Semantic search
Both Indian and Tibetan traditions struggled with the question of the ontological status of Buddha-nature. One finds indeed in some sūtras descriptions of Buddha-nature as permanent and pervading every sentient being, which are also characteristics ascribed by non-Buddhists to the Self (ātman). But if Buddha-nature were to be understood as a permanent entity akin to a Self, how could this teaching be compatible with the standard Buddhist doctrine that everything is impermanent and selfless?
Some Mahāyāna sūtras, such as the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, would offer support for the assimilation of Buddha-nature with a Self. The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra is quite explicit in associating the two notions, characterizing in particular the dharmakāya in terms of “perfection of Self” (ātmapāramitā), but warns about the confusion of the “correct” ātman, which is Buddha-nature, with ātman taken in its ordinary sense.1
RGV I.37 and RGVV also speak of the “perfection of Self” as an epithet of the dharmakāya, interpreting however this notion of “Self” (ātman) in the sense of selflessness (nairātmya) or quiescence of conceptual proliferations (prapañca), thus distinguishing Buddha-nature from the notion of a personal, permanent Self (ātman).2
Nevertheless, the RGV does not promote the doctrine of emptiness in the sense that everything is ultimately empty of intrinsic nature. Quite on the contrary, the RGV stresses the real existence of Buddha-nature, and proclaims the superiority of the Buddha-nature doctrine to the emptiness doctrine of the Prajñāpāramitāsūtras.3
The RGV thus on the one hand distinguishes Buddha-nature from the disapproved view of a Self, while on the other hand it admits Buddha-nature as ultimately existent4—an ambiguous viewpoint, and a challenging one for its interpreters. . . .
The present paper deals with a selection of rṄog’s most significant views on the doctrine of Buddha-nature and considers some reactions to his interpretations in the works of his followers. Since the RGV commentaries attributed to two of rṄog’s "four main [spiritual] sons" (sras kyi thu bo bźi), Źaṅ Tshes spoṅ ba Chos kyi bla ma and Gro luṅ pa Blo gros byuṅ gnas,19 as yet remain to be found,20 we will concentrate on the next-earliest available work, a commentary by Phywa pa Chos kyi seṅ ge (1109–1169).21 (Kano, introduction, 249–55)
Notes:
1. The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra equates ātman with Buddha-nature (see P 788 tu 105b5 [≈T vol. 12, 407b; 883b]: bdag ces bya ba ni de bźin gśegs paʼi sñiṅ poʼi don to //) and characterizes the dharmakāya (that is, the resultant aspect of Buddha-nature; see below [i]) in terms of “perfection of permanence” (nityapāramitā), “perfection of bliss” (sukhapāramitā), “perfection of Self (ātmapāramitā), and “perfection of purity” (śubhapāramitā) (see P 788 tu 33b3–34a2 [≈T vol. 12, 377c-378a; 862b]).
2. RGVV 31, 13–16: tathāgatas tua punar yathābhūtajñānena sarvadharmanairātmyaparapāramiprāptaḥb / tac cāsya nairātmyam anātmalakṣaṇena yathādarśanam avisaṃvāditatvātc sarvakālam ātmābhipreto nairātmyam evātmetid kṛtvā / yathoktaṃ sthito ʼsthānayogeneti /
(a Schmithausen [1971: 143] corrected tathāgataḥ to tathāgatas tu; b Johnston xvi; c Schmithausen [1971: 143] corrected avisaṃvāditvāt to avisaṃvāditatvāt;d Schmithausen [1971: 143] corrected evātmani to evātmeti)
RGVV 32,9–10: prajñāpāramitābhāvanayākāśopamasattvabhājanalokanairātmya- niṣṭhāgamanād.
See also RGVV 33,8–10: tām eva cāvidyāvāsabhūmiṃ pratītya sūkṣmanimittaprapañca- samudācārayogād atyantam anabhisaṃskārām ātmapāramitāṃ nādhigacchanti.
Schmithausen (1971: 143–144 and 1973: 135) links this sentence to the Madhyamaka view. For instance, the Madhyamakahṛdaya (III.284cd) similarly defines dharmakāya as quiescence of conceptual proliferations (buddhānāṃ dharmakāyo ʼyaṃ prapañcopaśamaḥ śivaḥ).
3. The alternative title of the RGV, mahāyānottaratantra “supreme doctrine of the Mahāyāna," hints to the superiority of the Buddha-nature doctrine to the emptiness doctrine. Cf. RGV I.160: pūrvam evaṃ vyavasthāpya tantre punar ihottare / pañcadoṣaprahāṇāya dhātvastitvaṃ prakāśitam /
4. Cf. RGV I.53, I.165; RGVV 2,11–13.
19. The other two are Khyuṅ rin chen grags and ʼBre śes rab ʼbar. Cf. bKaʼ gdams chos ʼbyuṅ gsal baʼi sgron me, 151.
20. Both A khu Chiṅ Śes rab rgya mtsho and gŹon nu dpal ascribe RGV commentaries to these two authors. (Cf. respectively Tho yig, nos. 11333 and 11339, and rGyud bla me loṅ, 4,23, 574,5.) gŹon nu dpal also lists RGV commentaries by Chos kyi bla ma’s disciple Ñaṅ braṅ pa Chos kyi ye śes (12th century); Phywa pa’s disciple gTsaṅ nag pa brTson ʼgrus seṅ ge (12th century); and Dan ʼbag sMra baʼi seṅ ge (12th century). See gŹon nu dpal, rGyud bla me loṅ, 4,23–24. A khu Chiṅ Śes rab rgya mtsho most
likely copied gŹon nu dpal’s references (see Tho yig nos. 11331, 11334, 11335).
With in the history of Buddhism in East Asia the world of nature gained and retained a high position —something seen as having inherent religious value. This two-part essay reviews aspects of the history of this upward valuation of nature in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism and analyzes the interpretative shifts and changes made necessary by this impulse toward the attribution of increasingly great religious significance to nature. The development is carried as far as the twelfth century in Japan and the poetry of the Buddhist monk Saigyō (1118- 90), poetry which not only itself moved the valorization of nature beyond the point where earlier writers had brought it, but also, since as poetry it gained a position in the public mind and a place in the popular imagination of the Japanese people, historically "fixed" a lasting nexus between Buddhism and nature in the popular consciousness of the Japanese people. Saigyō, therefore, is of great significance in the history of Japanese religion, a fact that has always been implicitly recognized in the Japanese regard for him as Japan's greatest "medieval Buddhist nature poet." His poetry is important not only as literature but also as a document in the history of Japanese religion.
Although in what follows I am more interested in an analysis of Saigyō's verse—in relationship to the Buddhist view of nature—than in details of his life, it is of importance to note here that Saigyō, whose name before he became a monk was Satō Norikiyo, saw his Buddhist vocation as something to be carried out in the mountains rather than in temples and monasteries. Before becoming a monk he had been a military guard in the service of Emperor Toba and a member of an elite corps of palace guards known as the Hokumen no Bushi or "North-facing warriors." But at age twenty-three he relinquished his career in court and became a Buddhist monk . He was at first loosely attached to Shingon and Tendai temples in the vicinity of Heian-kyō or Kyoto and seems to have retained a lifelong attachment to the memory of Kūkai (774-835), the Japanese founder of the Shingon school. But Saigyō's forte lay in his composition of waka or thirty-one-syllable verse and it is in the context of his writing of these verses that we gain an understanding of his vision of nature, Buddhism, and the correlation of these two. For Saigyō the world of nature was the primary world of Buddhist values, and it is this that I wish to investigate in what follows. (LaFleur, "Saigyō and the Buddhist Value of Nature," 93–94)
During his scientific expeditions to India, Nepal, Tibet and Pakistan in the nineteen thirties, forties and fifties, Giuseppe Tucci (1894-1984) had the opportunity of photographing, and in many cases of having someone copy, several important Buddhist works.[1] Subsequently, most of the manuscripts that he photographed or copied entered the collections in Nepalese, Chinese and Pakistani libraries, but others were lost. At present Tucci’s reproductions of some of these manuscripts are the only documentation at our disposal.
The study and cataloguing of the photographs and manuscripts now held in Rome in the Library of the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente (IsIAO) was begun in 1997 (officially on 12th June 1998) by Claudio Cicuzza and myself. The first results of our work have been published as an appendix to the first version of this paper published in Warsaw in 2000. At that time the scanning of the negatives was still underway, so our list was highly provisional, based mainly on the short titles written on the envelopes of the negatives and on the photographs already printed.
During the last few years, not only it has been possible to correct this list here and there, sometimes with the help of other scholars, as we shall see below, but also to find further manuscripts and photographs of Sanskrit manuscripts that belonged to the Italian scholar –in the IsIAO Library, in the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale ‘Giuseppe Tucci’ (MNAOr) and in a small but important private collection near Rome–and eventually to gather more information regarding the history of Tucci’s expeditions and of the formation of his collection.[2] (Sferra, introduction, 15)
Notes
- Certainly Tucci did not photograph the MSS personally, for he declares his complete unfamiliarity with any kind of device, including the camera (“[F]ra me e quale che sia macchina, anche la macchina fotografica, resta un’assoluta incapacità di intesa”, 1996b: 17). Among his companions on the expeditions there was always a person responsible for the photographic reproductions.
- This aspect of Tucci’s work has been studied by Oscar Nalesini; see below, pp. 79-112.
