examined first. Next I will investigate some of the explicitly physical descriptions of the body as found in the philosophical literature of each religion; medical and erotic descriptions of the body, though interesting, will not be considered in detail. This will be followed by a discussion of the subtle body, defined in each system by karmic accretions. Included in this section is a brief summary of the anatomy of the chakras and nadis. The article concludes with a discussion of the cosmic body, not only as religious metaphor, but also as the felt experience of the accomplished yogi.
The Cosmic Body
In the religions that have originated in greater India (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism), three terms are used to designate body: kaya, sharira, and deha. All three terms can be used interchangeably, although the first (kaya) tends to be used more metaphorically and expansively, particularly in the Buddhist tradition, where the term kaya also refers to “body” or “corpus” in a larger sense. The later Mahayana traditions refer to the teaching, transformation, and enjoyment bodies (kaya) of the Buddha, each of which assumes cosmic proportions.
Numerous other cosmic body allusions can be found in South Asian literature. In the “Purusha Sukta” of the Rg Veda, the body parts of the cosmic person are identified with the various realms of the universe: head with sky, feet with the earth, and so forth. This “cosmicization” is also seen in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, where first the parts of a horse and then the parts of an anthropomorphized deity are similarly interpreted (I.1-2). In the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, the body (deha) of Krishna assumes mammoth proportions, literally swallowing and chewing up entire armies. And in the Jaina tradition, the entire cosmos takes on the form of a quasi-human being, with the upper heavenly realms, including the state of kaivalyam (liberation), at the “head,” and the lower, hellish realms at the base or “foot.” 2 The later Tantric or Tantric-influenced aspects of all three religions explicitly enfold the body-as-cosmos metaphor into both their presuppositions and their intentionality. But before completing our discussion of the cosmic body in Indian religions, let us first examine the interpretations of body, known in Sanskrit as the gross body (sthula sharira) and subtle body (sukshma sharira).
The Physical Body
The term used to refer to the mundane or physical body is the sthula sharira or the gross body, an assemblage of the earth, water, fire, and airy elements, powered by the organs of action and sense organs. The Buddhist Abhidharma tradition, the Hindu Samkhya and Vedanta systems, and the Jaina explication of karma all provide details about the structure of the physical body. In the Abhidharmakosha, a Buddhist text, the twelve gotras (six internal senses and their respective six external objects) or eighteen ayatanas (a similar listing that also includes six respective consciousnesses) account for the body’s constitution.3 The Chandogya Upanishad speaks of a five-fold person that includes a self made of food, breath, mind, intellect, and bliss.4 In the Samkhya Karika, the five gross elements (mahabhutas) compose the physical body, said to be “born of mother and father” (matapitrjah).5 However, this body utterly relies upon the five action organs (karmindriyas), and the five sense organs (buddhindriyas), the five subtle elements, the ego, the mind, and the intellect. As we will see below, no body can operate without the presence of a variously construed driving karmic force. In the Jaina Karmagrantha texts, the nama-karmans, subdivided into 93 uttara prakritis, account for all possible bodily forms that jivas can assume in the four states of existence (celestial, human, animal, infernal).6
In all three philosophical traditions of body, relatively little emphasis is placed on the physical composition of the body. Rather, the discussion focuses on the body in its role as vehicle for consciousness. Although the pinda-prakritis, numbered 28-39 in the Jaina Karmagrantha, discuss bone joints and posture, this information is clearly secondary in importance to the modality of being-in-the-world that one assumes. These traditions emphasize the body as subject rather than object. However, in the erotic traditions of India, particularly as seen in the Kama Sutra, the human body is grouped into such objective categories as elephant-woman, stallion-man, etc. However, although sex is sanctified as part of one’s dharma (duty), it is generally associated with remaining in the clutches of samsara (the wheel of birth) and hence is antithetical to the highest goals generally associated with religion. One exception to this attitude is the Tantric tradition, which will be considered briefly below.
