Understanding the Dhamma Body and Its Significance : หน้า 113/263

Dhamma Body, thereby make themselves invulnerable to the action of defilements. In the past we might have been unable to give up unwholesome behaviours (such as drink- ing alcohol) in spite of knowing the damage it was doing to our body and mind, because of the influence of our defile- ments. Furthermore we might have been too lazy to do wholesome things (like practising meditation) even though we knew the value of doing them, because of the action of defilements. It is only by attaining the Dhamma Body in- side that one can definitively overcome the action of one’s defilements—but for as long as one has not yet attained the Dhamma Body, one will be continually defeated by one’s defilements. The Dhamma Body or the Dhammakāya is the essence of Buddhism. All of the teachings of the Lord-Buddha are de- rived from the fact that He managed to attain and become inseparably unified with the Body of Enlightenment inside Himself, as illustrated by his exhortion: Dhammakāyo ahaṁ itipi (My essence is the Dhammakāya) At that point the mind of the Lord Buddha had become de- finitively disconnected from all the inner bodies nested at the seventh base of the mind, from the human physical body to the Dhammakāya Anāgāmi Body and became perma- nently united with the Dhammakāya Arahant, whether asleep, awake, standing, walking, sitting or lying down as the 'arahaṭṭa sammā sambuddha'. Every teaching given by the Lord Buddha derived from the wisdom of the 'arahaṭṭa sammā sambuddha' who had freed himself of all defilement. Whether it be greed, hatred or delusion and all the higher and lower fetters [saṁyojana] 111