常身

What this concept is about

Let us begin from a very ordinary experience.

When we see a person born, grow up, fall ill, age, and pass away, we naturally conclude: "This person's body is this person; when the body breaks down, this person is gone." If we apply the same way of observing directly to the Buddha, a difficulty arises: since the Buddha likewise is said to have manifested birth, cultivation, illness, and final extinction, is he then merely a person who appeared briefly in history and subsequently vanished?

The "permanent body" (常身, nitya-kāya, the "permanent body") is spoken precisely to answer this question.

In one sentence: the permanent body is the Buddha's true body, which transcends arising and ceasing, change and alteration, and cannot be destroyed; and yet the Buddha, precisely because he transcends arising and ceasing, does not distance himself from sentient beings—on the contrary, he can, in accord with conditions, manifest birth, illness, teaching, and even nirvāṇa.

However, this sentence must be unpacked. The permanent body comprises at least two inseparable aspects that cannot be conflated into one:

First, the Buddha's true body is not governed by arising and ceasing.

The *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* (《大般涅槃經》) says:

"如来身者，是常住身、不可坏身、金刚之身、非杂食身，即是法身。"

*"The Tathāgata's body is the permanent body, the indestructible body, the vajra body, the body not sustained by mixed food—that is, the dharma body."*

Here several names illuminate one another:

- "Permanent body" (常住身): it does not change with the flow of arising and ceasing; - "Indestructible body" and "vajra body": it is not an existence temporarily pieced together from fragile conditions that will eventually decay; - "Body not sustained by mixed food": it is unlike the flesh-and-blood body of ordinary beings, which is nourished by food and drink and maintained by conditions; - "That is, the dharma body": the emphasis falls on the Tathāgata's true nature, not on a material body extended indefinitely in time.

Thus, "permanent" does not mean "has existed for a very long time," nor does it mean imagining the Buddha as a colossal divine being who never ages and stands forever somewhere in the cosmos. To live a hundred years, ten thousand years, or even an unimaginably long time is still continuation within time; as long as it occurs through conditions and changes with conditions, it remains conditioned (有為法, saṃskṛta-dharma, conditioned phenomena) and impermanent. The "permanence" of the permanent body refers to the fact that the Tathāgata's dharma body fundamentally does not belong to this mode of existence that proceeds from birth toward destruction.

The classical sources further explain this from two sides: dharma-nature and buddha-nature.

Regarding dharma-nature (法性, dharmatā, dharma-nature): the *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* links nirvāṇa with "the dharma-nature of all buddhas" (諸佛之法性) and immediately stresses: "夫法性者，无有灭也。" ("As for dharma-nature, it has no extinction.") This sentence blocks a common misunderstanding: the Buddha's entry into nirvāṇa is not a case of a previously existing Buddha being annihilated into nothingness at some moment. Nor is nirvāṇa some hidden location in the cosmos to which the Buddha moves after relinquishing his body. To understand nirvāṇa as utter annihilation is still to imagine the dharma body within the framework of things arising, enduring, and disappearing.

Regarding buddha-nature (佛性, buddha-dhātu, buddha-nature): the sūtra says that buddha-nature is "without arising, without ceasing, without going, without coming" (無生、無滅、無去、無來), does not belong to the three times, and is not a thing produced by causes and conditions, and is therefore called permanent. It further says:

"佛性即是如来，如来即是法，法即是常。"

*"Buddha-nature is the Tathāgata; the Tathāgata is the dharma; the dharma is the permanent."*

This is not a claim that buddha-nature is an eternal soul hidden inside the body. Soul views typically still presuppose an entity that can exist independently, go from here to there, and migrate from this life to the next; the sūtra deliberately uses "without going, without coming," non-spatiality, and non-production by causes and conditions to describe buddha-nature and the dharma body. It is not another, more hidden and more solid thing within the empirical world.

Second, true permanence and skillful manifestation must be understood together.

If one speaks only of "neither arising nor ceasing," it is easy to imagine the permanent body as a motionless, abstract essence with no relation to sentient beings; but the sources repeatedly state that the Tathāgata can manifest various bodily forms for the sake of liberating beings.

