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Your Buddha-Nature

Buddha-nature is the teaching that all people are fundamentally good. We have no "original sin" or any sort of imperfection that we need to rid ourselves of or transform. All our suffering and failings are actually the result of ignorance. They are caused by our ego, generated by mistaken perceptions of our experiences and the world around us. On examination one finds that all conceptual dualities—that of self and other chief among them—are without solid basis. Recognizing this reality not only frees us from our own petty concerns, it also opens us up to a compassion through which we are liberated.

What Then?

Everyone has the same buddha-nature, even the Buddha. The only difference is that the Buddha recognized his and the rest of us have not. The goal of Buddhist practice is to allow our true nature to shine forth. We may not yet be perfect buddhas, but we will be the moment we cease our commitment to our ego and our suffering. The Buddhist teachings and practices are all dedicated to revealing our true nature through retraining the mind and body, both by cultivating the proper outlook and behavior, and by ceasing the negative habits that cause dissatisfaction and suffering.

What is buddha-nature?

Two metaphors used to describe buddha-nature are a golden statue encased in muck and the seed of a mango tree. The first suggests that our buddha-nature is already perfect, and only needs to be revealed in order to manifest our enlightenment. The second presents buddha-nature as a potential that must be cultivated in order to attain enlightenment. A third, less common interpretation is that we somehow produce buddhahood and thus acquire 'buddha-nature' at a certain stage of religious accomplishment. These three models, 'disclosure', 'transformation', and 'production', are used by different traditions to define buddha-nature and describe the methods to fully actualize enlightenment.

In almost all communities buddha-nature is understood to be the same as the natural luminosity of mind. That is, the mind's natural pure state free from any duality or defilement. All beings therefore share the potential for full enlightenment, because their minds are already, in some sense, enlightened. In East Asian Buddhist traditions this is known as the doctrine of original enlightenment, while in Tibetan contexts it is called primordial purity or fundamental clear light. Various Buddhist paths employ diverse methods to shake off the obscurations and cultivate the mind's natural perfection, from quiet sitting to elaborate Tantric visualization and yogic endeavors.

Not all Buddhist traditions are comfortable with language that describes buddha-nature as the mind's fundamental state, suspecting that such descriptions promote the idea that buddha-nature is some kind of abiding individual self. Strict adherents to the Madhyamaka philosophy argue that any description of what buddha-nature is cannot be accurate, as language cannot describe the ultimate reality. The best these communities can offer is that buddha-nature is the same as emptiness, the theory of radical selflessness, in which all phenomena are understood to lack independent, unconditioned existence. The logic is that because our minds are themselves by nature empty—because all ignorance and defilements have no fundamental existence—we are able to attain buddhahood. This is not necessarily a contradiction with luminosity, and in certain Tibetan communities buddha-nature is defined as a union of emptiness and luminosity.

In Indian and Tibetan traditions philosophers have also debated whether buddha-nature is a definitive teaching—one given by the Buddha to describe things as they are, or a provisional teaching—not true but valuable for encouraging a student to move in the right direction. Early scriptural evidence in fact points to the provisional interpretation: buddha-nature was offered to help those who were discouraged by the teachings of emptiness or by the daunting project of attaining enlightenment. For many philosophers, the doctrine of buddha-nature is like this—the idea that we possess buddha-nature inspires us to practice, but such a thing cannot be actually said to exist because of the fundamental truth of emptiness. Others, however, take the position that the mind's natural luminosity is self-evident, and need not be explained as a rhetorical trick.

The Questions

Are buddha-nature teachings controversial?

