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One time, a monk asked Chan master Shishuang Qingzhu (807–888), "I heard that buddha-nature is like space; is that correct?" Shishuang replied, "It's present when you sleep; absent when you sit." Similarly, when asked by a monk whether a dog has buddhanature or not, Chan master Zhaozhou Congshen (778–897) said, "No!" These two examples are like a fish asking another fish, "I heard that fish swim in water. Is that correct? There are such things as fish and water, right?" Ridiculous questions deserve ridiculous answers.
Buddhanature is our true nature, already free from self (Skt. ''atman''), vexations (Skt. ''klesas''), and delusions (Skt. ''avidya''). The personal experience of this freedom is called awakening (Skt. ''bodhi''). Mahayana scriptures have already clarified that buddhanature is present everywhere, in all beings, and have provided many metaphors for it (e.g., spacious and vast like the sky or ocean)—so why ask?
We ask because we are trapped in our narrow, myopic perceptions, seeing only good and bad, joy and sorrow, right and wrong, success and failure, having and lacking, fair and unfair, self and other. The self, or the "me, I, mine," come into being when we are caught up with these perceptions. This is delusion—it vanishes when we personally experience the emptiness of these perceptions—when we see through the veil of these constructs. This is wisdom, awakening. A fish doesn't have to imagine the "water" in swimming—it just swims. It's through swimming that the water is experienced. The important thing is to keep swimming. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
Buddha Shakyamuni's first impressions after enlightenment move me every time:
:This peace so profound-this unpolluted, uncreated clear light-this nectar-like dharma I have found: to whomever I may teach it, it would remain enigmatic. So I will stay silent, keeping to the forest. (''Lalitavistara'', Sutra of the Panoramic Play)
What wonder is this that can enchant a mind so unbound into hushed humility?
Hearing the verse as the Buddha's ''doha'', his hymn of realizing buddhanature, is my touchstone for discerning buddhanature-first in his teachings, then my own experience.
To begin, why might the Buddha choose not to teach? Explicit statements about buddhanature are tricky. The unabashed Tibetan ''Shentong'' (Empty of All Else) philosophy; infamous for not shying away from assertion, speaks of "sublime peace," a mystical synergy beyond false binaries of permanent/impermanent, suffering/bliss, self/nonself. An enigma, to be sure. And readily misconstrued. In the reaches of the inexpressible, understanding dawns by degrees.
Sometimes silence is more articulate. The Buddha famously leaves certain questions unanswered. Nor does he mention clear light, enigmas, or buddhanature in his first public discourse, only weeks after invoking his doha. Instead, the Four Truths meet us in what we know all too well: life's sticky sorrow, even amidst its sweetness. The Buddha exhorts us to recognize dukkha, eradicate its origin, and actualize its cessation by relying on the path. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
A member of our incarcerated sangha once mentioned that our presence "smelled like freedom." It brought to mind the following quote from Nichiren Shonin (1222–1282):
:A singing bird in a cage attracts uncaged birds, and the sight of these uncaged birds will make the caged bird want to be free. Likewise, the chanting of ''Odaimoku'' will bring out the Buddha-nature within ourselves.
His comment was an opening to further explore the concept of buddhanature: What was it ''really''? I had learned that buddhanature meant that we all have the seed of buddha within, that we possess the wisdom that illuminates that seed, and that we engage in. the practice that manifests that wisdom. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
Buddhism, with its manifold jeweled nets of cause and effect and co-dependent arisings, naturally has various articulations of the concept of buddhanature. Shinnyo-en traces its idea of buddhanature through various threads of Mahayana Buddhism, which comprises a large number of sutras and commentaries. The idea that anyone has the potential to become a buddha is a prominent theme found amongst the schools of Mahayana Buddhism. As it is expressed in a key phrase found in the Mahayana ''Mahaparinirvana Sutra'', often referred to as the ''Nirvana Sutra'': "All sentient beings have a buddha-nature."