The *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* distinguishes the truly permanent body from the "transformation body" (變化身, nirmāṇa-kāya, transformation body). The birth, growth, eating and drinking, illness, relinquishing of the body, and nirvāṇa that sentient beings see can be manifestations arising in accord with conditions for the purpose of teaching—they do not mean that the dharma body itself undergoes a change from existence to non-existence. The sūtra uses two sets of similes:

- Like a venomous snake shedding its old skin: abandoning a manifested body does not mean the true Tathāgata is annihilated; - Like genuine gold being freely fashioned into various vessels: the vessel's shape can be changed, but the gold does not thereby lose its gold-nature.

The sūtra further says that the Tathāgata can manifest various bodily forms within the "twenty-five realms of existence" (二十五有), appearing to be born, to grow, to enter nirvāṇa, and so on, while the true Tathāgata body remains "permanent, without change or alteration." The key here is not to deny that people genuinely see the Buddha's physical body and his passing into nirvāṇa, but to distinguish "the manifested appearance" from "the Tathāgata's true nature."

The emphasis of the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra* (《大智度論》, *Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom*) is somewhat different. It does not, in the relevant passages, build up theoretical definitions of the dharma body, dharma-nature, and buddha-nature point by point; rather, it focuses on describing "showing" (示):

"尔时，世尊以常身示此三千大千世界一切众生。"

*"At that time, the World-Honored One, with his permanent body, showed himself to all sentient beings in this trichiliocosm."*

This passage immediately follows the Buddha's skillful manifestation of illness. The Buddha manifested a minor ailment so that, in later ages, ill monks could properly request medicine from laypeople, and after their bodies were at ease, continue sitting in meditation and practicing the path. The treatise therefore judges: "佛为方便，非实病也。" ("The Buddha's illness was skillful means, not a real illness.") Subsequently, the Buddha, about to teach the Mahāprajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜, the great perfection of wisdom), entered the samādhirāja-samādhi (三昧王三昧, king of samādhis); light rose from the wheel-mark on the soles of his feet, ascending in sequence to the uṣṇīṣa (cranial protuberance), becoming a vast radiance that illuminated the trichiliocosm and even the buddha-worlds of the ten directions; devas, humans, and non-humans gathered to make offerings.

Therefore, the emphases of the two sources cannot be forcibly compressed into a single identical statement:

- The *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* explains primarily from the side of essence that the permanent body is the Tathāgata's dharma body—permanent, indestructible, neither arising nor ceasing—and distinguishes the true body from the transformation body manifested as skillful means; - The *Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra* passage focuses on the Buddha "showing" the permanent body to all sentient beings, and on the relationship between this manifestation and entering samādhi, emitting light, and the Prajñāpāramitā teaching assembly.

Taken together, the permanent body is neither a transcendence that "never appears at all," nor the claim that "all appearances are themselves eternally unchanging." It explains that the Tathāgata's true nature does not fall into arising and ceasing, and that the Buddha, unconstrained by any single form, can make various manifestations in accordance with the conditions of sentient beings.

This also explains why the sūtra says the permanent body cannot be pointed out by the directions east, west, south, or north. When ordinary people say "body," they invariably think of an object occupying space: it is here, not there; it comes from here, goes toward there. But the *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* uses fire as a simile: fire burns depending on conditions, and when the conditions are exhausted it ceases; one cannot ask whether, after ceasing, it went east or west. This simile first dismantles the attachment that "what arises and ceases must have an entity that comes and goes." The permanent body can neither be understood as a physical body arising and ceasing through causes and conditions, nor be placed in some corner of space.

For this very reason, the sūtra's statement "如來常住，則名為我" ("the Tathāgata is permanent—this is then called self") cannot be smuggled into the ordinary self grasped by ordinary beings as permanent, unitary, independent, and all-controlling. This "self" is linked to "the Tathāgata's dharma body, boundless and unobstructed, neither arising nor ceasing, attaining the eightfold mastery" (八自在, aṣṭa-vaśitā, the eightfold mastery); it is the *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra*'s language for describing the Tathāgata's dharma body in a specific context, not an endorsement of the everyday sense of self or of the eternal-self views of non-Buddhists.

The place of the permanent body on the path of liberation becomes visible here: it does not satisfy the human longing for immortality, but prevents practice from falling into two extremes.

One extreme is attachment to permanence: imagining the Buddha, buddha-nature, or nirvāṇa as an eternally unchanging substantial self.

The other extreme is annihilationism: thinking that since the five aggregates (五陰, pañcaskandha, the five aggregates) are impermanent and the Buddha also manifested entry into nirvāṇa, the final result of practice is to become utterly nothing.

