some misconception, when the term is used alone, on the part of the uninitiated. To avoid this, "reality" has been prefixed, which purposes to make it clear that the ultimate reason is not an abstraction, not a mere subjective creation, but a real objective (or rather transcendental) existence. Bhutakoti serves the same end, as it means the "highest point of reality," or "the real end of things."

Alakshitam, Cunyata, and Nirvanam express the negative phase of the Dharmakaya. When affirmation alone is not sufficient, we frequently resort to the negative way of defining things, showing thereby at least what they are not. The human mind cannot have a positively adequate conception of things which are beyond the realm of conditionality, for it is bound up within spatial and temporal relations; and in order to give expression to these non-conditional objects, we use the negative method and say that they are not such and such. In innumerable ways, this negation is as effective in defining things as affirmation.

When Buddhists assert that the Dharmakaya is cunya = empty, or alakshana, = devoid of particular marks, or nirvana = emancipating, or nacrava = faultless, they are following the inevitable course of mentation. All these and some other negative terms unfortunately have caused a great deal of misunderstanding on the part of unsympathetic critics who have either forgotten

or ignored the peculiar proclivity of human reason to onesidedness and exclusiveness.

Lastly, Paramartha and Satya are the terms used to designate the epistemological phase of the Dharmakaya. Paramartha is the first or highest reason, and Satya is truth or that which truly is. And for the psychological aspect of the Dharmakaya, or as it is manifested in the human consciousness, we have Bodhi or Hridaya. Bodhi is the divine wisdom incarnated in our limited intelligence, or the divine love as reflected in our human sympathy and compassion. Hridaya is the inner life of existence which prompts and quickens us to do the will of the Dharmakaya, and which is awakened to its full dignity and glory when intelligence passes over the limits of relativity. The reason why we are able to have an insight into the nature of the ultimate being and to recognize the truth that sameness and difference are co-existent and really identical, is because our Bodhi or Hridaya is essentially one with the Dharmakaya. When the Bodhi comes to know itself, it also knows the inner being of Dharmakaya, however fragmentary the knowledge be, and we lie blissfully at rest in the bosom of eternal motherliness.

Footnotes

^25:1 It may be interesting for our readers to read in connection with this article Dr. Paul Carus's Buddhist story entitled Amitabha.