Not all Buddhists accept the teachings of buddha-nature, and some actually disparage it as "non-Buddhist." This is because of the similarities between buddha-nature and the "self," which the Buddha famously declared does not exist. The Buddha taught that all individuals are subject to "dependent arising," which simply means we exist because of causes and conditions. We are made up of parts in dependence on other things, and so there is no clear defining line between ourselves and the world. We exist, but we exist as pieces of a larger process that is constantly changing, and there is no underlying permanence to any of it; as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, the only constant is change. Because buddha-nature is described as our "essence" or "innate nature" some teachers and scholars have argued that it is no different than the self and is therefore in contradiction with basic Buddhism. Some buddha-nature scriptures even use the word "self" (ātman in Sanskrit) to describe buddha-nature, but they mean the term in a very different way, describing a basic fact of reality shared by all beings rather than an individual essence. Proponents of buddha-nature defend the teaching by either classifying buddha-nature as "provisional," meaning a teaching of practical value that is not literally true, or by explaining that buddha-nature is not something belonging to an individual, but is rather a basic characteristic of having a mind. That is, there are no separate "buddha-natures" belonging to each person. It is like the air in our lungs—it is in us as a integral factor of our being alive, but it is not our individual air.

Learn more about the controversies here: Questions and Controversies

Is buddha-nature like a soul? Is it the same as the Hindu ātman?

"Soul" is a Greek-inspired teaching of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There are many ways that these traditions understand the concept, but at its most basic a soul is said to be a permanent individual entity that survives death. Indian religious traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism do not have this idea. The Hindu ātman is individual, but more like the wave on an ocean than a truly separate entity—the individuality of the ātman is said to be illusory and is the cause of human suffering. The goal of Hindu practice is to abandon that illusion and experience the universal unity of existence, called Brahmā—for the wave to dissolve back into the ocean. Buddhism however does not accept the individual existence of anything, neither the wave nor the ocean. Both are dependent on causes and conditions to exist. Buddha-nature is neither an individual permanently-existing entity nor a universal presence manifesting as individual entities. Instead it is simply a basic characteristic of sentient existence: the innate capacity for wisdom.

What does buddha-nature have to do with enlightenment?

Buddha-nature is the fundamental capacity of the mind to understand the world as it is. The mind is said to be like a glass of dirty water all shaken up by desire and ignorance. When the water in the glass is allowed to still the dirt all settles, revealing the basic purity of the water. So too, when the mind is properly trained, the impurities vanish, and we perceive reality as it actually is, untainted by petty desires and impulses. In other words, buddha-nature theory teaches us that we are fundamentally pure, yet obscured with ignorance. Enlightenment will be achieved by freeing the mind of that ignorance and in so doing revealing our buddha-nature.

The Traditions

The doctrine of buddha-nature—the innate enlightened nature of mind—is found in all Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions, but it was not present in early Buddhism and is not accepted by most contemporary Asian Theravada Buddhist traditions. In mainstream Theravada consciousness is one of the five aggregates, the conditioned aspects of existence which are left behind upon attaining nirvāṇa. The notion of a mind that exists apart from the aggregates, which is primordially pure and somehow innately enlightened, would be heretical to most Theravada Buddhists. As the contemporary Western Theravadin teacher Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu has written, "the Buddha never advocated attributing an innate nature of any kind to the mind—good, bad, or Buddha." Not only are the buddha-nature teachings not true, he continues, but they are a hindrance to the progress on the path: "If you assume that the mind is basically good, you’ll feel capable but will easily get complacent." This is not a universal view; the Thai Forest tradition that began at the turn of the Twentieth Century espouses the view that the mind is "luminous" in the sense of being innately pure, non-dual awareness, and that it continues to exist in nirvāṇa.

All Mahāyāna traditions teach that because all phenomena arise in dependence on other phenomena they are empty of any self-nature. How to describe that emptiness is, however, a matter of considerable disagreement. Where Yogācāra masters use positive language to describe the mind and the true nature of reality, in the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nāgārjuna and his disciples only negative language can be used. "Because there are no phenomena that are not dependently arisen," Nāgārjuna wrote, "there are no phenomena that are not empty." Thus while buddha-nature is generally accepted in Yogācāra, in Madhyamaka it is considered either provisionally (meaning not literally) true or as a synonym for emptiness.