The Triśaraṇasaptati is a small versified work consisting 68 ślokas, the full text of which is preserved only in Tibetan translation. We find two versions (i.e. recensions) of the Triśaraṇasaptati in all the Tanjurs. The two versions are almost the same, having been translated by the same translation team (Atiśa and Rin chen bzang po).
Sorensen translated the Tibetan text into English and added to them six verses (12, 13, 33, 45, 46, and 47) in Sanskrit traced in the form of quotations in other works. Sorensenʼs English translation is for the most part faithful to the Tibetan text. The Tibetan translation itself, when compared with the Sanskrit original, is seen on occasion to be imprecise (see below, "Philological Remarks").
Other quotations from the Triśaraṇasaptati have been found in two passages in the Munimatālaṃkāra: Passage A (Skt. Ms. 7v1-4; Tib. D 82a7-b3; verses 1, 34, 51, 54, 55, 67) in Munimatālaṃkāra chapter 1 (the Bodhicittāloka chapter)'"`UNIQ--ref-00000BDA-QINU`"' and Passage B (Skt. 132r1-3; Tib. D 219a5-b1; 7-9ab, 22-23) in chapter 3 (the Aṣṭābhisamayāloka chapter). When we collate these 11½ verses with the 6 verses independently collected by Sorensen, the total number becomes 17½, which is about 26% of the whole text of the Triśaraṇasaptati. (Kano and Xuezhu, introductory remarks, 4)
Among the distinctive aspects of Shakya Chokden s oeuvre are his several contributions to the history of Buddhist thought. Historical writing in Tibet (chapter 11) was interested above all in important political or religious events, and the lives of the major actors. Doctrinal or intellectual history was generally ignored, no doubt in part be- cause the outlook fostered in the monastic colleges was one of perennialism: the truths revealed in the Buddha s teaching were eternal, and thus exempt from the process of historical change. Knowledgeable scholars were, of course, aware that commentarial and interpretive traditions did have a history of sorts, but this awareness tended to be expressed in their own commentarial notes, not in dedicated doctrinal histories. In Shakya Chokden's writings, however, we find sustained historical essays on Indian and Tibetan traditions of logic and epistemology, and of the Madhyamaka philosophy inspired by Nāgārjuna. The selections given here are drawn from his work on the latter, and may serve as an introductory guide to the philosophical writings included in the remainder of this chapter.
Shakya Chokden's discussion turns on the distinction made by Tibetan thinkers between two types of argument, termed in the present translation "autonomous reason” and "consequence.” The first refers to the method of using positive proof to demonstrate the truth or falsehood of a given proposition. The second, by contrast, only seeks to undermine the propositions advanced by a (real or presumed) opponent by drawing out their untenable consequences, and so is similar to reductio ad absurdum, or “indirect Proof,” in Western systems of logic. This distinction was often considered by Tibetans to he the basis for designating two distinct schools of Madhyamaka philosophy, Svātantrika (Autonomous Reasoning) and Prāsańgika (Consequentialist). MTK (Komarovski, Sources of Tibetan Tradition, 373)
The field of Ch'an studies has seen some very lively disputes over the course of the twentieth century, but there has been general agreement on the proposition that the doctrine of sudden enlightenment represents the highest expression of the doctrinal mainstream of early Chinese Ch’an Buddhism. Although there is some quibbling regarding details and specific interpretations, scholars working in this field often describe the history of the doctrine of sudden enlightenment within Ch’an in terms of three subjects: (1) Hui-neng’s doctrine of sudden enlightenment as shown in his "mind verse" (hsin-chieh) in the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liu-tsu t'an-ching); (2) Shen-hui’s campaign in opposition to the gradual teaching of the Northern school and in support of the public recognition of Hui-neng as sixth patriarch; and (3) the continuation of the spirit of Hui-neng in the teachings and religious practice of Ma-tsu, Shih-t'ou, and the later Ch’an tradition
Research done in recent years has shown that the traditional interpretations of these three subjects are all substantially incorrect, although the implications of these findings have not yet been fully realized. The history of early Ch'an is in the process o f being thoroughly rewritten, but it is already clear that the doctrine of sudden enlightenment and the dispute between the sudden and gradual teachings should no longer be used as yardsticks by which the religious message of Ch'an and its widespread acceptance in T'ang dynasty China are understood. (McRae, "Shen-hui and the Teaching of Sudden Enlightenment in Early Ch'an Buddhism," 227)
"Buddha-nature" (Japanese, Bussho) has been regarded in the Sōtō sect as one of the three central fascicles of the Shōbōgenzō, together with Genjōkōan and Bendōwa. Dōgen delivered it the tenth month of 1241 to the followers gathered around him at the Kōshō-ji south of Kyoto. The work as we now have it, however, is a considerably revised form of that original text. Although neither the original or revised manuscript exists in Dōgen's holograph, a copy by his disciple Ejō (1198-1280), including Dōgen's later revisions, is preserved in the Eihei-ji. In most editions, Shōbōgenzō Buddha-nature is the third fascicle in the collection, following Genjōkōan and Makahannya-haramitsu.
The idea that sentient beings all possess the Buddha-nature and the possibility of attaining Buddhahood is central to most of the schools of the Mahayana. Yet Dōgen's treatment, reflecting his own unique Zen standpoint, can be said to be apart from all the rest. Strictly adhering to a nondualistic interpretation, he comments on passages from Zen and other Buddhist writings that have some bearing on this theme. What is most striking about this commentary is the manner in which it gives clear priority to religious meaning over normal grammatical syntax. In more than a few cases Dōgen chooses to read these passages in ways which are dubious, and sometimes even impossible, from a grammatical point of view. But he does it for a definite purpose. It focuses attention on what he feels to be inadequacies in the traditional ways the texts are read, and at the same time it clearly sets forth his own understanding and rectification of those inadequacies based on his religious awakening.
For example, at the very beginning of the work he quotes a passage from the Nirvana Sutra ("Northern" version) well-known to all Buddhists: "All sentient beings without exception have the Buddha-nature". This is the general Mahayana statement, which is emphasized in particular in the Nirvana Sutra. Dōgen goes beyond it, by reading the passage as, "All sentient beings-whole being is the Buddha-nature." This he does by reading the characters shitsuu normally "without exception have, as "whole being (he is aided by the fact that the character u means both "to be," or "being," and "to have"). This changes the traditional emphasis of sentient beings having a Buddha-nature, to stress a standpoint more in keeping with the basic nondualistic Mahayana position: whole being is the Buddha-nature, in which "whole being" means not only sentient beings but all beings. This avoids the duality of subject (sentient beings) and object (the Buddha-nature possessed by them), the duality which regards the Buddha-nature as a potentiality to be actualized in the future, and the duality of means and end, where practice is taken as a means and realization of Buddha-nature the end. Dōgen's reading "whole being is the Buddha-nature" thus indicates the nondualistic oneness of the realizer (whole being) and the realized (Buddha-nature), the simultaneity of Buddha-nature and enlightenment (Buddha), and the identity of practice and attainment. It is the key to his understanding of the Buddha-nature as it is developed in various aspects throughout the rest of the work*
Buddha-nature is the eighth fascicle to appear in this series of translations from Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō which began in May 1971 with Bendōwa. As in the past, we have provided rather extensive footnotes. Their aim is to provide the English language reader a means of better arriving at some understanding of this extremely difficult work, much of which would be incomprehensible without them. We of course do not pretend that they are in any way definitive. They could not be, given the profoundly complicated and suggestive nature of the text. We have attempted, however, to have them exemplify a consistent view of the work as a whole. The edition followed is that of Õkubo Dōshū: Shōbōgenzō (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1971), pp. 14–35. We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Nishitani Keiji for his valuable suggestions.
N.B. In the text, Dōgen quotes passages from Zen and other Buddhist writings at the heads of the various sections. In order to make clear both the way they are normally read and Dōgen's own sometimes peculiar interpretative reading, we have translated them according to the normal reading when the italicized quotation first appears en bloc at the beginning of the sections; then, when Dōgen's different reading makes it necessary, we have generally retranslated the same words as close to his meaning as the English will allow in the following phrase by phrase discussion of the quotation. When this is done the discrepancy between the two renderings is detailed in the footnotes. (Waddell and Abe, introduction, 94–96)
Notes
- See Abe Masao, "Dōgen on Buddha-nature," Eastern Buddhist, IV, I.
There is no traditional rubric of tathāgatagarbha scriptures, though modem scholars (e.g. Takasaki, 1974) have treated several scriptures as belonging to a thematic class, namely the ;;Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta, the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādasūtra, the (Mahāyāna) Mahaaparinirvāṇamahāsūtra, the Mahāmeghasūtra, the *Mahābherīhārakasūtra, and the Mahāyāna Aṅgulimālīya (or Aṅgulimālīyasūtra). This classification is based in the first instance on the use of these and related works as proof texts in the Indian treatise Ratnagotravibhāga (Mahāyānottaratantra). The category is thus in some sense conceptually coherent even in an Indian context. Moreover, many of these texts take on a very significant role in East Asia where, again, they are often appealed to in various groupings.
