On page 76 of White Sail, Thinley Norbu writes:
Ordinary karmic air is like pollution that depletes pure energy and causes heaviness. If karmic air is purified through practice, then immeasurable stainless wisdom sound and clear light Buddhafields pervade. this is Sambhogakaya.
One way to translate the Sanskrit term, Sambhogakaya, is “enjoyment body” Sambhoga = pleasure or enjoyment. Kaya – body or vehicle.
Practice means some kind of spiritual practice that is physical, or at least based in form, through which heavier, more solid forms are dissolved and more subtle, purified forms then open the channels of the body through which chi or prana moves. When the channels are finally purified completely, then, as Norbu says, there is nothing bur “immeasurable stainless wisdom sound and clear light Buddhafields” and so the body radiates light and perfection. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll walk on water,except to say that in the full realization of sambhogakaya, it is much like the characterizations of Jesus when he came to John the Baptist at the river Jordon. John was a mystic and was able to recognize his sambhogakaya. At the time of the Baptism, the descent of the Holy Spirit marked this bhodi, or achievement.
Later, at the transfiguration, we see the achievement of nirmanakaya that was discussed earlier. He held to this nirmanakaya until the crucifixion, which was the transcendence of this material life.
When sambhogakaya arises, an inconceivably vast and blissful body expresses itself. This is that radiance that people experience in the presence of their guru (if he’s for real). It has nothing to do with the physical form, per se, but more to the boundless light that radiates out from them, from the heart and from the eyes – a sense of peace, wisdom and unconditional love. Complete lack of judgment or expectation that gives you a glimpse of the inexpressively vast spaciousness that is your true state.
“Ordinary karmic air” refers to the conceptions, thought forms, and habitual forms that constrain your physical expression (body) and which inevitably lead to suffering. Ordinary karmic air makes the mind and the body restless, agitated and over stimulated, depleting your energy because it takes so much energy to constrain the vibrations of this “air” into these constricted and limited forms that our limited minds think is all there is. As you purify the nadi of the crystallized, obscuring phenomenon that are precipitated from the habitual thought and energy patterns of the karmic air, it releases all the tension, and you finally feel the energy that is available to you when not being used up to maintain un-maintainable forms.
The the true state of being can be sensed… These are the buddhafields… spaces in you that are open and spacious and totally pure, so that the immense, inconceivable opulence of buddha expresses itself, or arises. Each Buddhafield is an inconceivably small yet inconceivably vast and open paradise of unconditional love and bliss.
