Dhammakaya, Dhammakāya, Dhamma-kaya: 5 definitions
Introduction:
Dhammakaya means something in Buddhism, Pali. If you want to know the exact meaning, history, etymology or English translation of this term then check out the descriptions on this page. Add your comment or reference to a book if you want to contribute to this summary article.
In Buddhism
General definition (in Buddhism)
Dhammakaya is a Pali word meaning "body of dharma" or the body of enlightenment. It can refer to:
- Wat Phra Dhammakaya, a Thai Buddhist temple;
- The Dhammakaya Movement and the Dhammakaya Foundation, which originated at that temple;
- The Mahayana Buddhist concept of dharma body; note that this is normally referred to by the similar Sanskrit term dharmakaya, because Pali is rarely used to discuss Mahayana Buddhism
- Dhammakaya Meditation, a meditation technique
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
Dhammakāya refers to: having a body according to the Norm (the dhammatā of bodies). See Bdhgh as translated in Dial. III, ad Loc.; having a normal body (sic Bdhgh, esp. of the B. D.III, 84;
Note: dhammakāya is a Pali compound consisting of the words dhamma and kāya.
dhammakāya (ဓမ္မကာယ) [(pu) (ပု)]—
[dhamma+kāya]
[ဓမ္မ+ကာယ]
[Pali to Burmese]
dhammakāya—
(Burmese text): (၁) (က) (ပရိယတ်,ပဋိပတ်) တရားအပေါင်း။ (ခ) (သီလ,သမာဓိ,ပညာ) တရားအပေါင်း။ (ဂ) (သမာဓိ-စသော) တရားအပေါင်း။ (ဃ) (ဒုက္ခသစ္စာ) တရားအပေါင်း။ (င) (ဒသဗလဉာဏ်,စတုဝေသာရဇ္ဇဉာဏ်,ဆအသာဓာရဏဉာဏ်,၁၈-ပါးသော အာဝေဏိကဂုဏ်တော် စသော) တရားအပေါင်း။ (စ) (လောကုတ္တရာ ၉-ပါး) တရားအပေါင်း။ (ဆ) (ဘုရားအလောင်း အလျာတို့၏ ပါရမီ ၁ဝ-ပါး,စရိယ ၃-ပါး,စွန့်ခြင်းကြီး ၅-ပါး) တရားအပေါင်း။ (ဇ) (စတုပါရိသုဒ္ဓိသီလ) တရားအပေါင်း။ (ဈ) (မဟာကရုဏာ-စသော) တရားအပေါင်း။ (ည) (အဒေါသ-စသော) တရားအပေါင်း။ (ဋ) (ဒသဗလဉာဏ်,စတုဝေသာရဇ္ဇဉာဏ် စသော) တရားအပေါင်း။ (တိ) (၂) (က) (ပိဋက ၃-ပုံ) တရားဟူသော တရားအပေါင်းရှိသော။ (ခ) (ပုဗ္ဗေနိဝါသာနုဿတိဉာဏ် စသော) တရားအပေါင်းရှိသော။ (ဂ) အလုံးစုံသော တရားအပေါင်းရှိသော (ဘုရားရှင်)။ ဓမ္မကာယသိရီ-(၂)-ကြည့်။ ဓမ္မကာယတ္တ-(၂)-ကြည့်။ ဓမ္မကာယတ္တ-(၃)-ကြည့်။
(Auto-Translation): (1) (a) The totality of all phenomena (precepts, insight). (b) The totality of all characteristics (morality, concentration, wisdom). (c) The totality of all phenomena (such as concentration). (d) The totality of all phenomena (suffering truth). (e) The totality of all phenomena (like the powers of insight, the four royal insights, the eight supreme knowledge, etc.). (f) The totality of all phenomena (nine kinds of Lokakuttra). (g) The totality of all phenomena (the ten perfections of deities, three kinds of wealth, five kinds of great abandonment). (h) The totality of all phenomena (such as the four types of Samadhi). (i) The totality of all phenomena (such as great compassion). (j) The totality of all phenomena (such as non-anger). (k) The totality of all phenomena (like the powers of insight, the four royal insights, etc.). (l) (2) (a) The totality of phenomena as stated in the three Pitakas. (b) The totality of phenomena (such as the knowledge of predetermined destiny). (c) The totality of all phenomena exists (in the Buddha). Dhamma-kaya theory - (2) See. Dhamma-kaya principle - (2) See. Dhamma-kaya principle - (3) See.
Dhammakāya (in Pali) can be associated with the following Chinese terms:
1) 法身 [fǎ shēn]: “dharma-body”; “law body”; “reality body”; “truth body”.
Note: dhammakāya can be alternatively written as: dhamma-kāya.
Pali is the language of the Tipiṭaka, which is the sacred canon of Theravāda Buddhism and contains much of the Buddha’s speech. Closeley related to Sanskrit, both languages are used interchangeably between religions.
See also (Relevant definitions)
Partial matches: Kaya, Dhamma, Dharma, Dharma, Dharma.
Starts with: Dhammakaya Foundation, Dhammakaya Movement, Dhammakayadassana, Dhammakayaguna, Dhammakayasamodhana, Dhammakayasampatti, Dhammakayasiri, Dhammakayatta, Dhammakayupapanna.
Full-text: Dhamma, Bahudhammakaya, Dhammakayadassana, Dhammakayaguna, Dhammakayasampatti, Dhammakayasiri, Dhammakayatta, Dhammakayasamodhana, Dhammakayupapanna, Dhammakaya Movement, Dhammakaya Foundation, Dharmakaya, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Fa shen si, Ukkamukhapahattha, Tai guo fa shen si, Fa shen, Thavara.
Relevant text
Search found 9 books and stories containing Dhammakaya, Dhammakāya, Dhamma-kaya, Dhamma-kāya; (plurals include: Dhammakayas, Dhammakāyas, kayas, kāyas). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
A Treatise on the Paramis (by Ācariya Dhammapāla)
Maha Buddhavamsa—The Great Chronicle of Buddhas (by Ven. Mingun Sayadaw)
Part 16 - What is the Fruit of the Pāramīs < [Chapter 7 - On Miscellany]
How to develop the Excellent Wisdom in Subhasutta (by Phramaha Anuchon Khammee (Sasanakitti))
Part 4 - Wisdom development by four Satipaṭṭhānas < [Chapter 4 - How to develop the Excellent Wisdom as appeared in Subhasutta]
Theravada Buddhist studies in Japan (by Keiko Soda)
4. Theories of early Buddhism < [Chapter 2 - Theravada, Hinayana and Early Buddhism (critical study)]
On the use of Human remains in Tibetan ritual objects (by Ayesha Fuentes)
Introduction: The use of skulls and bone ornaments < [Chapter 2 - The use of skulls and bone ornaments]
Validity and Reliability of a Revised Scale of Attitude towards Buddhism... < [Volume 7, Issue 5 (2016)]
What Was a Monk in Joseon Korea? < [Volume 16, Issue 3 (2025)]
Magicians, Sorcerers and Witches < [Volume 8, Issue 9 (2017)]