The notion of tathāgatagarbha (embryo of the tathāgatas), a Mahāyāna innovation, signifies the presence in every sentient being of the innate capacity for buddhahood. Although different traditions interpret it variously, the basic idea is either that all beings are already awakened, but simply do not recognize it, or that all beings possess the capacity, and for some the certainty, of attaining buddhahood, but adventitious defilements (āgantukakleśa) for the moment prevent the realization of this potential. (Radich, "Tathāgatagarbha Sūtras," 261)The historical approach to Zen in Heinrich Dumoulin's major work, A History of Zen, published over twenty years ago, broke new ground in Western Zen studies. Up to that time Zen publication in the West dealt primarily with interpretive accounts of Zen and translations of Zen or Zen-related texts. I follow here an alternate approach to Zen and seek to place it in the context of one or another aspect of Mahāyāna tradition. One might read Zen in the perspective of Indian Mādhyamika or Yogācāra, or in terms of the Chinese prajñic or Hua-yen doctrinal development. But I would like to place it within the perspective of Tathāgatagarbha thought. (Kiyota, "Tathāgatagarbha Thought," 207)
Humans have long grappled with the question of the nature of our Self, defined here as the ultimate reality inherent to our individual being. Religious traditions can be a great place to look when attempting to understand this aspect of our humanity. Broadly speaking, when contemplating ideas of Self in Buddhism and Hinduism, the relationship between the Buddhist notion of Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha) and the Hindu notion of Self (ātman), is an intriguing one: How can we understand them to be similar or different? How do the Buddhist concepts of emptiness (śūnyatā) and mind-only (cittamātra) relate to the concepts of tathāgatagarbha and ātman? Is emptiness contrary to these ideas? Are tathāgatagarbha and the Hindu teaching that ātman is equal to brahman (ultimate reality), both expressions of a non-dualistic state of mind? Although it is commonly taught that Hinduism and Buddhism differ in their understanding of Self, one thing that becomes apparent is that these are not simple questions, perhaps mainly because their answers are contextual. There are many answers that come from many different types of Hindus and Buddhists in various places. For this paper, I will be looking at commentary on the Buddhist text the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra and its use of the concept of a permanent Self and how this relates to emptiness (śūnyatā) and skillful means (upāya). This paper seeks to support my claim that, through skillful means, ātman and anātman (no-Self) are both saying something quite similar—despite the apparent paradoxical nature of this statement—and will look at Buddha-nature in the Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra as a way to understand and help articulate this thought. (Laughlin, "Tathāgatagarbha and Ātman," 57)
Read more here . . .
Notes
- (In title and not shown) This was originally written in 1994; the publisher seems to have fallen into a black hole, so I am putting it out here myself; I have not changed it (other than fonts and some formatting issues) in order to keep the historical in perspective. I think that I still agree with myself, especially with the idea that tathāgatagarbha represents more of a dualism than a monism and thereby leads to ethical problems with the less-than-real (accidental) kleśa.
- Many of the questions considered here have been treated in David Ruegg's recent publication Buddha-nature, Mind and the Problem of Gradualism in a Comparative Perspective (Delhi: Heritage Publishers 1992); see especially Chapter One.
- Jikido Takasaki, A Study of the Ratnagotravibhāga (Uttara-tantra), (Rome, 1966), p. 302. Hereafter cited as Ratnagotravibhāga.
The concept of the Buddha's real or essential nature is referred to by (or better: rests upon) many different Sanskrit terms - e.g. (tathāgata-)dhātu, (buddha-)gotra, (tathāgata-)garbha, dharmatā, dharma-kāya, buddhatā. Other terms that are closely related are Tathatā, āśraya, prakṛti, prabhāsvara-citta, dharma-dhātu, buddha-jñāna.'"`UNIQ--ref-000011ED-QINU`"' So when we speak of the Buddha-nature (which is how I will abbreviate the more cumbersome 'the Buddha's real or essential nature' from now on), we are tacitly drawing upon some or all of these terms, which have their own ramifications and interrelations, of course. This is a very complex situation and I want to try and clarify it by approaching it from two angles. First, historically, I want to propose that Buddhism in India always had within it three strands which tended to view and understand the Dharma from their own standpoint; these strands are those of śīla, samādhi and prajñā (see p. 262 for details). Secondly, conceptually, I propose a number of what may be called conceptual nets or images (e.g. withinness, foundation, nature/being—see p. 263 for details) that can be applied to the concept of the Buddha-nature, and which (a) tend to hang together as a group, but in addition (b) each of the conceptual nets to a large extent determines the sort of terminology that is used when speaking of the Buddha-nature. Part of my argument is that works like the RGV (and to a lesser degree, the ŚMS) represent a systematization of the different terms (and hence, tacitly, the conceptual nets that give rise to these terms) that were available at the time that the Mahāyāna was growing to maturity.'"`UNIQ--ref-000011EE-QINU`"' This period of the Mahāyāna is usually referred to as the third turning of the Dharma-cakra; it involved a fundamental shift in the axis of Buddhism which led to a bhedābheda philosophy (i.e. the Absolute is both distinct and non-distinct from its attributes). Finally, we look at what the Chinese made of all this. They settled on the term fo hsing to mean 'Buddha-nature', but we find that hsing is used to translate different Sanskrit terms (e.g. prakṛti, gotra, bhāva—see p. 267 for details), and that these Sanskrit terms are themselves translated by other words than hsing (e.g. t'i, shen, chen, shih). In other words, the inherent ambiguities in the Sanskrit terminology are replaced by inherent ambiguities in the Chinese terminology. In addition, because garbha (which nearly always means 'embryo' in Sanskrit) is translated by ts'ang, ( = 'womb'; lit. 'storehouse'), a certain vacuum was created in the Chinese vocabulary which the terms fo hsing and fo hsin ( = buddha-citta) neatly filled. (Rawlinson, introductory remarks, 259–60)
Buddhism, and especially early Buddhism, is known for the anātman (no self) teaching. By any account, this teaching is central to both doctrine and practice from the beginning. Zen Buddhism (Chinese Ch'an), in contrast, is known for its teaching that the single most important thing in life is to discover the 'true self'. Is there a real, or only an apparent, conflict between these two versions of Buddhism? Certainly there is at the least a radical change in the linguistic formulation of the teaching. Examining the two teachings on the linguistic level, we note that the use of the term 'true' in the phrase 'true self' may indicate that we have here a conscious reformation of the place of the term 'self' in the tradition, or perhaps that the use of this phrase in Zen is the product of such a conscious formulation. Thus we may expect, upon investigation, to find an evolution from one teaching to the other, rather than a true doctrinal disparity. The apparent, or linguistic, conflict between the two, however, remains; hence we must also expect to find a doctrinal formulation at some point in this evolution in which the apparent conflict is consciously apprehended and resolved.
That is, Buddhism embraces both the teaching that there is no self and the teaching that the goal of life is to discover the true self. Not only does Buddhism embrace these two formulations, but each in its own context is the central pivot of the teachings of the school or community concerned. Two questions arise here. (1) How can a single tradition affirm both no self and true self? How can the two ideas be reconciled? (This is the philosophical question.) (2) In linking early Buddhism and Zen we are discussing two religious movements separated by approximately 12 centuries and by their development in two vastly different cultures, the Indian and the Chinese. What is there in the course of this development that could account for the transition from talk of no self to talk of true self? (This is the question of intellectual history.) In the present essay I will attempt to show that it is by examining the Buddha nature (fo hsing 佛性) concept and understanding it as a term representing certain actions that these questions may be answered. (King, "The Buddha Nature," 255)
Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960) brought Dōgen out of this long period of obscurity with his treatise Shamon Dōgen written between 1919 and 1921.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000D58-QINU`"' Watsuji's contribution, however, is not limited to his introduction of Dōgen to public attention. Instead of treating Dōgen as the founder of the Sōtō School, he presents him as a human being, a person, a man (hito):
- ...it may be justifiable to assert that I opened a gate to a new interpretation of Dōgen. He thereby becomes not the Dōgen of a sect but of mankind; not the founder Dōgen but rather our Dōgen. The reason why I claim it so daringly is due to my realization that his truth was killed by sheer sectarian treatments (Watsuji 1925,p. 160).
This realization grew out of Watsuji’s effort to solve the problem of how a layman like himself could attempt to understand Dōgen's "truth" without engaging in the rigorous training prescribed by the Zen tradition (Watsuji 1925, p , 156). A sectarian would claim that the "truth" must be experienced immediately and that any attempt to verbalize or conceptualize it constitutes falsification. If the immediate experience is the only gateway to the "truth," as the sectarian would claim, why did Dōgen himself write so much? Dōgen believed that it was through writing that his truth was to be transmitted to others. For his own religious training, he singlemindedly concentrated on sitting in meditation; yet he saw no intrinsic conflict between sitting and writing. This is why Dōgen started writing Shōbōgenzō in 1231: so that he might be able to "transmit the
Buddha’s authentic Dharma to those who are misguided by false teachers" (Watsuji 1925, p. 157). Watsuji further quotes from Dogen: "Although it (Shōbōgenzō) might appear to be a mere 'theory,' it still bears indispensable importance for the sake of Dharma" (1925,p. 157). Thus Watsuji claims that his approach, which relies on words and concepts, is a valid alternative to the monk’s subjective pursuit.
According to Dōgen, enlightenment is possible only through rigorous sitting in meditation (kufū zazen) and through the study of Dharma under a master (sanshi monpō). One can encounter Dōgen as a master through his writings, for he answers one’s questions in his works. But one still must practice sitting in meditation. Watsuji insists that meditation can be done in an office or a study as well as in a meditation hall; he even goes so far as to say that perhaps a study may be a more congenial place for this purpose than a meditation hall when many monasteries are no longer concerned with the transmission of the truth but are immersed in secular concerns (1925,p. 158). Therefore, for Watsuji, meditation does not necessarily require the act of entering a monastery.