The teaching of the permanent body passes between these two extremes: the psychophysical phenomena produced by causes and conditions are indeed impermanent and cannot be grasped as self; but nirvāṇa cannot therefore be misunderstood as annihilation, nor can the Tathāgata's dharma body be treated as a blank left behind after some conditioned composite finally breaks down. It makes one understand that liberation is not repairing an impermanent self into a permanent self, but transcending the very framework that measures reality by "I was born, I endure, I cease."

A walkthrough in daily life

Suppose you take the subway to work one morning. You slept poorly the night before; your body is tired. Phone notifications keep piling up. Your supervisor sends a message with an ambiguous tone: "Come by the office when you get in." You immediately tense up.

Step one: first look at the "body sustained by mixed food" (雜食身) in ordinary experience.

This body of yours is maintained by conditions: food, sleep, air, temperature, medical care. Without breakfast, blood sugar may shift; with a few hours less sleep, attention and mood are easily disturbed; when the carriage is stuffy, the body grows restless. This is precisely the body that is produced by causes and conditions (因緣, hetu-pratyaya, causes and conditions), requires nourishment, and is subject to fatigue and damage.

The easiest mis-mapping here is: because the *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* says the permanent body is "not sustained by mixed food," one might disparage one's own physical body, or think that practitioners should not eat, sleep, or seek treatment. The permanent body means that the Buddha's dharma body is not equivalent to the ordinary body sustained by mixed food; it does not cancel the conditionality of the ordinary body. Precisely because the body stands dependent on conditions, practitioners should care for it realistically, rather than mistreat it with metaphysical notions.

Step two: see how "the manifested appearance" (所現之相) can be mistaken for the whole of reality.

You see the supervisor's message, and your mind immediately produces a host of scenarios: is something wrong with my work? Are they going to lay people off? Are they dissatisfied with me? Within minutes, these conjectures feel like facts. You are no longer merely facing a message; you are facing an entire future you have manufactured.

Here, the teaching of the permanent body does not tell you to say to yourself: "All of this is the Buddha's transformation body, so I don't need to attend to it." Your present anxiety, speculation, and bodily reactions belong to the conditioned, continuous psychophysical process of an ordinary being; they cannot be passed off as the Buddha's skillful manifestation. The transformation body spoken of in the scriptures is the Buddha's body manifested to liberate sentient beings; not every psychological fluctuation can casually be called a "transformation body."

What is genuinely relevant as a reminder is this: do not take a single appearance before you as the whole of reality. The Buddha manifested illness without his dharma body actually having any defect—this shows that "the seen appearance" and "the true nature" cannot be rashly equated. By analogy in daily life, we can at least learn: a supervisor's sentence is a phenomenon that has appeared, but your interpretation of it is not yet a fact; a partner's momentary silence is a phenomenon, but it need not immediately equal "they don't love me anymore"; a child's single failed exam is a phenomenon, and it certainly does not equal "this child has no future."

This is only an analogy at the level of cognition; it is not to say that ordinary people's silence, anxiety, or mistakes share the same nature as the Buddha's skillful manifestation.

Step three: look at the boundary between "illness" and "skillful means."

In the afternoon you actually develop a fever. If one misreads the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra*'s "佛為方便，非實病也" ("the Buddha's illness was skillful means, not a real illness"), one might think: "The body is fundamentally empty; illness is also a manifestation; I don't need to see a doctor." This is arbitrarily imposing the Buddha's state upon an ordinary person.

The treatise's point is that the Buddha has already transcended unwholesome dharmas, and the minor illness he manifested had a specific pedagogical purpose; it does not say that all people's illnesses are unreal, nor does it negate medicine. On the contrary, the skillful means in that story exists precisely so that ill monks in later ages could legitimately seek medicine and practice the path peacefully. Applied to contemporary life, the correct walkthrough is: my body is a body dependent on conditions; when ill, I should assess the condition, rest, and seek medical care. Caring for the body is a way of reducing obstacles and continuing life and practice; refusing treatment is not the same as relinquishing attachment to the body.

Step four: look at "coming and going" in intimate relationships.

In the evening, a partner leaves the room after an argument. A strong unease rises in you: "They've left; our relationship is over; if the relationship ends, I will have lost my complete self." Our minds are deeply habituated to organizing existence through space and events: a person being here means possession; a person going there means loss; a relationship appearing means I am affirmed; a relationship ending means I am destroyed.