Buddha-nature is a central doctrine in all East Asian Buddhism save for the Pure Land traditions. Almost all base their teachings on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, a Chinese composition that introduced the concepts of original enlightenment and actualized enlightenment. The first is the fundamental nature of mind obscured by stains, and the second is that same innately enlightened mind freed of those obscurations. The Tiantai (Tendai in Japan), Huayan (Kegon in Japan) and Chan (Zen in Japan) and their offshoots all embraced buddha-nature, as did the Tantric Shingon School in Japan, although there are differences in their approaches. Dogen, one of the founders of Japanese Zen, taught that meditation is performed not to attain enlightenment but to express one's innate enlightenment. This expressed in the famous Zen proverb "If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him." That is, if you think that the Buddha is someone or somewhere else, you're wasting your time; destroy that idea and realize your own innate enlightenment. In Pure Land there remains some disagreement, with some sects arguing that ordinary beings do not have buddha-nature, only acquiring it upon being saved by the Buddha Amitābha and born in the Pure Land.

The dominant Tibetan and Himalayan Tantric traditions of Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu and Geluk are better understood as loose categories of affiliation than as closed systems, and leaders often move between monasteries to pursue their education. There is therefore no buddha-nature position that can be said to belong to any one particular tradition. Rather, buddha-nature teachings in Tibet are debated along the framework of provisional / definitive, and whether buddha-nature is simply another word for emptiness or has qualities of its own. That is, whether buddha-nature is empty of all qualities, a position known as "self-emptiness," or is empty of all but its own qualities, or "other-emptiness." These conversations began in India but took new life in Tibet, where buddha-nature theory is largely built around the fifth-century treatise Ratnagotravibhāga, popularly known in Tibet as the Uttaratantra, or Gyulama. The two poles of dialogue described above are traditionally defined in Tibet as the "analytic" and "meditative" traditions of Ratnagotravibhāga exegesis. The analytic tradition largely relies on strict Madhyamaka presentations of emptiness, and rejects any attempt to describe ultimate reality with positive characteristics. The meditative tradition encompasses a wide span of buddha-nature theory found primarily in the Jonang, Kagyu, and Nyingma traditions, usually, although not always in some form of a unity of emptiness and luminosity.

In Western Buddhism few teachers seem overly concerned with maintaining a separation between their received tradition and the Buddhisms of other regions, and have together contributed to a new form of Buddhism marked by eclectic assortments of teachings and practices, all of which embrace buddha-nature as a core tenet, explicitly or otherwise. This is true even in the Vipassana community, despite the objection of traditionalists such as the German monk Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, mentioned at the beginning of this essay. For example, Sharon Salzberg wrote of a meeting in 1990 with the the Dalai Lama during which she asked about self-hatred. The Dalai Lama responded with incredulity that any person would hate themselves: "But you have Buddha nature" he said. "How could you think of yourself that way?" Jack Kornfield has a teaching series called "Your Buddha Nature" and leads retreats on the topic. Perhaps more than any other contemporary Western Buddhist, Joseph Goldstein models the modern Western synthesis of disparate Asian Buddhist traditions. His book One Dharma unites the Theravada Vipassana tradition of the Burmese, Thai, and Bengali teachers that formed the major part of his training with Tibetan Dzogchen and Zen. Goldstein puts forward buddha-nature (or its synonyms) as the definition of wisdom in his One Dharma synthesis:

In Buddhism there are many names for ultimate freedom: Buddha-Nature, the Unconditioned, Dharmakaya, the Unborn, the Pure Heart, Mind Essence, Nature of Mind, Ultimate Bodhicitta, Nirvana.

The People

Buddhist scriptures can divided into two main categories: those which are said to be the word of the Buddha and those which were composed by the great masters to explain the doctrine. The Buddha is said to have given as sermons a core group of buddha-nature scriptures, collectively known as the tathāgatagarbha sūtras.