Of the two prerequisites for the realization of the truth, sitting in meditation is left to the individual. But the other, the pursuit of Dharma under a master, is Watsuji's principle concern. Shamon Dogen is an account of Watsuji's personal encounter with the person of Dōgen as he speaks in his writings, primarily Shōbōgenzō and Shōbōgenzō zuimonki, the latter of which was compiled by Ejō, Dōgen's closest disciple. In Watsuji's treatise, we encounter not only Watsuji as he faced Dōgen but Dōgen himself.
Watsuji’s new methodology considers it central to discover and encounter the person (hito) of Dōgen in his works.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000D59-QINU`"' Many people have followed Watsuji’s methodology. Professor Tamaki Kōshirō of the University of Tokyo, for instance, remarks that not only was he first exposed to Dōgen through Watsuji, but also that he encountered the living Dōgen in Watsuji’s treatise.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000D5A-QINU`"'
This writer finds Watsuji's methodology to be particularly applicable to the study of Dōgen. Dōgen himself saw the truth fully embodied in the personhood of his Chinese master, Juching. Dōgen's encounter with this individual was the single
most decisive experience in his life, as is abundantly attested in his writings. Furthermore, Dōgen repeatedly discouraged his disciples from associating with institutionalized Zen. This paper, therefore, is the result of the writer’s attempt to encounter the personhood of Dōgen.
While this writer uses Watsuji’s methodology, the main body of literature that is examined in this paper is the chapter of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō devoted to the busshō or Buddha-nature. The reasons for this choice are three. The question that tormented the young monk Dōgen concerned the Buddha-nature. Dōgen's search for the answer to this question took him to the eminent monks of his time: Kōen of Mt. Hiei; Kōin of Miidera temple;
Yōsai of Kenninji temple; Myōzen, who succeeded Yōsai at this first Rinzai Zen monastery in Japan; Wu-chi Liao-pai and finally T'ien-t'ung Ju-ching in Southern Sung China. This pilgrimage spanned a period of over ten years ending in 1225 when he attained enlightenment under Ju-ching’s instruction and solved his question. Thus it is possible to look at Dōgen's formative years as a continuing struggle with the fundamental question he first raised on Mt. Hiei. Secondly, the Buddha-nature chapter is one of the longest of the ninety-two chapters, in the Shōbōgenzō which may suggest Dōgen's particular concern for the subject matter. Lastly, the original manuscript of this chapter, now preserved in Eiheiji temple, bears witness to the fact that Dōgen laboriously revised the chapter a number of times. Study of the Buddha-nature chapter, therefore, can
reasonably be taken as central to understanding Dōgen's life and thought. (Kodera, "The Buddha-nature in Dogen's
Shōbōgenzō," 267–70)
So far, no lifeless universe has been discovered. That is, the occurrence of matter without the occurrence of life is, judging by the available empirical evidence viewed globally, something that does not happen. In every case that matter has been there in any universe, life has occurred—eventually.
I do not mean that there has never been a time, a single snapshot moment or a billion such moments, during which there was only matter but no life. Nor do I mean that there is no part of the universe in which, considered in isolation from all other parts, there is only lifelessness. "In every case that matter has been there in any universe, life has occurred" is true even if there are immense periods of time, considered in isolation, and immense swaths of space, considered in isolation, where there is no life.
The crux of the problem, however, lies in those three words, "considered in isolation." Everything depends on how we divide things up, where our definition of "one thing" begins and ends.
For what I mean when I say that "matter without life has never existed" is that, scientifically speaking, there has never appeared even one particle of any kind of matter found in any non-life-producing universe, considering that universe as a whole. For no non-life-producing universe has yet been discovered. Likewise, there is no lifeless matter in any period of time that is not part of at least one sequence of time that produces life.
All matter that has ever been discovered has existed only in a universe that also contains life, and all lifeless times were part of this sequence of time we are now in, the total sequence of time that produced this life.
No lifeless universe has ever been discovered. Among all the universes that have been discovered so far, there is not even one that is devoid of life. I challenge you or anyone to show me even one particle of matter, or even one moment of time, from a universe without life.
At this point we have merely been speaking empirically about what has so far been discovered. There are very few things that we can know with absolute certainty without relying on empirical contingency. But in fact this is one thing we can know with absolute certainty: no universe will ever be discovered devoid of life.
We can know this for two reasons. The first is perhaps relatively trivial, although some philosophers attach great significance to it. It is that the act of "discovering" itself requires a living being. Ipso facto, wherever any discovering is done, life is also present. Therefore no universe devoid of life can ever be discovered.
The second reason has to do with how we define universe. Th is is the hidden premise of the claims I am making here: it is because we understand the idea of "universe" in a certain way that we can claim, with absolute certainty, that there is no lifeless universe. If the universe is taken in its broadest meaning, which is also its most commonsensical meaning, it means "all that exists." All that exists certainly includes this planet, this solar system, this period of time. The universe in this broadest sense is what includes any more-narrowly construed universes—for example, all alternate universes. If we call the sum total of all possible universes "the universe," then it is obvious that there is no universe but this one, and since this one contains life, no universe can be discovered that is devoid of life. Whatever might be discovered is by definition part of this totality that includes our lives.
All of the above is true even if life exists only once, for a few million years, on one small planet. Even if there was no life for billions of years—and in most of the universe there never has been and never will be life—even if the phenomenon "life" is a peculiar flash that occurs only on planet Earth between the Hadean Eon 4,500 million years ago until 2018 CE, and never arises anywhere ever again, it is still true that there is no universe devoid of life and that there can never be any universe devoid of life.
And yet people often contemplate those vast billions of years and expanses of space and speak of "lifeless matter." This makes sense only if we divide the world in a certain way. That is, it is only because we are in the habit of dividing self and other, or mind and its objects, or—to put it most generally—inside and outside, that it is possible to speak of lifeless matter. Only if any one part of the universe is thought of as an entity truly separate from all other parts can anything be lifeless. The key question is how much of the universe do we consider to be "one thing." Where do we draw the line that divides inside from outside? If "me and that rock" are one thing, that one thing has life, just as "my skin and my fingernails" has life. If me and that rock are separate, then my body has life and the rock has no life.
Mahāyāna Buddhism, particularly that developed in the Madhyamaka school and further elaborated in Tiantai Buddhism, holds that the separation of "inside and outside" is impossible to sustain in any nonambiguous way. These schools generally develop this idea logically by use of reductio ad absurdum arguments that try to demonstrate that any way of drawing common-sense dividing lines to define one object in distinction to another end up being self-contradictory. (Read the entire article here).
Buddhist doctrine refers to entities possessing mind (Skt., citta) as sentient beings (Skt., sattva) and considers them to undergo rebirth through the six realms of existence (hells, hungry spirits, animals, asuras, human beings, heavenly beings). It is because they possess mind that they give rise to the defilements, accumulating the negative karma that is the cause of rebirth. The purpose of Buddhism therefore is to release beings from the suffering associated with rebirth, a condition called liberation (Skt., vimokśa) and nirvana. Mahayana calls it the attainment of buddhahood (Jpn., jōbutsu). There also exist nonsentient beings (Skt., asattva). Since they do not possess mind, they do not undergo the cycle of rebirth and so cannot attain liberation, nirvana, or buddhahood. In principle, therefore, plants, like inorganic substances not possessing "mind," are not understood to undergo rebirth. It is therefore impossible to discuss their attainment of buddhahood. However, when Buddhism entered China, the potential for buddhahood of nonsentient beings became an important subject for debate. Since China had not previously had any concept of sentient beings, no strict distinction was made between sentient and nonsentient, which was why the question of nonsentient buddhahood was taken up. The Jingangbi lun (Diamond Scalpel Treatise) of the sixth Tiantai patriarch, Zhanran (711–82), confronted the issue directly and asserted that nonsentient beings could attain buddhahood. This did not, however, mean that they could aspire to enlightenment, practice, and achieve buddhahood of themselves. Rather, when a sentient being attains buddhahood, the whole environment becomes the Buddha's realm. A sentient being's subjective existence (Jpn., shōhō) arises from past karmic effects and this causes the realm of the environment (Jpn., ehō) to arise. Environment is thus dependent on subjective existence, and therefore, when a sentient being attains enlightenment, so do nonsentient beings. What is important here is that sentient beings attain enlightenment through their own practice, whereas nonsentient beings can only do so as the environment of sentient beings. This was a solution consonant with Chinese ideas that placed significance on a person's own actions, seen typically in Confucianism. The Japanese did not view human beings in any special way as did the Chinese. Furthermore, they tended to look on nature in terms of plants. The land of Japan was called the "middle land of the reed beds" (ashihara no nakatsu kuni), its landscape being described as a swamp where reeds grew. The fecundity of plants symbolized the evolution of the world. According to the Nihon shoki (Chronicle of Japan, eighth century), before Ninigi, grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, descended from the heavenly plain, the land of Japan was where "the standing trees, and even the single blade of grass, uttered words." This is thought to represent the disordered state of nature that existed before the land was civilized. Humankind was referred to as people grass (hitogusa); in other words, the mass of people was understood through the model of grasses and trees.
