Thich Nhat Hanh says that when the Buddha was dying, he told his followers not to despair, that they still would be able to encounter his dharma body. I suppose this is one way of conceptualizing the presence of my mom's spirit that I so often feel.
I want to unpack it a bit, though. Dharma is, per Wikipedia (I know, but go with me), "that which upholds, supports or maintains the regulatory order of the universe." Based on the distinction that the Buddha draws between the physical body and the dharma body, we can infer that the latter is not corporeal. It must be what many of us would think of as spiritual, or the soul itself. But in the West, we don't have this added dimension of support for the universe.
I'm thinking of the dharma body now as the universe's scaffolding - everyone's soul/true self pitching in like the turtles in the Native American legend, each playing his or her own part in holding up the universe - or repairing it, if we want to turn to my originally chosen spiritual tradition. (I'll get to shul again one of these days, I swear). I love the way different faith and belief traditions dovetail; my mom's memorial will be a testament to that, as it fit with her beliefs, too.
Though I feel so disparate, not unified, scattered in my grief, I also know that I am being held together by certain things, and one of those is my mother's dharma body and the force of her love.
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