Dharma in Love

"My soul glowed from the fire of your fire. Your world was a whispering water At the river of my heart." --by the poet Rumi

While in love we often fear, often unconsciously fear, that another will subsume us, that we will drown in relationship, and to some extent this is true. The ego must move aside for the opening to the path to love. Love and the soul however will not be lost or drown in another. Rather these are our immutable essences; they cannot be lost or drowned, and yet ego strongly fears this fate. Our sense of self-protection that is ego rapidly assesses any situation in which we must potentially yield to be a threat.

There is a fundamental mystery to the soul, however, writes Deepak Chopra in his book, The Path to Love. He writes further, "its integrity is not violated by merging with another person. The blending of two spirits brings more to the union than each partner started with. The process of soul-making that used to be [for me alone] "me" is now for "us." The poet Rumi expressed this thought with these words:

My soul glowed from the fire of your fire.

Your world was a whispering water.

At the river of my heart.

With the growth of spiritual realization is the awareness that two can be as one; that the multiple aspects of the Dharmakaya are are work; that the Christian idea of a triune relationship within the soul of a great spirit, communing with God are all infinite and possible. While in the state of ego, on the other hand, persons remain isolated and self-protected as if in a siege mentality. There then is no room for the other; often a feeling of isolation and a vague, undefined loneliness results. Yet spirit calls to us powerfully, first, in romantic love. 

We fall in love and for the first time as Rumi passionately writes, we have the opportunity to engage our self into self as an expansion of identity. The Spirit uses relationship as its vehicle. No man is an island; spirit calls to us to overcome our fears such that love may be its replacement.

Once in relationship, however we gain a foothold over ourselves despite the passion, despite the growing self awareness, and ego often returns to us with a vengeance. Falling in love is delightful; it is passion, and a glimpse of the spirit itself. Being in love, love itself entails commitment, and a certain struggle. Many who come to this place in their spiritual journeys feel a sense of loss, and fear what is to come next. 

Relationships have consequences. While they give to each person a sense of belonging, friendship, security and compassion, love also demands something from each partner. Things like patience, devotion, persistence are part of the work and struggle to be realized along the path. Sometimes relationship is hard and painful. Resolution brings joy, and it brings disappointment. "The only real difference between romance and relationship, spiritually speaking, has to do with surrender. Surrender comes naturally to two people when they first fall in love." Love's first flush gives us the courage to do that, to be fearless and act under its protective power. Spiritually, surrender is a solution to the paradox existing between ego and spirit. 

Yet persons who love, who are intimates, over time often find that the ego, now returned carries them on its own agenda. Lovers play games to test one another, they withhold themselves; they are unwilling to give to spirit, and they are unwilling to give to and serve one another. Surrender now must be conscious. It must be an act of free will, of choosing this as your path. Chopra writes, "this isn't to say that surrender isn't hard work; it is conscious work. As such it can bring the same joy and delights as falling in love, the same sense of play which relieves lovers of the ego burdens." 

The British writer and poet, D. H. Lawrence wrote, "That is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust, the sapphire of fidelity. The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love."

A free loving commitment of the will made to another is the realization over time of: peacefulness, a companionship and a trust made by the Spirit to another which is, and is not self. "When they are fully committed... they see God in each other." On that basis, they are able to surrender, not to one another so much, as to surrender themselves to the God in each other, and to the God, the Dharmakaya in all things. Dharma is an ancient idea. It means perhaps most fully, sacredness. In its Sanskrit origin, dharma means to sustain or uphold. 

Thus what upholds, honors, or respects another's life is in keeping with dharma. It is, for example in dharma not to tell lies, to deceive oneself or others. Dharma looks to the sacred, it is tied to and intimately guided by spirit. Dharmakaya, likewise, is Karuna, love; love then is a guiding force emanating from the great being, the Dharmakaya. Thus surrender in relationship is surrender to spirit, to dharma. In the Way of the Beloved, the dharma is "a vision of spiritual equality; when you perceive life through this vision, separation ends."

Mahayana and Freedom of the Dharmakaya

"When bodhisattvas think of the Dharmakaya, how will they picture it to themselves?"
--General Treatise on Mayhayanism by Asanga and Vasubandhu
The writers of this important text as related by Suzuki in his book, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, answer this question-- what will they think/picture, by saying that, "They will think of the Dharmakaya by picturing its seven characteristics: free, unimpeded activity manifesting in all beings; all perfected virtues eternally in the Dharmakaya; absolute freedom from prejudice, both intellectual and emotional; spontaneous emanations from the will of the Dharmakaya; inexhaustible wealth stored in the Body of the Dharma, wealth spiritual and physical; purity without stain of onesidedness; earthly works achieved for the salvation of all beings, as reflexes of the Dharmakaya."

Asanga goes on to enumerate other characteristics of the Dharmakaya. He discusses its five forms of operation, its irresistible spiritual domination over all evil-doers, its method of destroying various unnatural and irrational methods of salvation practiced by: ascetics, hedonists, and Ishvaraism.He also mentions the ability of Dharmakaya to cure minds which believe in the reality, permanency and indivisibility of the soul-ego. Asanga ultimately seeks to inspire "those Bodhsattvas who have not yet attained to the stage of immovability, as well as those who are still in a state of vacillation."

Thus the freedom of the Dharmakaya is manifold (many-fold). According to the Buddhist view, "those spiritual powers everlastingly emanate from the Body of Dharma have no trace of human elaboration or constrained effort, but they are a spontaneous overflow from its immanent necessity, from its free will." That the Dharmakaya makes no conscious struggling gestures is to say that it is within itself, without diverse tendencies, one trying to gain ascendancy over another. It  becomes then, obvious, that any struggle becomes fertile for compulsion which is incompatible within the conception of the highest spiritual reality.

Absolute spontaneity and perfect (whole) freedom are necessary attributes when describing Dharmakaya. There can then, be no coercion, either external or internal. "Its every act of creation or salvation or love emanates from its own free will, unhampered by struggle which characterizes the activities of the every-day mind." This free will, which is divine, "stands in striking contrast to other, more earthly concepts of "free will."

As the Dharmakaya works of its own accord, "it does not seek any recompense for its deeds; its every act is for the best welfare of its creatures, for they are all its manifestations, and must know what we therefore need."

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