In Japan, therefore, nature was thought of in terms of plants, and people were thought to be close to them. Japan's view of nature is often described as animism, but this is not necessarily appropriate. Not all natural phenomena were regarded as spiritual entities, nor were they objects of veneration. Deities (kami) resided in the depths of nature, manifesting themselves in natural objects serving as receptacles (yorishiro). For example, at Ōmiwa Shrine in Nara Prefecture, Mount Miwa is described as the body (shintai) of its kami. Originally, though, the mountain was regarded as sacred because it was the place to which the kami descended: it was not itself the kami. The buddhahood of grasses and trees came to be a concern precisely because human beings and plants were thought of as being of the same quality. Whereas in China tiles and stones were presented as representative of nonsentient existence, in Japan it was grasses and trees. (Read the entire article here)
America—but also, and no less importantly, in the course of its development
within historical India itself.
One way in which Buddhism has responded to these intellectual and cultural encounters can be related to hermeneutics: that is, the modes by which a tradition explains its sources and thereby interprets (or reinterprets) itself
in a continuing process of reactivation and renewal of its heritage.[1]
In the case of Buddhism this process—perhaps comparable in part to what in another context is now frequently referred to as aggiornamento—had both endogenous and exogenous causes. It was, in other words, set in train both by internal, systemically generated requirements and tensions within the
Buddhist tradition as it evolved in geographical space and historical time, and by external impulses received from its intellectual and social environment, which could be, according to the case, either positive or negative in character.
The purpose of this paper is to explore this process with respect to the Buddhist hermeneutics of the ideas of non-self (anatman) and of a spiritual matrix or germ (gotra, tathagatagarbha or Buddha-nature) and the relationship of this pair of ideas to Vedantic notions and Brahmanical social groups in classical India. Reference will be made also to certain exegetical developments that either originated in Tibet or were at least fully realized there for the first time. Our analysis will revolve around the fact that, however historically antithetical and structurally contrasting these two ideas are in Buddhism, they in fact have not invariably been treated by Buddhist hermeneuticians as contradictory or even as systematically exclusive of each other.
Because of its philosophical and religious significance in the fields of soteriology and gnoseology, the Mahāyānist theory of the tathāgatagarbha—the Germ of Buddhahood latent in all sentient beings—occupies a crucial position in Buddhist thought, and indeed in Indian thought as a whole. In virtue of both their extent and their contents, the sūtras treating the tathāgatagarbha—and the systematically related doctrines of the natural luminosity (prakṛtiprabhāsvaratā) of mind (citta) and the spiritual germ existent by nature (prakṛtistha-gotra)[2]—are amongst the most important in the Mahāyāna. The idea that the doctrine of the tathāgatagarbha and Buddha-nature is one of the supreme teachings of the Mahāyāna is explicitly stated in
the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sutra.[3]
In light of all this, it might seem rather daring to suggest that an Indian actually composed the AFM, but that is what I propose to argue. I do not intend to suggest that the Sarvāstivādin Aśvaghoṣa, or even a "Mahāyāna Aśvaghoṣa" composed the AFM. The first place that any Aśvaghoṣa is listed as the author of the text is in Hui-yüan's Ta-ch'êng i chang, a work composed about a half century after Paramārtha was said to have translated the AFM, so the attribution of the text to Aśvaghoṣa probably postdated its composition. But there are a couple of pieces of important philological evidence, heretofore largely overlooked, that seem to point strongly to an Indian Buddhist, most likely Paramārtha himself, as the real author of the text, or at least of major parts of it. The first piece of evidence is the use in the AFM of the three categories of t'i, hsiang, and yung, categories which I will try to show were derived by the author of the AFM from Sanskrit categories used in the Ratnagotravibhāgamahāyānottaratantraśāstra (RGV) and which could not have been formulated by anyone who did not possess a knowledge of Sanskrit. The second piece of evidence is Paramārtha's interpolation of passages from the RGV into the Mahāyānasaṃgrahabhāṣya (MSbh), which seems to show not only that Paramārtha was intimately familiar with the RGV and its categories, but also that he was personally concerned about issues
central to the AFM. When examined together with some interesting biographical details from accounts of Paramārtha's life, this evidence seems to suggest the very real possibility that Paramārtha was the author of the AFM. (Grosnick, introduction, 65–66)Read more here . . .
The debate over the role of the Awakening of Faith in the theory and practice of Chinese Buddhism is one of the central ongoing debates among both Chinese Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism in the modern period. To understand this debate, and the views contained within it, it is necessary to contextualize it within the history of modern East Asian Buddhism. The following review focuses both on a critical assessment of the Awakening of Faith’s authenticity, as well as the role Ouyang played in shifting the course of this debate. This disputation was at the heart of Ouyang’s quest for authenticity. The chapter will not be a comprehensive treatment of all the thinkers involved in these debates; I will deal here only with dimensions of the text that became contentious for Ouyang and with the contribution of other participants who carried forward the debate at that time. (Aviv, introduction, 69)
Notes
- The Awakening of Faith exists in two purported “translations.” One is attributed to Paramārtha, T.32.1666.0575a03–0583b17, in 554 ce; the other, later version is attributed to Śikṣānanda, T.32.1667.0583b21–0591c22, in 695–700 ce. While the title includes the term Mahāyāna, and the text is often translated as the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna or according to the Mahāyāna, I take the term Mahāyāna as part of the customary classificatory term in the canon rather than as part of the actual title, as is common with other texts with the same classificatory term and other texts marked with terms such as Abhidharma (阿毘達磨) or the mothers of the Buddha (佛母).
In the analysis of the texts, the author suggests that Mo-ho-yen's doctrinal position was that of an extreme non-dualist who thought practice came after enlightenment. Consequently Mo-ho-yen denied the value of means to that enlightenment, yet he still had to allow for a means for people of lesser abilities. This admission probably gave his opponents grounds for criticism.
There is a glossary of Tibetan terms and their Chinese equivalents based on a comparison of the fragments in Tibetan with the Chinese of the Tun-wu Ta-sheng cheng-li chüeh which depicts Mo-ho-yen's side of the dispute (for which it may have been profitable to consult Hasebe Koichi's edition from the Pelliot and Stein Chinese manuscripts, the "Toban Bukkyō to Zen", Aichigakuin Daigaku bungakubu kiyō no. 1). Gomez in fact suggests that terminological ambiguity was one source of misunderstanding between the Chinese and Indian parties. Recently R.A. Stein has begun work on the Tibetan translations of Chinese and Indian vocabulary ("Tibetica Antiqua", BEFEO 72, 1983) which sheds more light on the subject. For example, lun and mdo (Gomez p. 87, notes 23 and 39), or gzhung and gzhun (Gomez p. 140) are interpreted slightly differently by Stein (pp. 175-6 and p. 179 respectively). (John Jorgensen, "Review of Studies in Ch'an and Hua-yan," JIABS 9, no. 2 (1986): 177–78).
To illustrate this general point Keenan considers the case of the translator Paramārtha and his amanuensis Hui-k'ai, and shows that in their work on Indic texts they not infrequently added references to tathtāgatagarbha and Buddha Nature where no such mention was made in the originals; they thus contributed to the centrality of Buddha Nature thought in East Asian Buddhism. (Griffiths and Keenan, introduction to Buddha Nature, 5)
I propose in this paper to challenge Matsumoto and Hakamaya’s reading of Buddha-nature thought. In my understanding, while Buddha-nature thought uses some of the terminology of essentialist and monistic philosophy, and thus may give the reader the impression that it is essentialist or monistic, a careful study of how those terms are used—how they actually function in the text—leads the reader to a very different conclusion. I will attempt to demonstrate that Buddha-nature thought is by no means dhātu-vāda as charged, but is instead an impeccably Buddhist variety of thought, based firmly on the idea of emptiness, which in turn is a development of the principle of pratītyasamutpāda
In making my remarks I draw upon the exposition of Buddha-nature thought given in the Buddha-Nature Treatise (Fo hsing lun), attributed to Vasubandhu and translated into Chinese by Paramārtha.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000D45-QINU`"' The Buddha-Nature Treatise is a particularly useful text to consult in this matter inasmuch as it constitutes a considered attempt, by an author of great philosophical sophistication, to articulate the Buddha-nature concept per se and to explain both its philosophical meaning and its soteriological function. Indeed, the author is savvy enough to have anticipated the criticisms that this concept would face, including the particular criticisms leveled in our time by Matsumoto and Hakamaya, and to have effectively countered them in the 6th century CE. In this chapter, then, I will consider some of these criticisms in turn and see how the author of the Buddha-Nature Treatise defends as Buddhist the concept of Buddha-nature and the language in which it is expressed.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000D46-QINU`"' (King, "The Doctrine of Buddha-Nature Is Impeccably Buddhist," 174–75)
Among the many concepts current among Chinese Buddhists, "Buddha-nature" is undoubtedly the most central and the most widely debated. As is well-known, the idea "Buddha-nature" first became popular in China with the translation of the Mahayana Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra (hence-forth referred to as MNS) in the early fifth century; since then, a variety of theses have been proposed on several aspects of the subject. These are worth examining not only because of the important role they play in the history and development of Chinese Buddhist thought, but also because they reflect more fundamental doctrinal differences. Once these differences have been clarified, a more comprehensive picture of the various dominant philosophical trends in the field of Chinese Buddhism will appear. This paper will unravel the diverse streams of thought which came to be associated with the Buddha-nature concept during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, i.e., in the first two centuries of the propagation of the Buddha-nature doctrine in China. (Liu, foreword, 1)
Accepting the possibility of enlightenment as a fundamental Buddhist axiom, one has to either explain the causal process of its production, or accept its primordial existence, for example in terms of a buddha nature (tathāgatagarbha). The latter also applies, of course, when buddhahood is not taken to be produced from scratch. The way this basic issue is addressed is an ideal touchstone for systematically comparing various masters and their philosophical hermeneutical positions in the complex landscape of Tibetan intellectual history. The diversity of views on buddha nature has its roots in the multilayered structure of the standard Indian treatise on buddha nature, the Ratnagotravibhāga. Depending on whether one follows the original intent of the Tathāgatagarbhasūtras (which can be identified in the earliest layer of the Ratnagotravibhāga), or the Yogācāra interpretation of the latter in the Ratnagotravibhāga, buddha nature can refer to either an already fully developed buddha, or the naturally present potential (prakṛtisthāgotra) or natural luminosity of mind, i.e., sentient beings’ ability to become buddhas. While some saw in such positive descriptions of the ultimate only synonyms for the emptiness of mind,[1] or simply teachings of provisional meaning,[2] the Jo nang pas, and many bKa’ brgyud pas and rNying ma pas as well, took them as statements of definitive meaning.[3] Among the latter, i.e., those for whom buddha nature is more than just emptiness, there was disagreement about the relationship between such a positively described buddha nature and its adventitious stains, which include all ordinary states of mind and the world experienced by the latter.