Both like and unlike the dualistic Platonic tradition of a soul independent of but trapped in the body, the religious traditions of India talk about a driving, essential component of identity that guides and motivates the body of each person. The term most universally applied for this entity is jiva, used by both the Hindus and Jainas; the Buddhists used the term pudgala in a similar fashion. In all instances, this “organizational bundle” consists of karmic constituents memory residues from past experiences that determine present and future action and, hence, personality as well as body type. This subtle body (sukshma sharira in the Hindu tradition) determines both the physical structure and psychic dispositions of the body.
The Subtle Body
In the Samkhya tradition, the subtle body is the repository for the effects of past action (samskaras). It is considered to be constant (niyata), while that “born of mother and father” is perishable. In other words, this special form of body transmigrates following the death of its temporary physical abode. Both the quality of its life and the nature of its future embodiment are governed by the bhavas (attitudes; modes) of its accumulated karmic residues. According to one figuring in Samkhya, there are eight bhavas, dyadically arranged: virtue, vice; knowledge, ignorance; strength, weakness; detachment, attachment. According to another account, the bhavas take fifty forms (five ignorances, twenty-eight incapacities, nine complacencies, and eight perfections).7 The goal of the Samkhya system, akin to Vedanta and Jainism, is to establish oneself in the knowledge bhava so that liberation (moksha or kaivalyam) may be reached. Though one continues to suffer due to a continued relationship with the physical body,8 when one finally separates from the body,9 one is not again subjected to rebirth, but dwells eternally in pure consciousness (purusha). In this system, the body exists because of its relationship with karmic forces; yet the goal of the system is ultimately to transcend those drives that cause embodiment. In Samkhya, the mechanics of the gross or physical body are succinctly described, while the subtle body, the sukshma sharira, the driving force behind the apparent body, is described in great detail.
Buddhist Condemnation of Corporeality
In the Abhidharma schools of Buddhism, the bodily constituents mentioned above are set in motion by the persistence of desire. This desire or thirst (trishna) causes a host of mental processes to arise (caitta-dharmas). In both the early and later schools of Buddhism, the physical body is regarded with great distrust. In order to reverse the pathology of physical attraction, which distracts the practicing Buddhist from his or her meditation, the aspirant is advised to bring forth an opposite thought when attraction arises. Perhaps the most graphic example of this practice is “concentration on foulness,” popularly referred to as the Buddhist graveyard meditation, and discussed at great length in Buddhaghosa’s Vishuddhimagga. Designed to help monks overcome bodily lust, this meditation involves reflection on the following aspects of a human corpse in the process of decay: “the bloated, the livid, the festering, the cut up, the gnawed, the scattered, the hacked and scattered, the bleeding, the worm infested, [and] the skeleton.”10 By witnessing or visualizing these aspects of the ultimate putrefaction of human corporeality, one will most likely retreat from pursuing what might be initially regarded with desire. Buddhaghosa writes: “a living body is just as foul as a dead one, only the characteristic of foulness is not as evident in a living one, being hidden by adventitious embellishments.”11 At a later date, Vasubandhu elaborates on how to meditate on the body in such a way as to reduce and eventually eliminate bodily attraction. He advises the meditator to conjure images of a blue corpse, a body partly eaten by insects, an immobile corpse, and finally a skeleton:
The Yogi who wishes to practice meditation upon the unattractive begins by fixing his mind upon some member of his body such as the toe of his foot or the middle of his forehead or any area desired. He should imagine that the flesh in that area rots and falls away and gradually continue the practice until the entire body is regarded as a skeleton. . . . [H]e should apply the same process to a second person and continue until he has conceived of the temple and compound, the town, the outlying regions and finally the limitless ocean as being filled with skeletons.12
The idea of body here is further elaborated on in the later Mahayana tradition:
. . . the body is a mass of filth and putridity. It exudes such malodorous and impure substances as sweat, pus, bile, phlegm, urine, saliva, and excrement through its nine apertures. It is indeed a rotten carcass, and it is infested by eighty thousand worms.13
Without doubt, these images of the body helped gird Buddhist monks for a life of solitude!
