[Advaita-l] Rainbow Body

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Sat, 7 Jul 2018, KAMESWARARAO MULA via Advaita-l wrote:

> When I was reading Tibetan Buddhist Monk's 
> works I came across a word called 'Rainbow body'. Will it be same as 
> Jivanmukta, i.e being liberated While living. Did Adi shankaracharya 
> talked about this or mentioned in any of his works? Why I was putting 
> this question is that his nirvana from the physical world is by walking 
> to kailasha.  Then how to reach state called breathlessness while 
> living?

The Vedantic version of this Buddhist notion is the pranamaya kosha.  The 
problem for the Buddhists is they do not believe in an imortal atma (they 
use the word to mean only ahamkara) yet they also believe in 
reincarnation.  So they theorize vasanas accrue in the prana.  Vedantins 
don't need to go through states such as breathlessness; knowing that this 
atma is all-encompassing and all-existent is enough.

I don't know what rainbows have to do with any of this which leads me to 
make a suggestion.  Forget about all these pop books and learn Sanskrit. 
It's not easy I will grant you though I think someone with your education 
should be able to get to a usable level within six months.  I understand 
why people like translations.  It seems much easier but if you are a 
serious sadhaka your time is better spent on the originals.  Even good 
translations often fail to fully convey the proper meanings and a lot of 
translations are far from good.  If you end up being confused how much 
time have you actually saved?

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>