Human Development
Emanation-body awareness
Description:
This state of awareness is characterized by the simultaneous presence of mind in various stations and is represented as the Buddha's distribution of emanation-bodies in all the world systems to teach the dharma. It is this body which appears on earth as a guide towards liberation for all beings and results from the compassion of buddhas in the sambhogakaya paradise, their meditation embodying dharmakaya as a human being. Thus the world's saviours have a docetic or illusory bodily existence. One attaining this state enacts the role of such an incarnation in the nirmanakaya, appearing to be born, experiencing a miraculous infancy and so on. Sakyamuni Buddha was such an emanated form or tulku, and his life is a paradigm of buddhic development. As a phase in the [bardo] state, nirmanakaya is manifest as light less brilliant than the previous phases and in forms related to the [bhavacakra] (six modes of existence).Context:
In [Mahayana] Buddhism, one of the [trikaya] (three bodies) of a buddha. In Tibetan Buddhism it is related to the last of three phases experienced in the "in-between" or [bardo] consciousness between death and rebirth, each being connected with one of the [trikaya] of Buddha and in any of which a being may attain liberation. In Tibetan Sakya Buddhism this is one of the states in the "Ascension Stages Game". In some sets it is numbered 97 on the board.<