Buddhist Underpinnings of Embodiment
In Buddhism, as in the Samkhya system, the body cannot be separated from the karmic forces that undergird its very being, also referred to as samskaras. Forty-six such mental dharmas (modes; characteristics) are categorized in the Sarvastivadin Abhidharma school as producing multiple embodiments. These range from impurities such as ignorance, carelessness, heaviness, lack of faith, sloth, and addiction to pleasure, to vicious traits such as anger, deceit, envy, jealousy, violence, vanity, and so forth. Neutral mind states, such as memory and absent-mindedness, are also listed, as well as ten aspects of goodness, including faith, strength, equanimity, self-respect, decorum, lack of cupidity, lack of hatred, nonviolence, nimbleness of mind, and acquiring and preserving good qualities. Each of these modes are expressed through the body due to the accumulated action that one has accrued through countless rounds of rebirth. As in all schools of Buddhism, the language of “self” is not used, but this array of dharmas accounts for the arising of self and body identity, albeit subject to eventual decay and dispersal. One’s past actions mandate one’s present constitution; though no “self” is said to continue, the bundle of karma wanders from one embodiment to the next since beginningless time, until one seeks to extinguish the desires that lie at the root of this process.
Despite its insistence on the non-existence of an abiding self, the Buddhist tradition offers the most comprehensive account of the rebirth of the individual. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, detailed instructions are given for the dying person, as he or she leaves the body, to proceed with care through the various post-life states (bardo) in search of enlightenment, or at least embodiment in a better situation.14
Although in the early Buddhist schools the state of nirvana as attained by Sakyamuni Buddha seemingly did not allow for the continuation of any bodily form, either gross or subtle, later schools of Buddhism ascribed a logos-style Docetism to the “body of the Buddha,” saying that the Buddha continues through his teachings. In the Mahayana school, the notion of forever escaping any form of embodiment is eschewed in favor of the bodhisattva vow to purposely return birth after birth in bodily form in order to help liberate other sentient beings. In the Bodhicaryavatara of Santideva, this also involves a commitment to sacrifice one’s own body for the sake of helping to relieve the suffering of others:
I have devoted this body to the welfare of all creatures. They may revile me all the time or bespatter me with mud; they may play with my body and mock me and make sport of me; yea, they may even slay me. I have given my body to them: why should I think of all that?15
In another often cited Buddhist tale, a hungry tigress gives up her own flesh to prevent her cubs from starving. These examples illustrate the importance of giving to others in the Buddhist tradition, and provide a unique perspective on the body as a vehicle to help others in their quest for salvation.
Jainist Components of the Subtle Body
The notion of the subtle body is perhaps most fully developed in the Jaina tradition. In Jainism, the various kinds of karmas guide one’s path in embodied form or determine the experiential body. For example, five karmas obscure knowledge, four obscure insight, and five cause different forms of sleep. Two cause feelings of pain and pleasure, three pervert religious views, and twenty-five disrupt proper conduct (sixteen of these cause passion; six modes, though not passionate, are nonetheless disruptive, such as inappropriate joking. There area also three forms of sexual desire, including homosexuality). Four kinds of karma determine the nature of one’s family status, and five inhibit the jiva.16
Of particular interest in Jainism is the use of color or leshya, presumably seen in aura form, in association with the discussion of karma. The hostile, pitiless, cruel, barbarous, impious man, who has a bad tongue and who takes pleasure in torturing other beings, has a black leshya. The fraudulent, corruptible, inconstant, hypocritical, voluptuous man has a dark blue leshya. The thoughtless one, who in all his actions does not weigh the evil and the wrathful, has a grey one. The liberal, honorable one who has a friendly mind toward religion has a fiery [red] leshya. The compassionate, bountiful, steadfast, intelligent one has a lotus-pink leshya. The pious man who performs good deeds, is passionless and impartial, has a white leshya.17 Bodies of all four realms (animals, humans, gods, and demons) are said to demonstrate leshya.