The teaching that the permanent body cannot be pointed out by east, west, south, or north is, first of all, about the Tathāgata's body; it cannot be directly turned into a therapeutic technique for ordinary emotions. But it can illuminate a deeply rooted cognitive habit of ours: imagining everything as a fixed entity that comes, abides, goes, and ceases. If we do not see this habit, we may even imagine liberation as "moving from the painful world to an eternal world," and nirvāṇa as a safe location where nothing is ever lost.

In the scene of a relationship, one can first do a simple thing: acknowledge that the argument is occurring, that the loss is occurring, but do not rush to freeze a present event into "who I am," "who the other person is," "what the future will be forever." This is not claiming to have already realized the permanent body; it is letting the mind produce fewer absolute judgments manufactured from arising-and-ceasing appearances.

Step five: see that "manifesting in accord with conditions" does not mean having no principles.

At work you are a manager; at home you are a partner, a parent, or a child of your parents; facing different people, you use different tones and bear different responsibilities. Someone might therefore interpret the permanent body as: "Everything is just a role anyway; I can play it however I like."

But the Buddha's transformational manifestations are directed toward liberating sentient beings; they are not a way of evading responsibility, still less opportunistic self-packaging. The simile of genuine gold being fashioned into different vessels has its point in the Tathāgata's free manifestation while the true nature remains unchanged; if used as a life analogy, it can only remind us in a limited way: maturity does not require mechanically maintaining the same expression and speech in every situation. Gently soothing a child, clearly pointing out a colleague's problem, patiently accompanying a patient—these can be different modes of response; the standard for evaluating them is whether they reduce harm and increase clarity, not whether they preserve a fixed persona of "I have always been like this."

AI can also provide a limited point of contrast: the same model generates different expressions in response to different prompts, and algorithmic platforms present different content to different users. This can help contemporary people intuitively understand that "the mode of presentation changes with conditions." But the analogy stops there. AI output depends on training data, computational resources, and system conditions—it belongs entirely to conditioned fabrication (有為造作); it can neither attest to the dharma body nor be equated with the Buddha's free manifestation. Whether artificial systems possess consciousness remains a matter of extensive debate in contemporary science and philosophy, and it certainly cannot be used to draw metaphysical conclusions on behalf of the scriptures.

This entire walkthrough ultimately requires distinguishing three things:

- The ordinary body-mind is produced by causes and conditions; it should be observed and cared for realistically, and cannot be passed off as the permanent body; - The Buddha's manifested birth, illness, teaching, and nirvāṇa are skillful means for liberating beings; one cannot infer from them that the dharma body arises and ceases; - Daily life can use the teaching of the permanent body to reflect on our habits of clinging to appearances, to entities, and to coming-and-going; but life analogies are not realization, nor are they the scriptural definitions themselves.

Why contemporary people need it

A deep anxiety of contemporary people is that everything is being renewed, depreciated, and disappearing.

The body ages, professional identities expire, platform popularity declines, relationships change, and digital materials saved over many years may be lost through devices, accounts, or formats. People therefore easily move toward two forms of compensation: either frantically producing something "that will never change," or simply concluding that "everything will disappear, so nothing has meaning."

To the first impulse, the permanent body says: do not process things produced by causes and conditions into eternal idols.

Longevity is not the permanent body; staying continuously online is not the permanent body; being remembered by posterity is not the permanent body. Even if a person's image is preserved forever by algorithms and a digital likeness can be generated endlessly, it still depends on servers, electricity, corporate policies, data formats, and viewers; when conditions change, the presentation changes. It only extends or copies conditioned phenomena; it does not transcend them.

To the second kind of nihilistic feeling, the permanent body says: impermanence is not nothingness, and nirvāṇa is not "nothing at all."

Buddhism points out that dharmas arising from conditions are impermanent in order to loosen grasping, not to pronounce that existence is worthless. Precisely because every condition affects the outcome, a kind response, an honest cutting of losses, a patient act of care truly matter. If everything were fixed and unchanging, practice would have no entry point; precisely because greed, hatred, and delusion (貪瞋癡, rāga-dveṣa-moha, greed, hatred, delusion) arise through conditions, moral discipline, concentration, and wisdom (戒定慧, śīla-samādhi-prajñā, moral discipline, concentration, and wisdom) can change their conditions.

