Rainbow Body and Resurrection

Introduction

All we have to rely on for understanding both the rainbow body and the Resurrection is the testimony of witnesses. There is no modern empirical evidence to demonstrate either. When we take the witnesses' reports on both phenomena and compare them, we can see that they are pointing to two different kind of reported events. The similarities between the two are merely superficial, while the essential messages encoded in each are radically different.

The Rainbow Body

The corporeal body of the realized Dzogchen practitioner ... returns to the primordial energetic essence of the five elemental processes (bare non-conceptualizing awareness, mirror-like awareness, awareness of sameness, investigative awareness, awareness that spontaneously carries out all that has to be done for the welfare of beings) through the bardo of Parinirvana (ultimate extinction). This is then projected as the mindstream through the process of phowa (the ‘transferral of consciousness’ into the constituent Five Pure Lights: space, air, water, fire, earth). The realiser of the rainbow body resides in the timeless, eternal space that is considered a mystery.

In other words, the rainbow body is the physical body in the process of decomposing into a spiritual body. It is a process that is both unique and rare, reserved to accomplished practioners of a particular sect of Buddhism. After the process of decomposing there are no reports of a deceased practitioner appearing bodily or physically to others over distances of time or space.

The Resurrection

The Resurrection is the overcoming of death by Jesus who undergoes death (Mt 27:54; Mk 15:39; Lk 23:47) and rises out of death (Lk 24:4-7; Mk 16:9: Mt 28:5-7). He bears the wounds of his crucifixion in his resurrected body (Lk 24:39f; Jn 20:20). People can physically touch the resurrected Jesus (Lk 24:39b; Jn 20:17), Thomas puts his fingers in the nail and spear wounds (Jn 20:27). The resurrected Jesus eats cooked fish in front of his apostles (Lk 24: 42f), and can handle physical things, as witnessed when he is seen preparing a meal in Galilee where he went to meet his disciples (Jn 21:9-14). Finally the Resurrected Jesus appears over the distances of time and space (1 Cor 15:5-8).

Comparing the Reports

Both the rainbow body teaching and the Resurrection claim a transformation for human beings. But the types of transformation in each tradition are not differences of degree, but differences of kind. The two types of transformations are more dissimilar than similar. The rainbow body is a kind of rare physical decomposition, revealing that the physical world is illusory and the spiritual world is real. The result is that the rainbow body teaching spots a previously unacknowledged dualism in Buddhism. The Resurrection makes no such distinction. It is a physical and bodily resurrection, not a transformed spiritual body as with the rainbow body. The physical reality of Jesus is as real as his Spirit which gains the term "Holy Spirit". Physical and spiritual are simply referential distinctions that have no clear separation in reality, similar to left and right, up and down. In other words, the Resurrection illuminates that physical and spiritual are non-dual.

The rainbow body points to a spiritual realm of which the physical is only a component and the spiritual is the foundational. The Resurrection points to a new creation, as claimed by the apostolic witnesses (1 Cor 15:20-23). It is a life in which physical and spiritual are not-two, a non-duality that even death cannot separate. The Easter troparion in the orthodox liturgy both proclaims and summarizes the significance of the Resurrection: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down Death by death, and to those in the tombs bestowing life.

Conclusion

There is little doubt that the rainbow body reports can appeal to the 21st century sophisticated mind, a product of the rationalist Enlightenment movement. But we shouldn't take this appeal too seriously. It is little more than the arrogance of the living, a pitfall for every generation of humans since, and probably before, the Enlightenment. Christian orthodoxy has consistently warned against a type of creeping rationalism that leads down a path that dehumanizes us, obscuring the mystery of being human. A sophisticated rational understanding is as inadequate as a pre-analytical mythical understanding when considering the reality embodied and encoded in Christianity. Just as the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) is a miracle of creation, so too the Resurrection is a miracle of a new creation. Neither miracles can be penetrated by the human mind. But both can be accepted, and in the acceptance help us make sense of what we are called to live and to help us live accordingly.