The so-called animal realm includes the elements, plants, and geographical and meteorological entities such as stones, dew, and so forth; the pan-animism of Jainism considers all these entities to be suffused with jiva. However, these kinds of beings, whose bodies are said to possess only the sense of touch, exhibit the three darkest leshya. Likewise, those whose bodies carry two senses (touch and taste), including worms and leeches; those who have three senses (adding smell), including bugs and ants; those who have four senses (adding sight), including bees and flies) are said to have black, dark, or grey leshya, as are the animals with five senses, such as aquatic, terrestrial, and air-borne animals that do not possess reason. Those born of the womb, including cattle, goats, sheep, elephants, lions, tigers, and humans, are said to exhibit all six forms of leshya, and hence are capable of purposeful ethical action. Likewise, all six leshyas are attributed to the gods and goddesses, while demons have only the three darker colors.18
In the Jaina tradition, corporeality extends both below and above its accepted definitions in other systems of thought. Due to the doctrine of re-embodiment following death, each life force has the potential to evolve into a higher (or lower) state; each human being has achieved its status only after innumerable births as a piece of dirt, a drop of rain, a blade of grass, an insect, and both invertebrate and vertebrate animals. In a real, biological sense, Jainism asserts that we are identical with all life forms.19 Consequently, Jainism advocates treating all beings, including the earth and water itself, as not different from one’s own being. This philosophy teaches that one can slowly release the essentially pure jiva from its bodily attachments through the practices of nonviolence, which delivers one into an eternal state of energy, consciousness, and bliss.
Yogic View of the Body
Thus far we have investigated several models of the body arising from South Asian traditions: various notions of cosmic body, definitions of the physical body linked to the gross elements and the senses, and several concepts of the subtle body. One idea is that the subtle body is powered by consciousness (Samkhya); another is that the subtle body arises from desire without being linked to an abiding self or soul (Buddhism); and another posits subtle bodies linked to souls that suffuse the manifest world, exhibit certain colors, and ultimately must be shed to attain the highest religious freedom (Jainism).
The Yoga tradition introduces another, more positive view of body that in later Tantric thought complements the various notions of body that we have already considered, as well as adds another layer of complexity. Yoga is perhaps most associated with its series of postures, known as asanas, through which one stretches the body to its limits and imitates a host of animals, as well as with its numerous breathing exercises (pranayama).20 Yoga also includes its own interpretation of the subtle body. In this unique view of the body, ascending centers of energy are located in the subtle body, and each is associated with a particular power. The earliest mention of these chakras or “wheels” of consciousness and nadis, the “rivers” through which this energy flows, is found in the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, a text that probably dates from the first century of the common era. A brief description of each of these is given in the third section of the text, the Vibhuti Pada, which deals with various powers that a practitioner of Yoga can cultivate:
[From concentration] on the central (naval) chakra, knowledge of the ordering of the body.
On the hollow of the throat, cessation of hunger and thirst.
On the tortoise nadi, stability.
On the light in the head, vision of perfected ones.21
Although Patanjali mentions only three energy areas, they clearly correspond to later lists that enumerate six or seven. Later lists include muladhara chakra, roughly aligned with the base of the spine, the svadhishthana chakra, associated with the sex organs, the manipura chakra, which corresponds to Patañjali’s naval chakra, the anahata or heart chakra, the vishuddha or throat chakra, as mentioned above, the ajna or “third-eye” chakra, the center of intuitive knowledge, and the thousand-petalled lotus, the sahasrara padma, which corresponds with Patanjali’s “light in the head.”22 The goal of Tantric Yoga, whether in its Buddhist or Hindu forms, is to raise one’s energy and focus further up along the spine, away from mundane concerns and toward compassion (heart), detachment (throat), insight (third eye), and ultimately enlightenment (thousand-petalled lotus).