In Sanskrit, the language in which the ''Mahaparinirvana Sutra'' was most likely first written, the word for buddhanature is ''buddha-dhatu''. "Dhatu" conveys a sense of essence or quality, indicating that "buddhaness" is the true essence or quality of all beings, and as a result, all beings possess the possibility of becoming a buddha. It is a very optimistic approach to the nature of humanity. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
Sunrays slanted through the overcast sky, and Ganges River dolphins swam playfully beside us. From time to time, the shiny gray bulk of a hippopotamus emerged from the water's surface. It was the winter of 1999, and the great Tibetan Buddhist master, Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche (1913-2015), was conducting his annual fish release. I was part of a team of twelve of Rinpoche's disciples who worked for ten days to release 94,600 pounds of live fish into the mouth of the Ganges River near Kolkata. The fish were mostly farmed silver carp destined for fish markets across West Bengal,
where they would face gruesome, untimely deaths.
Each day, twenty trucks arrived in the parking lot. The fish were weighed, dumped into fifty-five-gallon plastic buckets, and hauled on bicycle-drawn wagons to the top of the steps of the Barrackpore Gandhi Ghat, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi. From there, we carried the sloshing buckets down the steps, past an assortment of Hindu devotees bathing in the holy Ganges River, and heaved the buckets onto wooden boats. We added a splash of dharma medicine to each bucket and clamped the lids down to keep the frenzied, thrashing fish from leaping out. "Chalo! Chalo!" we shouted to the boatmen, "''Let's go!''"
All day long, they motored us out to the middle of the river, where Rinpoche sat on an anchored boat reciting aspiration prayers and blowing a white conch shell. As the haunting sound of the Dharma resounded across the water, awakening all beings from the sleep of ignorance, we tipped the fish over the sides of the boats to freedom. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
Mind is originally free from all fixed reference points—in Zen it is said that "mind cannot be grasped." At the same time, mind is luminously clear and aware—as one saying goes, "everyone is radiant light, but when looked for it can't be found." This empty clarity of mind is naturally and effortlessly compassionate when facing suffering, since self and other are nondual. The ungraspable, luminous, compassionate nature of ordinary awareness itself is called buddhanature.
One time during sesshin, an intensive Zen retreat, a sense of openness and ease arose, and I went to check it out with my teacher, Tenshin Anderson Roshi. I asked, "What if there's some peace in the midst of all this suffering?" He asked me to tell him about the experience, which I did. We were walking slowly down the path during one of the breaks. He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked, and he asked, "Can anything touch it?"
The question surprised me, and I began to investigate. If an experience is any kind of object known by mind, it can be touched by ideas of good and bad, it can be grasped or rejected, it will arise and cease. Awareness itself, the empty space of buddhanature, cannot be touched by anything since it is not an experience that comes and goes. The unchanging empty space of awareness can intimately host all experiences, but is not itself affected by any of them. By looking deeply into this question as the retreat continued, confidence in the untouchable peace of ever-present buddhanature arose. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
This paper discusses syntheses forged in Tibet among the doctrines of Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, and buddha-nature (''tathāgatagarbha''). Buddha-nature is a distinctively Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrine, taking a place along side of the Yogācāra doctrine of the basic consciousness (''ālayavijñāna'') and the universal emptiness (''śūnyatā'') of Madhyamaka. As a fundamental ground of reality, buddha-nature comes to be identified with a positive side of emptiness (in the case of Madhyamaka) and is assimilated with the basic consciousness (in the case of Yogācāra) as well. As the intrinsic purity of mind, buddha-nature also plays a causal role as the potential for complete awakening.
Buddha-nature comes to shape a Madhyamaka interpretation of emptiness in a positive light in a way that parallels its place in a Yogācāra interpretation (as a positive foundation of mind and reality). Buddha-nature supplements a Yogācāra theory of mind and reality by offering a positive alternative to a theory of consciousness that otherwise functions simply as the distorted cognitive structure of suffering. It thus is not only the potential for an awakened mind, but the cognitive content of awakening, too.
