Dharma, Dharmakaya, Dharmadhatu, Dharmamegha, and Dharmata

[This is an excerpt from my book Radical Dzogchen: The Direct Way to En-Light-enment, which is available in Kindle and paperback at Amazon, and from other book sellers.]

Can you clarify the definitions of Dharma, Dharmakaya, Dharmadhatu, Dharmamegha, and Dharmata?

Dharma, when capitalized, means the True Condition of a thing. When not capitalized, dharma means a thing or existent. Dharma, when capitalized, is also a synonym for Truth Teaching. Hence, the Dharma, or Doctrine, taught by Gautama was about realizing the True Condition of Reality, Nirvana.

The Dharmakaya is the Truth, or Reality, “Body,” or Dimension. It is timeless Awareness, or Mind, the ineffable Self-Existing, Self-Conscious “Substance” underlying and transcending all dharmas, or things. When the Dharmakaya is referred to as the “basic space of phenomena,” it is called the Dharmadhatu. But Dzogchen errs when it conflates the Dharmadhatu with space; for, in reality, the “space” in which phenomena arise is spaceless as well as timeless. Hence, Dharmadhatu is simply the term for the Dharmakaya as spaceless Awareness, the universal Context of all content, or phenomena.

If the Dharmadhatu is spaceless, what is space?

Space is the Akasha, the ether. Whereas the Dharmakaya/Dharmadhatu is uncreated, prior to and outside time and space, the ether, universal space, is created, and, along with time, it began in conjunction with the universe.

Dharmamegha is the Dharmakaya in its “phase” or “form” as “Grace,” Blessing Power poured down on bodhisattvas. It is the “rained-down” descent of the Dharmakaya (as the Sambhogakaya), which, when “full-blown,” “produces” Bodhicitta. Sometimes, the term “Great Dharmamegha” is used to differentiate “full” Dharmamegha from “partial” Dharmamegha, meaning Shaktipat insufficient to yield Buddhahood. Great Dharmamegha is the “Dharma Cloud” bursting and showering a bodhisattva with sufficient Shaktipat to yield Bodhicitta. It is the unobstructed Sambhogakaya uniting with the Nirmanakaya in the Heart-cave, or Tathagatagarbha, so as to “produce” Dharmata, the realization of Mind-as-Thusness, or Being-Consciousness.