But liberation is not merely making conditions more comfortable. Better sleep, more stable work, and healthier relationships are all worth cherishing, yet they will still change. The path of liberation continues to ask: when these conditions change, why do we immediately feel "I have been destroyed"? Who is it that seizes every arising-and-ceasing experience into "I" and "mine"? What the permanent body safeguards at the far end of the path is a correct understanding of buddhahood and nirvāṇa: practice is not the business of maintaining a self-project of perpetual existence, but the thorough transcendence of the way of establishing a self through arising-and-ceasing dharmas.

It also means that "the Buddha entered nirvāṇa" no longer equals "the Buddha's teaching has lost its source." If the Buddha were only a historical physical body, then after that body's extinction the Buddha would be merely a memorable past event. The *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra*'s emphasis that "the Buddha is permanent" is precisely what shifts the ground of refuge from dependence on a body that will decay to the Tathāgata's dharma body, dharma-nature, and buddha-nature. This does not deny the historical Buddha's manifestation; it says that the Buddha's true meaning cannot be exhausted by the appearance and disappearance of a historical physical body.

Therefore, the permanent body also transforms a practitioner's imagination of "seeing the Buddha." If one insists that the Buddha must stand before one's eyes in some fixed physical appearance, one still confines the Tathāgata to a spatial object; if one thinks the Buddha is invisible, unlocatable, and therefore unrelated to human life, one falls into abstraction. The *Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra*'s depiction of the World-Honored One universally showing the permanent body to sentient beings demonstrates that transcending arising and ceasing does not mean refusing to appear. Wisdom is not purified by leaving sentient beings behind, nor does skillful means occur by departing from reality; the Buddha's manifestation and teaching are precisely the opening of liberation in a way that sentient beings can bear.

From the standpoint of practical sequence, understanding the permanent body brings at least threefold correction:

First, honestly acknowledge the impermanence of the ordinary five aggregates, the sense bases and elements (陰入界), and all conditioned dharmas, without calling one's own body, emotions, views, or identity the permanent body.

Second, through the contemplation of impermanence, loosen the two opposing yet interdependent attachments: "I will exist forever" and "I will be utterly annihilated."

Third, in the context of the Mahāyāna fruition of buddhahood and nirvāṇa, understand that the Tathāgata's dharma body is neither conditioned nor annihilated, while still being able to benefit sentient beings through skillful means.

Without the first layer, the "permanent body" easily becomes a mystical doctrine of immortality; without the second, it is merely doctrinal knowledge that never touches a person's fundamental fears; without the third, the contemplation of impermanence can be misread as a cold philosophy of extinction. Only when the three layers are connected does the permanent body actually stand within the path of liberation, rather than floating on the surface of names and concepts.

Common misinterpretations and clarifications

First, "The permanent body means the Buddha forever possesses a physical body that never ages."

No. The *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* explicitly describes it as "not sustained by mixed food—that is, the dharma body." It is not a material body maintained by food and drink, occupying a fixed location, and extended indefinitely in time. Understanding "permanent" as "an especially long time" still has not left the framework of conditioned phenomena.

Second, "Since the permanent body is the dharma body, the Buddha's historical physical body and his entry into nirvāṇa are both fake."

Not accurate either. "Manifestation" (示現) is not a meaningless deception. The Buddha was born, cultivated, taught, manifested illness, and entered nirvāṇa in bodily forms that sentient beings could encounter; these have genuine function within the conditions of teaching. What is to be negated is the inference, drawn from these appearances, that the Tathāgata's dharma body likewise arises and ceases. The transformation body is not the opposite of the dharma body; it is skillful means for liberating beings. But the two cannot be conflated without distinction into the same level.

Third, "The permanent body means Buddhism affirms an eternal soul."

No. The sūtra explains "permanent" through buddha-nature being without arising, without ceasing, without going, without coming, not belonging to the three times, and not produced by causes and conditions—it does not establish an individual soul that exits the body and migrates elsewhere. Although the *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* says "the Tathāgata is permanent, this is then called self," this "self" is spoken in the specific context of the Tathāgata's dharma body being boundless, unobstructed, neither arising nor ceasing, and attaining mastery; it cannot be transplanted into the claim that there is a permanent sovereign within the ordinary five aggregates.

Fourth, "Since buddha-nature is permanent, my current personality, desires, and self-narrative are the permanent body."

No. A person's personality changes with experience; desires arise depending on objects and habits; self-narratives are shaped by memory, relationships, and social environment. These are all observable conditional processes. The permanence of buddha-nature spoken of in the scriptures cannot be reduced to "the true me has always been like this," and still less can it be used to stamp approval on habitual tendencies.