In Tibet we see the interpretation of buddha-nature converge with Mahāyāna doctrines in structurally parallel ways. Paired with buddha-nature, the doctrine of emptiness in Madhyamaka pivots from a “self-empty” lack of intrinsic nature to an “other-empty,” pure ground that remains. In narratives of disclosure characteristic of the doctrine of buddha-nature, we also see parallel shifts in the foundations of Yogācāra, as grounds of distortion like the basic consciousness, the dependent nature, and self-awareness are reinscribed into a causal story that takes place within a pure, gnostic ground. +
Although Tsongkhapa did not author a commentary on the ''Ultimate Continuum'', his main student and successor at his main seat of Ganden, Gyaltsap Je Darma Rinchen, composed an elaborate commentary on the ''Ultimate Continuum''. The commentary, filling 230 folios, was composed at Nenying temple at the request of Gungru Gyaltsen Zangpo and others after Gyaltsap had received teachings on it from both Rendawa and Tsongkha. One Tagtsel Kharkhap Dhondup Kunga served as the scribe for this voluminous and meticulous commentary, in which Gyaltsap carries out a relentless critique of the theory that buddha-nature is inherently endowed with qualities of the Buddha or that it is an absolute eternal reality empty only of other adventitious conventional phenomena. +
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The realization of one's buddhanature is made possible only through an awakening to our limitations and inherent human imperfections. This paradoxical relationship is central to understanding the experience of awakening taught by Shinran Shonin ( 1173–1263 ), founder of Jodo Shinshu, or Shin Buddhism, the largest school of Buddhism in Japan and one of the oldest in America.
Shinran famously declared in the ''Tannisho'' (''A Record in Lament of Divergences'') that "hell is decidedly my abode whatever I do." This brutally honest assessment of himself and the human condition is a hallmark of Shrinran's thought; he posits awakening as a twofold awareness of one's own karmic evil (lack of buddhanature within oneself) and the working of the Buddha's great compassion, which embraces unconditionally enabling our enlightenment. Shinran's realization of his true inner self, which he perceived to be the exact opposite of an enlightened being, leads to his humbling confession of how he does not see the existence of buddhanature within himself, and yet, simultaneously awakens him to the activity of Amida Buddha's Primal Vow, which is inconceivably directed to him. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/hope-for-the-hopeless/ Read more here]) +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
The question of ever-present change must be as old as the discipline of philosophy itself. The notion of constant flux attributed to Heraclitus (c. 535-c. 475 BC) and known as "''panta rhei''" was largely forgotten in the later development of Greek thought, but in India the notion of universal flux developed from around the sixth century BCE onward and inspired different philosophical systems, among them the Buddhist philosophy.
The Buddha’s statement "all that is conditioned[1] is impermanent!"[2] is known as one of The "Four Seals," the cornerstone of all Buddhist traditions. In Buddhist logic this seal became the basis for the equation: "Whatever is conditioned is impermanent and whatever is impermanent is conditioned. Whatever is not conditioned is not impermanent and whatever is not impermanent is not conditioned."
In Buddhism, the doctrine of the impermanence of conditioned entities is interwoven with the doctrine of causality. The fact that an entity is conditioned by previous causes and moments makes it subject to impermanence. The doctrine of impermanence was further refined into the doctrine of momentariness. This doctrine postulates a process of momentary arising and cessation on the micro level that happens so fast that it is perceived as a continuity.[3]
The following presentation will highlight different definitions and classifications of what the terms ''conditioned'' and ''impermanent'' might mean for a number of selected Tibetan Buddhist masters in their interpretations of the true nature of the mind. Their literary works are invariably based, directly or indirectly, upon Indian Buddhist ''śāstras'' translated into Tibetan.
<h5>Notes</h5>
#S. ''saṃskṛta'', T. ''<i>’</i>du byas'' or ''<i>’</i>du byed''.
#S. ''anitya'', T. ''mi rtag pa''.
#See Stcherbatsky’s ''Buddhist Logic'', von Rospatt’s ''The Buddhist Doctrine of Momentariness'', and Dreyfus’s ''Recognizing Reality'' for a detailed treatment of the Buddhist notions of impermanence and momentariness.