For my analysis of Mi bskyod rdo rje’s view on the relation between buddha nature and its adventitious stains I have chosen his Abhisamayālaṃkāra commentary, the rGan po’i rlung sman,[4] which contains a critical review of ’Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal’s (1392-1481) rGyud gsum gsang ba; the sKu gsum ngo sprod rnam bshad; the Phyag rgya chen po’i sgros ‘bum and Mi bskyod rdo rje’s independent work on gzhan stong, the dBu ma gzhan stong smra ba’i srol legs par phye ba’i sgron me. While these texts have in common that they endorse a robust distinction between buddha nature and the adventitious stains, the respective gzhan stong ("other empty") views underlying this relationship slightly differ, or are not mentioned in explicit terms. The homogeneous clear-cut distinction between impure sentient beings and a pure mind, dharmadhātu, or buddha nature is strikingly similar to what we find in the relevant works of the third Karma pa Rang byung rdo rje (1284-1339).5) Even though Rang byung rdo rje does not explicitly mention the word gzhan stong in his mainly Yogācāra-based presentation of buddha nature, Karma Phrin las pa’s[6] (1456-1539) and Kong sprul Blo gros mtha’ yas’s (1813-1899) description of Rang byung rdo rje as a gzhan stong pa[7] is at least understandable on the grounds that Mi bskyod rdo rje uses this label for a doctrine similar to Rang byung rdo rje’s.[8] In order to further contextualize Mi bskyod rdo rje’s distinction between buddha nature and adventitious stains I have also consulted relevant passages from his commentaries on the Madhyamakāvatāra and the dGongs gcig. (Mathes, introductory remarks, 65–67)
Notes
- This mainly is the position of rNgog Blo ldan shes rab (1059-1109), who claims in his Theg chen rgyud bla’i don bsdus pa, 5b3: "The mental continuum, which has emptiness as its nature, is the [buddha] element (i.e., buddha nature)." (... stong pa nyid kyi rang bzhin du gyur pa’i sems kyi rgyud ni khams yin no). A similar line of thought is followed by the dGe lugs pas, for whom emptiness is what is taught in the doctrine of tathāgatagarbha (see Seyfort Ruegg 1969, 402).
- This is, for example, the position maintained by Sa skya Paṇḍita (1182-1251) and Bu ston Rin chen ‘grub (1290-1364) (Seyfort Ruegg 1973, 29-33).
- For rNgog Blo ldan shes rab and some dGe lugs pas, too, buddha nature has definitive meaning on the grounds that it is a synonym of emptiness (see Mathes 2008:26-27; and Seyfort Ruegg 1969, 402) .
- This is how the author originally referred to his work, even though it appears in the Collected Works in the less irreverent title Sublime Fragrance of the Nectar of Analysis (Higgins and Draszczyk 2016, vol. 1, 12).
- I.e., the Zab mo nang don and its autocommentary, the sNying po bstan pa, the Dharmadhātustava commentary, and the Rang byung rdo rje’i mgur rnams. See Mathes 2008, 51-75.
- See Karma 'Phrin las pa: "Dris lan yid kyi mun sel zhes bya ba lcags mo’i dris lan bzhugs", 91, 1-4. For the Tibetan text and an English translation, see Mathes 2008, 55 & 441.
- See Kong sprul Blo gros mtha’ yas: Shes bya kun khyab mdzod, vol. 1, 460, 2-13.
- The fact that the relation between buddha nature and its adventitious stains is only occasionally labelled gzhan stong by Mi bskyod rdo rje is not very telling, since in his dBu ma gzhan stong smra ma’i srol the main topic is the said relation, and Mi bskyod rdo rje refers to it as gzhan stong merely in the title.
In the course of his monumental work on the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras E. Conze has written: 'It is quite a problem how the Dharma-element which is common to all can be regarded as the source of a variety of "lineages" [gotra]'.[1] It has been the endeavour of the present writer in a series of publications starting in 1968 to shed light on this very fundamental and interesting question. An article in the Festschrift dedicated to the late E. Frauwallner was devoted to the interconnexion between the single, unique and undifferentiated dharmadhātu, the naturally existent spiritual element or germ (prakṛtisthaṃ gotram) and the variously conditioned psycho-spiritual categories (gotra)[2] recognized by the Buddhist texts as explained by Ārya Vimuktisena (ca. 500 ?) and his successor Bhadanta Vimuktisena in their commentaries on the Abhisamayālaṃkāra (i. 37-39), which they correlate with the topics of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā.[3] And shortly afterwards there followed a more detailed study of this question as it relates to the notion of the tathāgatagarbha or buddha-nature in La théorie du tathāgatagarbha et du gotra: Études sur ta sotériologie et la gnoséologie du bouddhisme (Paris, 1969) and Le traité du tathāgatagarbha de Bu ston Rin chen grub (Paris, 1973). In the last publications Haribhadra's commentaries on the Prajñāpāramitā were discussed, and the importance of the doctrine of the One Vehicle (ekayāna), was taken up at some length not only from the point of view of soteriology but also from that of gnoseology
Between the two Vimuktisenas and Haribhadra (fl. c. 750-800) on the one side and the Tibetan exegetes on the other there lived a number of important Indian commentators whose work could be only briefly touched on in the Théorie. Amongst the most important of these later Indian masters of the Prajñāpāramitā are Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta, both of whom have been reckoned by Buddhist doxographers as being, for certain systematic reasons, close to the Svātantrika-Mādhyamika school, and Ratnākaraśānti (first half of the 11th century), a Vijñānavādin (of the Alīkākāravāda branch) who appears to have undertaken a harmonization of the Vijñānavāda and the Madhyamaka in the manner of the synthesizing movements especially characteristic of later Buddhist thought in India.
One of Ratnākaraśānti's main works on the Prajñāpāramitā—the Sārottamā (or Sāratamā ?), a Pañjikā on the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, which until recently was known only by its Tibetan version in the Bstan 'gyur—has now been recovered in an incomplete Sanskrit manuscript. Since the promised publication of this text is awaited with keenest interest by students of this literature, his work must be left for another occasion.[4] The present paper will therefore consider the discussions by Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta of the relation between the gotra, the dharmadhātu, the ekayāna, and the tathāgatagarbha. (Ruegg, "The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā," 283–284)
Notes
- E. Conze, The Large Sūtra on Perfect Wisdom (London 1961), p. 105 note 2. References hereunder to the folios of Tibetan translations of Indian texts contained in the Bstan 'gyur relate to the Peking edition as reproduced in the Japanese reprint published by the Tibetan Tripiṭaka Research Institute (Tokyo and Kyoto). Prints of other editions of the Bstan 'gyur were unfortunately unavailable during the writing of the present paper.
- On the meanings of the term gotra, and in particular on the two meanings '(spiritual) element, germ, capacity' and '(spiritual) lineage, class, category' which might be described respectively as the intensional and extensional meanings of the word when the gotra as germ determines the classification of persons possessing it in a gotra as category, see the present writer's article in BSOAS 39 (1976) p. 341sq.
- "Ārya and Bhadanta Vimuktisena on the gotra-theory of the Prajñāpāramitā," Beitriige zur Geistesgeschichte Indiens (Festschrift fur Erich Frauwallner), WZKSO 12-13 (1968/1969), pp. 303–317.
4. Ratnākaraśānti's other work on the subject, a commentary on the AA entitled Śuddhimatī, (or: Śuddhamatī) will be referred to below.
Read more here . . .
