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Tulpa


Tulpa is a concept in mysticism of a being or object which is created through sheer spiritual or mental discipline alone. Indian Buddhist texts call it an unreal, illusory, or mind-created apparition. The term comes from Tibetan "to build" or "to construct": Tibetan: སྤྲུལ་པWylie: sprul-pa; Sanskrit: निर्मित nirmitaनिर्माण nirmāṇa. Tulpa is sometimes used synonymously to "magical emanation", "conjured thing", "phantom", and thoughtform. Some modern practitioners use the term to refer to a type of imaginary friend.

One early Buddhist text, the Samaññaphala Sutta lists the ability to create a “mind-made body” (manomāyakāya) as one of the "fruits of the contemplative life". Commentarial texts such as the Patisambhidamagga and the Visuddhimagga state that this mind-made body is how Gautama Buddha and arhats are able to travel into heavenly realms using the continuum of the mindstream (bodhi) and it is also used to explain the multiplication miracle of the Buddha as illustrated in the Divyavadana, in which the Buddha multiplied his emanation body ("nirmita") into countless other bodies which filled the sky. A Buddha or other realized being is able to project many such "nirmitas" simultaneously in an infinite variety of forms, in different realms simultaneously.


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