According to traditional biographies, Gautama Buddha had a special relationship with trees. He was born among trees in Lumbini Grove, when his mother went into premature labor. As a child, while sitting under a tree and watching his father plow a field as part of a religious ceremony, he naturally fell into a meditative trance. Later, when he left home on his spiritual quest, he went into the forest, where he studied with two teachers, later engaged in ascetic practices, and then meditated by himself under a tree, where he awakened. Afterward he continued to spend most of his time outdoors, often teaching under trees and eventually dying between two trees.<br> Unsurprisingly, the Buddha often expressed his appreciation of trees and other plants. According to one story in the Vinaya monastic code, a tree spirit appeared to him and complained that a monk had chopped down its tree. In response, the Buddha prohibited monastics from damaging trees or bushes, including cutting off limbs, picking flowers, or even plucking green leaves. One wonders what he would say about our casual destruction of whole ecosystems today.<br> We may also wonder about the larger pattern: why religious founders so often experience their spiritual transformation by leaving human society and going into the wilderness by themselves. Following his baptism, Jesus went into the desert, where he fasted for forty days and nights. Mohammed's revelations occurred when he retreated into a cave, where the archangel Gabriel appeared to him. The ''Khaggavisana Sutta'' (Rhinoceros Horn Sutra), one of the earliest in the
Pali canon, encourages monks to wander alone in the forest, like a rhinoceros. Milarepa lived and practiced in a cave by himself for many years, as did many Tibetan yogis after him. Today, in contrast, most of us meditate inside buildings with screened windows, which insulate us from insects, the hot sun, and chilling winds. There are many advantages to this, of course, but is something significant also lost?<br> Although we normally relate to nature in a utilitarian way, the natural world is an interdependent community of living beings that invites us into a different kind of relationship. The implication is that withdrawing into it, especially by oneself, can disrupt our usual ways of seeing and open us up to an alternative experience. Does that also point to why we enjoy being in nature so much? We find it healing, even when we don't understand why or how, but clearly it has something to do with the fact that the natural world offers us a temporary escape from our instrumentalized lives. (Read the entire article [https://rk-world.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DW18_7-12.pdf here].)
The concept of buddhanature (''bussho''), as interchangeable with ''tathagatagarbha'' (womb or embryo of ''tathagata''; "one who has thus come," an epithet of the Buddha), arose in Mahayana Buddhism after Nagarjuna (second to third century CE) and before Vasubandhu (fourth to fifth century CE). Sutras from this period are considered middle Mahayana sutras. Before the development of the Mahayana, people generally did not believe they could become buddhas, but some Mahayana Buddhists began to teach that any one of us can become a bodhisattva—a buddha-to-be—if we arouse ''bodhicitta'' (awakening mind), take bodhisattva vows, receive bodhisattva precepts, and practice the six paramitas (generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and wisdom).
However, probably because they observed themselves and the conditions of the samsaric world—in which so many are self-centered, competitive, in conflict, and have hatred for each other—they needed to instill some faith that buddhahood was within reach. Even if the people of the world were deluded, their minds defiled with the three poisons, they could eventually reach buddhahood if they continued to practice the Buddha's teachings.
They developed the concept of buddhanature—that is, the pure undefiled mind as the essential self-nature, hidden and covered as it may be thanks to our deluded, discriminative minds. According to those middle Mahayana sutras, buddhanature is permanent, without change, whether in deluded living beings or in enlightened buddhas. It continues to exist, life after life, until buddhahood is reached, no matter how long it might take. Some people criticized this theory, arguing that buddhanature sounded like ''atman,'' the permanent self that Shakyamuni had negated.