Modern scholarship on the Five Treatises has so far privileged studying the texts of the Five Treatises individually, not giving much importance to the concept of the Five Treatises per se and its consequences on the interpretation of the texts that form it. In the following pages I argue that, on the contrary, the notion of the Five Treatises and the idea that they form a unit is crucial enough for Tibetan interpreters that we cannot fully understand Tibetan interpretations of those texts without taking this into consideration. If we look at the way Tibetan interpreters define the category and how they form their interpretations around it, we come to the conclusion that a study of Tibetan interpretations of individual treatises cannot represent fully the influence of those texts on Tibetan Buddhist literature and thought
In order to establish that claim, having explained the concept of the Five Treatises as a unit and where that unit fits among Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, I will trace its origin and development from the recognition of Maitreya’s authorship of the Treatises to the notion that the Five Treatises form a single work. I will conclude by explaining how the study of the Five Treatises as a whole and of that concept itself allows us to understand things that the study of the texts individually cannot provide. (Turenne, introduction, 215–16)
The idea of dhātu-vāda is thus an integral part of the Critical Buddhism critique and as such merits careful examination in any evaluation of the overall standpoint. Since Matsumoto first found the dhātu-vāda structure in Indian tathāgata-garbha and Yogācāra literature, we need to begin with a look at the texts in question. My approach here will be purely philological and will limit itself to the theoretical treatises (śāstras). (Yamabe, introductory remarks, 193)
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One of the most popular sūtras in China is the Ta-pan nieh-pan ching, the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra translated by Dharmakṣema in 421 A.D. Its doctrine of "universal Buddha-nature" has endeared itself to the Orient so much that it became an axiom of sorts, and any challenge to this doctrine would be seen as a challenge against Mahayana itself. To this day, this sūtra, TPNPC for short, is well received by all major Buddhist schools. The Pali canon preserved its version of the teaching of the Buddha at his parinirvāṇa, great extinction, in the Dighanikaya. The Mahayana tradition's redaction is the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra, of which the Chinese translations alone survive. Prior to Dharmakṣema, Fa-hsien the pilgrim and Buddhabhadra translated a shorter Ta-pan ni-yüan ching in six chapters. This version was based on an earlier Sanskrit text that corresponds now to the first ten chapters of the forty-chaptered TPNC. The texts were unknown to Kumārajīva (d. 413) the Kuchan translator who produced the authoritative Miao-fa lien-hua ching, the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka or Lotus-sūtra. When the TPNPC was known to the Chinese, it was almost immediately crowned as the final, ultimate 'positive'—that is affirming the permanence of the Buddha-nature qua Dharmakāya qua mahā-nirvāṇa—teaching of the Buddha. Even the Lotus-sūtra was placed, both in time and in content, second to it. In the Sui dynasty, however, T'ien-t'ai master Chih'i, establishing the Lotus school, reversed the judgement somewhat.[2] It is in part to uncover the glory that once belonged to the TPNPC that the present essay tries to analyze the initial reception of this sūtra. (Lai, "The Mahāparinirvāṇa-Sūtra and Its Earliest Interpreters in China," 99)
Notes
- The placement of note #1 in the text is unclear in the original. Nevertheless it reads: On the impact of the TPNPC, see Kenneth Ch'en, Buddhism in China (Princeton: Princeton University, 1964), pp. 112-129 or Fuse Kōgaku, Nehanshū no kenkyū, I, II (Tokyo, Sōbun, 1942) and Tokiwa Daijō, Busshō no kenkyū (Tokyo, Meiji, 1944).
- On Chih-i's p'an-chiao, see Leon Hurvitz, "Chih-i," Melanges chinois et Bouddhiques, XII, (Brussells, 1960-62), esp. appendix on p'an-chiao.
It is well recognized by Buddhologists that the Mahāsāṃghika sect arose by a schism from the previously undivided Buddhist saṃgha in the second century after the Buddha's Nirvāṇa (A.N.), leaving the other part of the saṃgha to be called Sthavira. As to precisely when the schism occurred, there was a difference of opinion as to whether it happened as a result of the Second Buddhist Council (about 110 A.N.) over a laxity of Vinaya rules by some monks, or happened later in the century (137 A.N.) over the five theses about Arhats and which occasioned a 'Third Buddhist Council' sponsored by the Kings Nanda and Mahāpadma. There were some other possibilities, as summarized by Nattier and Prebish,[2] who conclude that the schism occurred 116 A.N. over Vinaya rules, while the argument over Arhat attainment provoked a further split within the already existing Mahāsāṃghika sect. It is immaterial for our purposes whether the 'five theses of Mahādeva' downgrading the Arhat occasioned the schism between the Mahāsāṃghikas and the Sthaviras, or whether this downgrading was an internal argument within the Mahāsāṃghika. What is important here is that the downgrading of the Arhat continued into a Mahāyāna scripture called the Śrīmālā-sūtra, and that the five theses are a characteristic of the Mahāsāṃghika, to wit: 1. Arhats are tempted by others, 2. they still have ignorance, 3. they still have doubt, 4. they are liberated by others; and 5. the path is accompanied by utterance. The fifth of these seems explainable by other Mahāsāṃghika tenets, in Bareau's listing:[3] No. 58 'morality is not mental'; No. 59 'morality does not follow upon thought'; No. 60 'virtue caused by a vow increases'; No. 61 'candor (vijñapti) is virtue'; No. 62 'reticence (avijñapti) is immoral.'
Part I of this paper attempts to relate the Śrīmālā-sūtra and the Tathāgatagarbha doctrine to the Mahāsaṃnghika school. Part II discusses the terms dharmatā and svabhāva so as to expose an ancient quarrel. (Wayman, introduction, 35–36)
Notes
- Akira Hirakawa, "The Rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its Relationship to the Worship of Stupas," Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, No. 22, Tokyo, 1963, p. 57.
- Janice J. Nattier and Charles S. Prebish, "Mahāsaṃghika Origins: The Beginnings of Buddhist Sectarianism," History of Religions, 16:3, Feb., 1977, pp. 237, ff.
- André Bareau, Les sectes bouddhiques du Petit Véhicule (École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1955), Chapitre I 'Les Mahâsânghika', pp. 55–74.
Yet the significance of the MPNS goes well beyond that restricted topic, despite its interest to many. For example, when utilized to the fullest, the available textual materials for the MPNS allow unique insights into the creation, development & transmission of Mahāyāna texts in general. Additionally, I believe that the composition of the main elements of the MPNS can be reliably dated to a narrow period from the middle decades to the end years of the 1st century CE, when read in conjunction with the small group of associated texts (the Mahāmegha-sūtra, Mahā-bherī-sūtra and the Aṅgulimālīya-sūtra), due to the specific mention in them of the Sātavāhana ruler Gautamīputra Sātakarṇi in conjunction with the timetable of a dire eschatological prophesy. There would also seem to be biographical details of a certain individual who may have been the founder or author of the MPNS “movement”. In sum, this situation seems to be virtually unique among all Mahāyāna sutras and, if properly understood, should have far-reaching ramifications for the study of the early Mahāyāna movements, for the MPNS may now be taken as a fixed reference point for constructing a relative chronology for many other early Mahāyāna sutras, though with the usual caveats concerning interpolated material. (Hodge, introduction, 1)
The word gotra is frequently used in the literature of Mahāyāna Buddhism to denote categories of persons classified according to their psychological, intellectual, and spiritual types. The chief types usually mentioned in this kind of classification are the Auditors making up the śrāvaka-gotra, the Individual Buddhas making up the pratyehabuddha-gotra, and the Bodhisattvas making up the bodhisattva-gotra.[2] In the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra these three types constitute altogether different gotras, which thus coincide with the three separate Vehicles (yāna) as recognized by the Yogācārin/Vijñaptimātratā, school.[3] To these three some sources add the further category of the undetermined (aniyatagotra), which is made up of persons not yet definitively attached to one of the three preceding classes; and the non-gotra (agotra), that is the category made up of persons who cannot be assigned to any spiritual class.[4] Each of the first three categories is thus comprised of persons capable of achieving a particular kind of maturity and spiritual perfection in accordance with their specific type or class, the Auditor then attaining the Awakening (bodhi) characteristic of the Śrāvaka and so on.[5] Especially remarkable in this connexion, and somewhat anomalous as a gotra, is the non-gotra, i.e. that category of persons who seem to have been considered, at least by certain Yogācārin authorities, as spiritual ‘outcastes’ lacking the capacity for attaining spiritual perfection or Awakening of any kind; since they therefore achieve neither bodhi nor nirvāṇa, they represent the same type as the icchantikas to the extent that the latter also are considered to lack this capacity.[6]
The three gotras mentioned first together with the aniyatagotra and the agotra are discussed chiefly in the Śāstras of the Yogācārins[7] and in the commentaries on the Abhisamayālaṃkāra.[8]
In addition, the gotra functions so to speak as a spiritual or psychological 'gene' determining the classification of living beings into the above-mentioned categories, which may be either absolutely or temporarily different according to whether one accepts the theory that the three Vehicles (yāna) are ultimately and absolutely separate because they lead to the three quite different kinds of Awakening of the Śrāvaka, Pratyekabuddha, and Bodhisattva—namely the extreme triyāna doctrine-or, on the contrary, the theory that the Vehicles are ultimately one because all sentient beings are finally to attain Awakening and buddhahood which are essentially one—in other words the characterized Mādhyamika version of the ekayāna theory.[9]
Notes
- (Note 1 belongs to title): A shortened version of this paper was read before the Indological section of the twenty-ninth International Congress of Orientalists in Paris in July 1973.
The following abbreviations are used.
IBK Indogaku-Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū.
MSA Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra (ed. Lévi).
RGV Ratnagotravibhāga (Sanskrit text ed. E. H. Johnston).
RGVV Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā (Sanskrit text ed. E. H. Johnston).
TGS Tathāgatagarbhasūtra (Tibetan translation in the lHa-sa ed. of the bKa'-'gyur).
Théorie D. Seyfort Ruegg, La théorie du tathāgatagarbha et du gotra (Publications de l'École Française d'Extreme-Orient, LXX, Paris, 1969). - v. Laṅkāvatārasūtra, ed. Nanjō, 2, pp. 63-6, and the other sources quoted in Ruegg, Théorie, 74 f.
- Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra 7.15, 24; cf. Théorie, 73-4.
