Over the Thanksgiving weekend, in addition to spending lots of quality time with friends and family, I also had the opportunity to learn about the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the Rainbow Body.

At first, I scoffed at the story as it was told of people who attain such enlightenment that their body dissipates into the light, becoming a rainbow itself, only to leave behind the dead bodily components like hair and nails. Apparently, there are tales of individuals having achieved Rainbow Body throughout history, the most recent recorded case being Ayu Khandro in 1953.

Ayu was a life-long student of Buddhism. As a child she was drawn to the religion, but was forced into an arranged marriage by her family. An illness befell her just a few years after the wedding. Conveniently enough, a Buddhist teacher told her husband that if she wasn’t allowed to return to her spiritual study, Ayu would die. Thankfully, Ayu had an understanding husband, and Ayu was allowed to go back to her studies. Ayu Khandro survived her illness going on to study and teach for many years, and became well known as a living female Buddha. When she died she was 115 years old.

Ayu’s is a wonderful life story. However, a little digging finds that her corporeal body did not turn into light of all colors at the end of her life. Her body remained for two months before being cremated.

It may be debatable as to whether or not she reached a transcendent mental state. We can’t know what happened to her spirit at the point of her death. Some will say that she simply died. Others will believe that having lived a saint’s life, she went to heaven. Still others will believe that her consciousness transferred to an energetic essence.

Regardless of the belief, she did not physically disappear. In this case, it seems the symbolism of the Rainbow Body became concrete. Whether it was purposeful misrepresentation or a result of human interpretation, the result is that people now take the story literally.

I wonder how often this happens that philosophical symbolism, like this transition from life to leaving the body and joining the rainbow light of Nirvana, becomes real in peoples’ minds. How many stories in the bible or any other historical text are symbolic in nature when written or spoken, but turned to truth somewhere down the road?

We have no way of knowing what comes after death, what lies beyond our universe, or even where our universe came from. If stories like these are meant to give people hope that this life is not all there is, they can’t be all that bad. It’s when they are misrepresented and then mistaken for truth that they stop being as culturally useful.

I don’t necessarily subscribe to Buddhist or any other religious thinking, but I do appreciate the symbolism and the stories. The story of the Rainbow Body has a certain appeal. When you stop to think about it, who wouldn’t want to turn into a rainbow instead of heading off to heaven or hell at the end of life? I find it a particularly satisfying ending.