In India, others argued that all living beings have buddhanature, or that some do, but that especially deluded people, called ''icchantika'', lacked it. In the later part of the ''Nirvana Sutra'' (second century CE), it is said that all living beings, without exception, have buddhanature. This idea heavily influenced almost all traditions of Chinese Buddhism. Some Chinese Buddhists, including the ancestors of today’s Zen practitioners, further maintained that not only sentient beings but also nonsentient beings, have buddhanature. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/how-insentient-beings-expound-dharma/ Read more here])
No abstract given. Below are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>A monk asked Zhaozhou: ‘‘Does a dog have buddha-nature?’’ Zhaozhou replied: ‘‘No.’’<br><br>
This pithy exchange between an unidentified Buddhist monk and the Tang dynasty Chan master Zhaozhou Congshen (778–897) is perhaps the best-known example of a Chan ''gong’an'', or ‘"public case." Although the passage occurs in a collection of Zhaozhou's sayings supposedly compiled by his disciples, its notoriety is due to a Song dynasty master, Wumen Huikai (1183–1260), who placed this exchange at the beginning of his famous ''gong’an'' collection, ''Gateless Barrier of the Chan Tradition'' (''Chanzong wumen guan'', 1228).[1] Wumen’s compilation, consisting of forty-four such exchanges and anecdotes accompanied by Wumen’s comments, is one of the most important works of Chan literature. And as the first case in Wumen’s collection, "Zhaozhou’s dog" became the single most influential ''gong’an'' in the Chinese Chan, Korean Son, and Japanese Zen traditions. It is often the first and sometimes the only ''gong’an'' assigned to monks, and many traditional commentators claim, following Wumen’s lead, that this single ''gong’an'' holds the key to all others.<br> Wumen’s work was neither the earliest nor the most comprehensive compilation of Chan cases. Indeed, the ''Gateless Barrier'' is relatively short and straightforward in comparison to two earlier collections, the ''Blue Cliff Record of Chan Master Foguo Yuanwu'' (''Foguo Yuanwu Chanshi Biyan lu''), published in 1128, and the ''Congrong Hermitage Record of the Commentaries by Old Wansong on the Case and Verse [Collection] by Reverend Jue of Tiantong [Mountain]'' (''Wansong laoren pingzhang Tiantong Jue heshang songgu Congrongan lu''), published in 1224. The cases that
make up these texts are each based on an individual anecdote, verbal exchange, or quandary known as the ''benze'' (original edict), to which has been added comments in prose and verse brushed by later masters. Whereas the ''Gateless Barrier'' contains forty-four such anecdotes accompanied by a brief comment and verse by Wumen, the ''Blue Cliff Record'' and ''Congrong Hermitage Record'' each contain one hundred cases including several layers of appended judgments, verses, and interlinear glosses. (The same "original edict" may appear in two or more collections, but the exegesis will invariably differ. More will be said about the structure of these
collections below.) Many more ''gong’an'' collections gained currency in China, and the Chan tradition would come to speak of seventeen hundred authoritative cases (although this number was probably not meant to be taken literally). By the end of the Song the ''gong’an'' had assumed a central role in the ideological, literary, and institutional identity of the Chan school.<br> Popular books on Chan and Zen Buddhism present ''gong’an'' as intentionally incoherent or meaningless. They are, it is claimed, illogical paradoxes or unsolvable riddles intended to frustrate and short-circuit the intellect in order to quell
thought and bring the practitioner to enlightenment. This understanding of ''gong’an'' is allied with a view of Chan as an iconoclastic and anti-intellectual tradition that rejects scripture, doctrine, philosophy, and indeed all forms of conceptual understanding in favor of unmediated or "pure" experience. ''Gong’an'' are intended, according to this view, not to communicate ideas so much as to induce a transformative experience. To grasp at the literal meaning of a Chan case is to