Fifth, "Since the Tathāgata can manifest illness, an ordinary person's illness is also only a manifestation, so no treatment is needed."

This is a dangerous misapplication. The relevant passage in the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra* refers specifically to the Buddha's skillful manifestation of illness, and its pedagogical effect includes enabling ill monks in later ages to seek medicine and practice the path peacefully. The illness of an ordinary being's condition-dependent body should be cared for realistically and treated when necessary. Claiming that one's own pain is merely a manifestation is often not transcending attachment to the body but denying reality.

Sixth, "Since the permanent body can manifest in accord with conditions, any miraculous sight can be said to be the Buddha appearing."

No such inference is possible. The *Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra* does describe the Buddha entering samādhi, emitting light, universally showing the permanent body, and the assembly gathering to make offerings—but dreams, visual anomalies, online images, or personal intuitions cannot therefore be automatically certified as a scriptural Buddha-body manifestation. The doctrinal function of scriptural narrative and the judgment of truth or falsity in personal experience are two different matters. Toward anomalous experiences, one need be neither dismissive nor hastily sanctifying.

Seventh, "The permanent body is omnipresent, so it is equivalent to some kind of cosmic energy."

"Energy" has a specific, measurable physical meaning in modern science. The dharma body is not a physical object, and there is no scriptural basis for equating it with an energy field. Even using "omnipresence" as an aid to imagination requires caution; declaring outright that science has discovered the dharma body confuses the boundaries between contemplative language, religious doctrine, and empirical science. Science can study religious experience, cognition, and bodily responses, but it cannot by those studies alone prove or disprove the metaphysical significance of the dharma body.

Eighth, "Since the dharma body neither arises nor ceases, conditioned dharmas are not worth attending to."

Quite the opposite. The Buddha's skillful manifestations occur precisely within the concrete situations of sentient beings: illness requires medicine, confusion requires teaching, and different faculties require different approaches. The permanence of the dharma body is not an excuse to flee the world of conditions; it explains that the Buddha is not restricted by any single arising-and-ceasing form and therefore can benefit beings in accordance with conditions. For practitioners, appreciating this should make one more willing to care for concrete suffering, not more indifferent.

Ninth, "The permanent body means that, apart from the Tathāgata, many worldly things are also absolutely permanent."

The *Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra* restricts this severely: "此常法称要是如来，非是余法。" ("This dharma called permanent is precisely the Tathāgata, not any other dharma.") The sūtra also excludes Brahmā (梵天), Īśvara (自在天), the self grasped by the world, primordial matter (性), atoms (微塵), and other non-Buddhist or worldly notions of permanence. One cannot, because something is extremely long-lasting, extremely subtle, or temporarily shows no change, include it in this "permanent dharma."

Tenth, "The Buddha extinguishes the impermanent form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness to obtain the permanent body—this means practice requires loathing and destroying one's own body and mind."

This cannot be narrowed in that way. The sūtra explains, in the context of the Tathāgata's permanent body, that it transcends the impermanent five aggregates; it is not encouraging ordinary beings to violently suppress feelings, memories, volitional formations, or consciousness. For practitioners, the entry point remains the realistic observation of the body-mind's conditions, not grasping the five aggregates as permanent, blissful, self, or pure. If one attempts to destroy body and mind out of self-disgust, that is still "I" in control, and has not transcended attachment to self.

Finally, the essential meaning of the permanent body can be gathered into one sentence: it is not upgrading a perishable "I" into an imperishable "I," but revealing that the Tathāgata's true nature does not fall into arising-and-ceasing, permanence, or annihilation, while never abandoning sentient beings—able to manifest in accord with conditions, teach the dharma, and liberate beings within the world of arising and ceasing.

Thus, one who truly understands the permanent body does not cling more tightly to some eternal image, but becomes clearer in distinguishing the real from the manifested, the dharma body from the physical body, impermanence from annihilation; nor does one flee reality in the name of transcendence, but learns wisdom and skillful means within each concrete set of conditions. The "permanence" of the permanent body is not a rigid refusal of change; the "manifestation" of the permanent body is not the falsity of arbitrary role-playing. The former keeps the fruit of buddhahood from falling into annihilation; the latter keeps the dharma from being separated from sentient beings. Only when both stand together does this concept carry its full weight on the path of liberation.