Are Trikaya levels?

[Viach]

Are Trikaya ontological levels of reality (suchness)? By analogy: subatomic (level), nuclear, atomic, molecular, gene, cellular etc. Dharmakaya is, respectively, the proto (thin) level, and Nirmanakaya - the upper (rough) level?

[Schrödinger’s Yidam]

Ice, water, vapor.

[treehuggingoctopus]

Are Trikaya ontological levels of reality (suchness)? By analogy: subatomic (level), nuclear, atomic, molecular, gene, cellular etc. Dharmakaya is, respectively, the proto (thin) level, and Nirmanakaya - the upper (rough) level?

No they are not. Try to understand them on their own terms, in their own context (nothing else would really constitute understanding in any case).

[TrimePema]

Ice, water, vapor.

hello, i am a block of ice. when i melt, will you be a vapor or a block of ice?

[Schrödinger’s Yidam]

Ice, water, vapor.

hello, i am a block of ice. when i melt, will you be a vapor or a block of ice?

Hmmm. I don’t get what you’re trying to say. Want to try that again?

[TrimePema]

Ice, water, vapor.

hello, i am a block of ice. when i melt, will you be a vapor or a block of ice?

Hmmm. I don’t get what you’re trying to say. Want to try that again?

If you are a block of ice and when I see you I see water does that mean I understand that both aspects, water and ice, are none other than expressions of vapor?

But if I am a block of ice and you are a block of ice and all I see is ice, can I know ice is none other than water and vapor?

[Wayfarer]

Are Trikaya ontological levels of reality (suchness)? By analogy: subatomic (level), nuclear, atomic, molecular, gene, cellular etc. Dharmakaya is, respectively, the proto (thin) level, and Nirmanakaya - the upper (rough) level?

Not at all, not in the least. To see it that way is to look at it through the perspective of a pre-existing ontological attitude, most likely a Western cultural construct. I mean, it was the Greek philosophers - and here I'm by no means dismissing them or being critical of them - who thought about nature in terms of how it is constituted, what it is made from (like Animaxander with 'the boundless' or Thales with 'water' - and so on.)

The orientation of Buddhism is different. It is concerned with the nature of lived reality and the constituents of experience. That is why the 'dharmas' of the abhidharma are not at all like the atoms of the Greek and Indian atomists. Dharmas comprise infinitesimal 'moments of experience' that collectively create the impression of a unified whole (analogously to how the frames of a film generate a moving picture.) But they're nothing like the permanently existing 'uncuttable objects' that atomism posits. In fact Buddhism has always argued against atomism on philosophical grounds.

So Buddhist philosophy is not objective or 'objectifying' in the way that Western philosophy generally tends to be. If anything, it converges more with existentialism and phenomenology.

Speaking of which, have a read of Dan Lusthaus' online essay, What Is, and Isn't, Yogācāra. It contains a lot of useful cross-cultural analysis between Western and Buddhist philosophy. It's not overly long. (Lusthaus' wikipedia entry is here, he's a reputable scholar in Buddhism and phenomenology.)