miss its point.<br> Recently scholars have begun to question the instrumental view of Chan that underlies this approach to Chan cases, arguing that it is based on a misreading of the historical and ethnographic record.[2] Chan ranks among the most ritualistic forms of Buddhist monasticism, and a master’s enlightenment is constituted within a prescribed set of institutional and ritual forms.[3] Moreover, the notion that Chan is designed to induce a nonconceptual or pure experience can be traced in part to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese intellectuals such as D. T. Suzuki and Nishida Kitarō, who were culling from Western sources, notably William James.[4] The notion that Chan is anti-intellectual and repudiates "words and letters" is belied by the fact that the Chan tradition produced the largest literary corpus of any Buddhist school in East Asia.[5] This corpus consists in large part of "recorded sayings" (''yulu'') and "records of the transmission of the flame" (''chuandenglu'') texts—texts recounting the careers and teachings of past patriarchs from which the original edicts were drawn.<br> Scholars now appreciate that Chan is more complex than early apologists and enthusiasts cared to admit; it is no longer possible to reduce Chan practice and Chan literature to a mere means intended to engender a singular and ineffable
spiritual experience. Accordingly, scholars of Chan ''gong’an'' have begun to attend to the institutional context and literary history of the genre,[6] and one scholar has devoted an entire monograph to the folkloric themes that appear in a single case.[7] Be that as it may, little progress has been made in deciphering the doctrinal and exegetical intent of Chan ''gong’an''; it would appear that scholars remain reluctant to treat ''gong’an'' as a form of exegesis at all. This reluctance may be due to the enduring legacy of an earlier apologetic mystification of the ''gong’an'' literature. The primary objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that such reluctance is misguided and that it is indeed possible to recover the original meaning and doctrinal purport of at least some of the cases. The task is not easy, however, as the cases are philosophically subtle and hermeneutically sophisticated, and the authors of the collections delighted in obscure allusions, clever puns, and deft wordplay. (Sharf, "How to Think with Chan ''Gong’an''," 205–7)<br><br>
<h5>Notes</h5>
My thanks to Charlotte Furth and Elizabeth Horton Sharf for their comments and
suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter and to Ling Hon Lam for his meticulous
editorial attention.<br>
#T 2005:48.292c20–24. The exchange is also featured in case no. 18 of the ''Wansong Laoren pingzhang Tiantong Jue heshang songgu Congrongan lu'', T 2004:48.238b21–39a28. Textual details concerning Zhaozhou’s recorded sayings (''Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi yulu'') will be found below.
#Faure, ''The Rhetoric of Immediacy'' and ''Chan Insights and Oversights''; Foulk, "Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice"; Sharf, "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism," "Whose Zen?" and "Experience."
#Foulk and Sharf, "On the Ritual Use"; Sharf, "Ritual."
#Sharf, "Whose Zen?"
#On the sometimes controversial place of literary endeavors in the Song monastic institution, see esp. Gimello, "Mārga and Culture"; and Keyworth, "Transmitting the Lamp," 281–324.
#See esp. Heine and Wright, eds., ''The Kōan''.
#Heine, ''Shifting Shape''.
Articles/Hōshōron miroku chosaku setsu no kagen nendai saikō: Tonkō bonbun dankan IOL Khot S 5 to Pelliot 2740 no setsugō fukugen to nendai suitei +
It was reported by H. W. Bailey that a Khotanese-hybrid Sanskrit manuscript fragment from Dunhuang, IOL Khot S5 (abbr. S5) verso side, quotes verses from the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' (abbr. RGV) and attributes them to Maitreya. S5 is the earliest text hitherto known that ascribes the authorship of the RGV to Maitreya. While Bailey dates the S5 verso side to the period between the end of the 8th century and the 11th century, we can now further specify the date of composition as some time between the first half of the 9th century and the 11th century. Our rationale for this more specific ''terminus post quem'' is that the Chinese version of the ''Aparimitāyurjñānadhāraṇī'' (無量寿宗要経) written on the recto side of S5 is likely one of the numerous copies of the sūtra produced during (or shortly after) the reign of king Khri gtsug lde btsan, that is, during the first half of the 9th century. This fact is attested by two witnesses: Pelliot Tibétain 999 and the colophon of S5 recto side. There is also another Dunhuang Sanskrit fragment (Pelliot Chinois 2740) which quotes the RGV, and it is identified as the missing part of S5: the text of Pelliot 2740 recto precisely supplies the missing portion of S5 recto, and the two fragments are very similar in terms of size, material, and scripts. (Source: [https://www.academia.edu/5417315/_Dating_the_Earliest_Source_that_Attributes_the_Ratnagotravibh%C4%81ga_to_Maitreya_Sanskrit_Fragments_IOL_Khot_S_5_and_Pelliot_2740_from_Dunhuang_Indogaku_Bukkyogaku_Kenkyu_60-2_2012_._pp._168-174_in_Japanese_ Academia.edu]) +