Following the appearance of these discourses, which lay out the basic parameters of buddha-nature theory, Indian scholars began to produce treatises that systematized the received teachings. The earliest and most influential Indian commentary on buddha-nature is the Ratnagotravibhāga. It became the main scriptural source for buddha-nature theory in Tibet. Who wrote this important text is not known. According to Chinese tradition the author was a man named Sāramati, a member of the kṣatriya clan from Central or Northern India. A northern Indian named Ratnamati is said to have come to China from Madhyadeśa between 498 and 508 and translated the Ratnagotravibhāga between 511 and around 520 in Luoyang. He may or may not have brought the manuscript with him, and may have been assisted by Bodhiruci. The later Indian and Central Asian traditions, however, holds that it was written by Maitreya—either a man by that name or the bodhisattva. In the Tibetan tradition it is believed that the Bodhisattva Maitreya revealed the root verses of the treatise to the fourth-century founder of Yogācāra, Ārya Asaṅga, who then composed the prose commentary. It was translated into Tibetan by six different teams, including Atiśa Dīpaṃkara by Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab, who worked with his Indian teacher Sajjana. Many of the greatest Tibetan philosophers have written commentaries, including Ngok Lotsāwa, Pakpa Lodro Gyeltsen, the Third Karmapa, Dolpopa, Gyeltse Tokme, Gyeltsabje, Bodong Paṇchen, Go Lotsāwa, Śākya Chokden, Tāranātha, Jamgon Kongtrul, and Mipam, to name only a few masters from all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.

Buddha-nature in East Asian Buddhism is largely based on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, another treatise whose author is not easily identified. The second-century Indian poet Aśvagoṣa is considered by Chinese tradition to have been the author, but most scholars consider that unlikely. The sixth-century Indian monk Paramārtha is credited with its translation, and he may well have been its author, in China, together with a team of Chinese scribes. The first commentary appeared in 580, written by the monk Tanyan and was followed over the centuries by more than one hundred seventy written in China, Japan, and Korea, by some of the great religious leaders of East Asian Buddhism. These included Jingying Huiyuan of the Chinese Southern Dilun School, the Chinese Chan patriarch Shenxiu, the great Korean monk Wǒnhyo, the Chinese Huayan founder Fazang, and the Japanese founder of the Shingon School, Kukai.

The Japanese scholar D.T. Suzuki first translated the Awakening of Faith into English, in 1900. Some of the most influential early-Twentieth Century American converts used it in their promotion of Buddhism, most notably Paul Carus, the author of The Gospel of the Buddha, and Dwight Goddard, the author of The Buddhist Bible. Columbia University professor Yoshito S. Hakeda published a reliable translation in 1967. The Russian Buddhologist Eugène Obermiller first translated Ratnagotravibhāga into English, in 1931. Japanese scholar Takasaki Jikidō published a second English translation in 1966.

More on Buddha-Nature

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Your True Nature: Talk on Refuge and Buddha-Nature by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

In this short video, Tibetan meditation teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche teaches how our true nature is fundamentally pure and good. When we take refuge in the Buddha, he explains, we are ultimately taking refuge in our own Buddha nature. This video is excerpted from a series of teachings entitled, Ngöndro: The Foundational Practices, Parts I & II.

Mingyur, Yongey, 7th. "Your True Nature." Produced by Tergar Learning Community, February 29, 2012. Video, 4:43. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCd9lTgHuUc.

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Dealing with Depression: Interview with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo on Study Buddhism

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo discusses buddha-nature beautifully for a general audience.

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Evidence of Our Buddhanature

Gyatrul Rinpoche is a famed modern Tibetan teacher of the Nyingmapa school and holder of the Dudjom Tersar Lineage. This short teaching is a clear and pithy presentation of the Tibetan Buddhist view of buddha-nature from the Nyingma viewpoint that reminds us not only that it is obvious that all sentient beings have buddha-nature, but also that recognizing our buddha-nature depends upon learning in a deep way. We must "chew" on what we have learned and really take it to heart: "If you don’t know your buddhanature, learn about it! Don’t just complain that you don’t understand, or say it is too difficult. How can you see it? How can you recognize it? By learning."

Gyatrul Rinpoche. "Evidence of Our Buddhanature". Vimala. 2018 Online Teaching Series by Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche. Winter, February 26th, 2018. https://vimala.org/downloads/VGR-SR-02252018-EvidenceOfBuddhanature.pdf.

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Impermanence is Buddha Nature

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Fischer, Norman. "Impermanence is Buddha Nature." Lion's Roar, April 8, 2019.

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