"Say not that the
Tathagata is undergoing final extinction: his spiritual presence
abides for ever unchangeable." This apparently corresponds to the
passage in the Pali Canon,[95] which runs "It may be that in some of
you the thought may arise, the word of the Master is ended: we have no
more a teacher. But it is not thus that you should regard it. The
truths and the rules which I have set forth, let them, after I am
gone, be the Teacher to you." But in Buddhist writings, including the
oldest Pali texts, Dharma or Dhamma has another important meaning. It
signifies phenomenon or mental state (the two being identical for an
idealistic philosophy) and comprises both the external and the
internal world. Now the Dharma-kaya is emphatically not a phenomenon
but it may be regarded as the substratum or totality of phenomena or
as that which gives phenomena whatever reality they possess and the
double use of the word dharma rendered such divagations of meaning
easier.[96] Hindus have a tendency to identify being and knowledge.
According to the Vedanta philosophy he who knows Brahman, knows that
he himself is Brahman and therefore he actually is Brahman. In the
same way the true body of the Buddha is prajna or knowledge.[97] By
this is meant a knowledge which transcends the distinction between
subject and object and which sees that neither animate beings nor
inanimate things have individuality or separate existence. Thus the
Dharma-kaya being an intelligence which sees the illusory quality of
the world and also how the illusion originates[98] may be regarded as
the origin and ground of all phenomena. As such it is also called
Tathagatagarbha and Dharma-dhatu, the matrix or store-house of all
phenomena. On the other hand, inasmuch as it is beyond them and
implies their unreality, it may also be regarded as the annihilation
of all phenomena, in other words as Nirvana. In fact the Dharma-kaya
(or Bhuta-tathata) is sometimes[99] defined in words similar to those
which the Pali Canon makes the Buddha use when asked if the Perfect
Saint exists after death--"it is neither that which is existence nor
that which is non-existence, nor that which is at once existence and
non-existence nor that which is neither existence nor non-existence."
In more theological language it may be said that according to the
general opinion of the Mahayanists a Buddha attains to Nirvana by the
very act of becoming a Buddha and is therefore beyond everything whic