I
No abstract given. Here is the first relevant paragraph: <br><br>
I have been able to trace a hitherto unidentified quotation in the ''Ratnagotravibhāga(vrtti)'' (''RGV(V)'') to the ''Tathāgatagarbhasūtra'' (''TGS''). The sentence in question occurs in the ''RGV(V)'' in the context of the explanation of the three ''svabhāvas'' of the ''dhātu'', viz., ''dharmakāya'', ''tathatā'' and ''gotra'', the three key terms of verses 1.27-28, which constitute the central section of the ''RGVV''. The quotation is part of the commentary on the third aspect, i.e., ''gotra'', and is placed after the last of the three interpretations of the compound ''tathāgatagarbha''. In this context the ''dhātu'' of living beings, i.e., their buddha essence, has
just been declared to mean "cause" (''hetu'').<br><br>
[http://iriab.soka.ac.jp/publication/aririab.html Read the rest of this article in Vol. 3 of the Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology . . .] +
Articles/In Defense of His Guru: Dratsepa's Rebuttal to the Challenges Articulated by the Proponents of the Other-Emptiness Doctrine +
The buddha-nature literature has a significant place within the Indian Mahāyāna tradition and Tibetan Buddhism. While it is usually included in the so-called Last Wheel of the Buddha’s teachings, many Tibetan thinkers began to cast doubts about the textual significance of buddha-nature discourse in fourteenth century Tibet. In this article, I will examine one particular case where there is apparent tension between multiple Tibetan masters over the importance of buddhanature teachings. This paper primarily analyzes Dratsepa’s commentary to the ''Ornament'' (''mdzes rgyan'') written by his teacher, Buton. Dratsepa construes the ''Ornament'' as a work critiquing Dolpopa’s interpretation of the buddha-nature literature. He levels a barrage of criticisms against Dolpopa by referring to Indian śāstras and sūtras that are equally important to both of them, and also by tracing his own assessment of the tathāgata-essence teachings to early Tibetan scholars. In contradistinction to Dolpopa’s claims, Dratsepa offers several nuanced readings of the buddha-nature literature and complicates the notion of what it means to have tathāgata-essence, what a definitive or provisional meaning entails, and the relationship between the Middle Wheel and the Last Wheel teachings. In brief, Dratsepa’s text sheds light on one of the earliest discourses on the tension between self-emptiness and other-emptiness presentations. +
Articles/Is "Buddha-Nature" Buddhist? Doctrinal Tensions in the Srimala Sutra: An Early Tathagatagarbha Text +
Recent controversies in Japanese Buddhist scholarship have focused upon the Mahayana notion of a "Buddha nature" within all sentient beings and whether or not the concept is compatible with traditional Buddhist teachings such as ''anātman'' (no-abiding-self). This controversy is not only relevant to Far Eastern Buddhism, for which the notion of a Buddha-nature is a central doctrinal theme, but also for the roots of this tradition in those Indian Mahāyāna ''sūtras'' which utilised the notion of ''tathāgatagarbha'' (Buddha-embryo or Buddha womb). One of the earliest Buddhist texts to discuss this notion is the ''Queen Śrīmālā Sūtra'' (''Śrīmālādevīsūtra''), which appears to display a transitional and revisionist attitude towards traditional Mahāyāna doctrines such as emptiness (''śūnyatā'') and no-abiding-self (''anātman''). These and related issues are examined as they occur in the ''Śrīmālā Sūtra'' and as they might relate to the issue of the place of Buddha-nature thought within the Buddhist tradition. Finally some concluding remarks are made about the quest for "true" Buddhism. +