This brings us to the idea of the sense of embodiment associated with the highest religious life in Indian traditions. When these centers are awakened, one then becomes open to an experience described by Mircea Eliade as “cosmicization.” Eliade writes that through the awakening of this kundalini power, “Not only does the disciple identify himself with the cosmos; he also rediscovers the genesis and destruction of the universe in his own body.”23 As Sanjukta Gupta has noted, the human body itself becomes the identified with the powers of the universe.24 The Hindu goddess tradition is particularly associated itself with this religious insight. Katherine Harper writes that:
…the body as the imago mundo has a sevenfold order that found its internal expression in the seven chakras of the body. Each of the seven chakras was envisioned or symbolized by a goddess (more specifically a Shakti) residing in a lotus . . . When the consciousness had traversed the seven-fold path of the chakras, moksha was achieved.25
Hence we’ve come full circle in the definition of the body found in the Indian religious traditions. The metaphor of the cosmic person in Hinduism, the dharma-kaya in Buddhism, and the loka-kaya in Jainism become more than metaphors in the experiential meditative traditions of Yoga and Tantra. The body itself, rather than being an impediment to liberation, becomes its very vehicle. By understanding the operations of first the gross and then the subtle body, and by plumbing the depths and heights of its various energy flows, the practitioner of Yoga enters into a mode of embodiment that both embraces and transcends the mundane.
Endnotes
1. Jaideva Singh, tr., The Yoga of Delight, Wonder, and Astonishment (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 60.↩
2. Collett Caillat and Ravi Kuman, English rendering by R. Norman, The Jain Cosmology (New York: Harmony Books, 1981) pp. 20, 54.↩
3. Th. Sctherbatsky, The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word “Dharma” (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1974), pp. 7-14, 96-97. First published by the Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1923.↩
4. Taittiriya Upanishad II, Robert Ernest Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979) , pp. 283-286.↩
5. See Samkhya Karika 39-41, by Isvarakrishna, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, ed., (Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 424-445.↩
6. Helmuth von Glasenapp, The Doctrine of Karma in Jain Philosophy (Bombay: Bai Vijibai Jivanlal Panalal Charity Fund, 1942), pp. 11-18.↩
7. Samkhya Karika 43-52.↩
8. Samkhya Karika,52, 55, 67.↩
9. Samkhya Karika, 68.↩
10. Bhadantacariya Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), translated from the Pali by Bhikkhu Nyanamoli (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1976), VI:1, p. 185.↩
11. Buddhaghosa, VII:88, p. 201.↩
12. Artemus Engle, manuscript trans. of Abhidharmakosa VI (Carmel, NY: The Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions Microfiche Edition, 1980), VI, pp. 36-37; Prahlad Pradhan, ed., Abhidharmakosabhasyam of Vasubandhu (Patna: K.P. Jayasawal Research Institute, 1975), p. 337.↩
13. Lalita-vistara 208; 328.20; Siksasamuccaya 229, 77, 81; Satasahasrika Prajnaparamita, 1430; Bodhisattvavadanakalpata, ii, 58 in Har Dayal, trans., Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature, (NY: Samuel Weiser, 1978), p. 92.↩
14. W.Y. Evans-Wentz, comp. and ed., The Tibetan Book of the Dead or The After-Death Expeeriences on the Bardo Plain, According to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960).↩
15. Santideva’s, Bodhicaryavatara III:12, as translated in Har Dayal, p. 58.↩
16. von Glasenapp, pp. 6-19.↩
17. von Glasenapp, p. 48.↩
18. von Glasenapp, pp. 52-61.↩
19. See my comparison between Jainism and Gaia theory in Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993).↩
20. By imitating animals in such poses as the cobra (nagasana), the lion (sihmasana), etc., one acknowledges and expresses kinship with the wider network of bodily forms, which, as we have seen, one presumably assumed in earlier lives. For a full description of Hatha Yoga, see Pancham Singh, tr., The Hatha Yoga Pradipika (New Delhi: Oriental Reprint, 1980) and Rai Bahadur Srisa Chandra Vasu, tr., The Gheranda Samhita (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1979).↩
21. Christopher Chapple and Eugene P. Kelly, Jr., The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: An Analysis of the Sanskrit with Accompanying English Translation (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1990), pp. 92-93.↩
22. Evans-Wentz, p. 216; Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), pp. 241-244.↩
23. Eliade, p. 244.↩
24. Sanjukta Gupta, Dirk Jan Hoens, and Teun Goudriaan, Hindu Tantrism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1971), as noted in Katherine Anne Harper, The Iconography of the Saptamatrikas: Seven Hindu Goddesses of Spiritual Transformation (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989.↩
25. Harper, p. 161.↩