Modern exponents of mindfulness meditation promote the therapeutic effects of “bare attention”—a sort of non-judgmental, non-discursive attending to the moment-to-moment flow of consciousness. This approach to Buddhist meditation can be traced to Burmese Buddhist reform movements of the first half of the 20th century, and is arguably at odds with more traditional Theravāda Buddhist doctrine and meditative practices. But the cultivation of present-centered awareness is not without precedent in Buddhist history; similar innovations arose in medieval Chinese Zen (Chan) and Tibetan Dzogchen. These movements have several things in common. In each case the reforms were, in part, attempts to render Buddhist practice and insight accessible to laypersons unfamiliar with Buddhist philosophy and/or unwilling to adopt a renunciatory lifestyle. In addition, these movements all promised astonishingly quick results. And finally, the innovations in practice were met with suspicion and criticism from traditional Buddhist quarters. Those interested in the therapeutic effects of mindfulness and bare attention are often not aware of the existence, much less the content, of the controversies surrounding these practices in Asian Buddhist history. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>In this chapter I examine some medieval Buddhist doctrines that, at least on the surface, seem similarly strange and implausible. Indeed, some of the Buddhist notions to be examined below were perplexing to audiences in their own day, much as discussions of brain transplants are perplexing to us today. On the Indian side, I will begin with the notion of ''nirodha-samāpatti'', a meditative state akin to a vegetative coma in which all consciousness has ceased. I will then turn to a class of beings known as “beings without conception” (''asaṃjñika-sattvāḥ''), denizens of a celestial realm who are devoid of sentience, thought, and consciousness. In both cases, an insentient state seems to be followed by (or gives rise to) a sentient state, which poses serious challenges to the classical Buddhist understanding of karma. On the Chinese side, we will consider the debate over the buddha-nature of insentient objects—can an insentient thing such as a wall or roof tile attain buddhahood and preach the dharma? This doctrine too could be (and was) seen as a threat to the coherence of Buddhist teachings.<br> Modern scholars tend to approach such doctrines as the products of intelligent but misguided scholastics struggling to make sense of the universe, all the while hobbled by the dictates of tradition, scripture, and a prescientific understanding of the cosmos. They are the proverbial schoolmen calculating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But I would suggest another perspective. Such theories, I argue, serve as frames of reference for pondering issues of personal identity, ethical responsibility, sentience, and death. Given that we ourselves are still far from clarity on these issues, and given that we too devise fanciful thought experiments to help gain a conceptual toehold, perhaps it is time to look afresh at what the Buddhists might have been up to.[11] (Sharf, preamble, 144–45)
<h5>Notes</h5>
11. For an articulate defense of Buddhist scholasticism, along different lines, see Paul John Griffiths, “Scholasticism: The Possible Recovery of an Intellectual Practice,” in ''Scholasticism: Cross-Cultural and Comparative Perspectives'', ed. José Ignacio Cabezón (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 201–35.
There have been several attempts of late to read Yogācāra through the lens of Western phenomenology. I approach the issue through a reading of the ''Cheng weishi lun'' (''Treatise on the Perfection of Consciousness Only''), a seventh-century Chinese compilation that preserves the voices of multiple Indian commentators on Vasubandhu’s ''Triṃśikāvijñaptikārikā'' (''Thirty Verses on Consciousness''). Specifically, I focus on the "five omnipresent mental factors" (''pañcasarvatraga'', Chin. ''wu bianxing xinsuo'') and the “four aspects” (Chin. ''sifen'') of cognition. These two topics seem ripe, at least on the surface, for phenomenological analysis, particularly as the latter topic includes a discussion of “self-awareness” (''svasaṃvedana'', ''svasaṃvitti'', Chin. ''zizheng''). Yet we find that the ''Cheng weishi lun'' account has little in common with the tradition associated with Husserl and his heirs. The categories and modes of analysis in the ''Cheng weishi lun'' do not emerge from or aver to a systematic reflection on the nature of “lived experience” so much as they are focused on subliminal processes and metaphysical entities that belong to the domain of the noumenal. In my conclusion I suggest that the later ''pramāṇa'' tradition associated with Dignāga and Dharmakīrti—a tradition that profoundly influenced later Yogācāra exegesis in Tibet—did indeed take a “phenomenological turn.” But my comparison shows that both traditions falter when it comes to relating conceptual content to non-conceptual experience, and thus there is reason to be skeptical about claims that phenomenology is epistemologically grounded in how the world presents itself first-personally. +