- Laṅkāvatārasūtra 2, p. 63.
- v. Laṅkāvatārasūtra 2, pp. 63-5; MSABh. 3.2.
- Laṅkāvatārasūtra 2, pp. 65-6; MSABh. 3.11: aparinirvāṇadharmaka. There are two categories of persons not attaining nirvāṇa, those who do not attain it for a certain length of time (tatkālāparinirvāṇadharman) and those who never do so (atyantāparinirvāṇadharman). The theory that some persons are destined never to attain nirvāṇa and buddhahood is considered characteristic of the Yogācārin school, which does not admit the doctrine of universal buddhahood implied by the usual interpretation of the ekayāna theory (see Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra 7.24) and the theory of the tathāgatagarbha present in all sentient beings. (MSA 9.37 does not, it seems, refer to the fully developed tathāgatagarbha theory which is based on three factors—the irradiation of the dharmakāya, the non-differentiation of the tathatā, and the presence of the gotra [see RGV 1.27 f.]—and concerns only the non-differentiation of the tathatā, and the tathāgatatva, which all beings possess as their embryonic essence. Cf. below, n. 50.)
The agotra doctrine to the extent that it assumes a class of spiritual 'outcastes' being evidently incompatible with the tathāgatagarbha theory, the question arises as to the significance of the allusion to persons without a gotra in RGV 1.41. The reference there seems to be to a hypothetical case (opposed to the author's own view expressed before in RGV 1.40-41c), which is not, however, admitted by the author; and the revised reading of pāda 1.41d agotrāṇāṃ na tad yataḥ (cf. L. Schmithausen, WZKS, xv, 1971, 145) 'since this is not so for those without gotra ' makes this interpretation easier (see p. 346). Indeed, according to RGVV 1.41, any allusion to an icchantika who does not attain nirvāṇa is to be interpreted as referring to a certain interval of time (kālāntarābhiprāya) only, and not to a permanent incapacity. On the icchantika cf. D. S. Ruegg, Le traité du tathāgatagarbha de Bu ston Rin chen grub, Paris, 1973, p. 12, n. 1. The aparinirvāṇagotra is also mentioned in RGVV 1.32-3, 1.38, and 1.41, and the aparinirvāṇadharman in 1.41. - cf. MSA, ch. 3; Madhyāntavibhāgabhāṣya and ºṭīkā, 2.1, 4.15-16.
- cf. Théorie, 123 f.
- v. Théorie, 177 f.; MSA 11.53-9; Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīkā 3.1a, 22. On the equivalence of nirvāṇa and buddhahood, see RGV 1.87.
Notes
- CYC pp. 13 and 17 for the term of ch'an-men; pp. 57, 86, 210 and 320 for ch'an-tsung. Compare Sekiguchi Shindaiaa, "Zenshū no hassei." Fukui sensei shōju ki'nen Tōyō shisō ronshü (Tokyo, 1960), pp. 321–338.
- Jan Yūn-hua, "Tsung-mi and his Analysis of Ch'an Buddhism", TP 58 (1972): 1–54; for a detailed study of Tsung-mi, see Shigeo Kamata, Shūmitsu kyōgaku no shisōshi teki kenkyū (Tokyo: Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 1975).
- CYC, pp. 30 and 254.
A brief summary of the content of the work in which Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita unfolds his understanding of the history of Buddhism is as follows. After the title, his homage to buddhas, and a statement of the composition’s purpose, he sets out to give an account of the Three Turnings of the Wheel of the Teaching. Doxographically, the First Turning gives rise to the doctrines of the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika schools of the Lesser Vehicle. The author explains the ultimate truth as conceived by the Vaibhāṣika School, but rejects its atomic theory as being deluded, since it posits the existence of subtlest particles of both matter and cognition. He likewise cannot follow the Sautrāntikas in their assertion of the true existence of external objects. From there, he jumps to the Last Turning, which he deals with until the end of the work, primarily on the basis of quoted scriptures. Among them, those concerning the Mind-Only school focus in on the Three Natures theory, which in turn he disallows, given that a truly existing perceiving subject does not comport with the essencelessness of phenomena. That school, he claims, died out, and their works did not gain entry into Tibet. From there he moves on to the next great figures to arrive on the scene: Nāgārjuna and Asaṅga. He goes on to explain the two modes of Madhyamaka, and contends that though both of them are in fact Mādhyamikas of the Middle Wheel, some biased persons claim Asaṅga for the Mind-Only school. Mādhyamikas, whose doctrine is grounded in the Two Truths, divided into two subschools, the Svātantrikas and Prāsaṅgikas. The former, represented in the Indian tradition by Bhāviveka, accepted the existence of phenomena only on the relative level. The latter, by contrast, represented by Buddhapālita, do not accept phenomena even on the relative level. That was the stage to which the Indian Mādhyamikas developed. Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita identifies his own position as that of a true successor of Indian Buddhism’s Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka. In Tibet, Tsong kha pa (1357-1419) initiated a new approach, whereby the truth was subject to confirmation by means of valid cognition, which led to a tradition of rigorous debate. Extensively citing the Ratnapradīpa of Bhavya (clearly distinguished from the Svātantrika Bhāviveka), which expounds the subtle, inner Madhyamaka of practice, he refutes the use of logic when it comes to ultimate reality. He asserts that the doctrine of mind-only as taught in such works associated with the Last Turning of the Wheels as the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra and the Ghanavyūha-sūtra is the subtle, inner Madhyamaka—and Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Candrakīrti, and Bhavya also taught it as such. He equates it with the Great Madhyamaka of other-emptiness, which he also terms the Great Madhyamaka of definitive meaning. He defends Hwa shang's "abandoning mental engagement," as being the tradition of the instruction of Madhyamaka. The practitioners of Rdzogs chen, he notes, label the doctrine of the Last Turning the "king and creator of all" (kun byed rgyal po), and so he regards Rdzogs chen as the same as the Great Madhyamaka of other-emptiness. Thus, he places Madhyamaka at the summit of the doxographical hierarchy of Buddhist schools as it crystallized in Tibet from its roots in India. He thereby emphasizes that the two modes of emptiness, or two forms of Madhyamaka, that is, self-emptiness and other-emptiness, are in harmony. For Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita, the essence of the Buddhist doctrine, which is the Great Madhyamaka of other¬emptiness, is shared by all Tibetan Buddhist schools, be they Jo nang pas, the early Dge lugs pas, Bka' brgyud pas, Sa skya pas, or Rnying ma pas. He ends by stating that Tantric practice is fundamental to the Great Madhyamaka of other-emptiness, and that it is predicated on the existence of the Buddha-nature—that is, Buddhahood—in every sentient being. (Makidono, preliminary remarks, 77–79)
Notes
2. Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita. Nges don dbu ma chen po'i tshul rnam par nges pa'i gtam bde gshegs snying po'i rgyan. I have used three editions of the text for my translation; see the References. The section headings in the translation have been added.In this paper, which is exploratory in nature, I shall briefly outline these two views and then ask the question of what the psychological or social effects of holding one or other of these views might be. The views I have in mind are expressed in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as the view of self-emptiness and the view of other-emptiness (rangstong and gzhan-stong). (Hookham, "The Practical Implications of the Doctrine of Buddha-nature," 149)
It is the orthodox belief that the MNS teaches that all sentient beings possess the Buddha-nature. Since in the MNS "Buddha-nature" refers to "the nature of the Buddha" and "to possess" the Buddha-nature in the case of sentient beings usually indicates "to have in the future,"[1] this belief amounts to the conviction that the MNS maintains that all sentient beings will achieve Buddhahood someday. This conviction is well attested by the text of the MNS. Thus, we find it clearly expressed in the MNS that "all three vehicles will eventually share the same Buddha-nature":
- Good sons! The same is true of the śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas and bodhisattvas, [all of whom will attain] the same Buddha-nature, in the like manner as [cows of different colours produce] milk [looking the same]. Why is it so? For all of them will [sooner or later] put an end to defilements. However, there are various sentient beings who maintain that Buddhas, bodhisattvas, śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas are different [with respect to their final destiny. [Thus,] there are various śrāvakas and common people who doubt [the teaching] that the three vehicles are not different. These sentient beings will finally come to understand that all three vehicles [will eventually share] the same Buddha-nature. . . .[2]
Those who refuse to accept the tenet that all sentient beings without exception will possess the Buddha-nature are criticized by the MNS as wanting in faith.[3] In the sūtra, this idea of the
universal presence of the Buddha-nature is presented as one of the distinctive themes of Mahāyāna writings[4] as well as among the principal claims to excellence of the MNS itself.[5] It is so highly esteemed that it is described as representing the "essential meaning" (tzu-i) of the Buddha's teaching;[6] and, together with the doctrine of the eternal nature of the Tathāgata, it is said to be definitive (chüeh-ting) and not open to future amendments.[7]
If this thesis of the eventual enlightenment of all sentient beings does indeed constitute the central theme of the MNS, it is strongly qualified by the presence in the sutra of the concept of the icchantika. The term "icchantika" is derived from the Sanskrit root is meaning "to desire," "to wish" and "to long for." This explains the variant Chinese renderings of the term "icchantika" as "a being of many desires" (to-yü), "a being cherishing desires" (lo-yü) and "a being full of greed" (ta-t'an).[8] But in the MNS, the failings attributed to the icchantikas far exceed those which are usually associated with people of such descriptions. In the sūtra, the icchantika is described as "devoid of good roots" [9] and as "the most wicked being."[10] He is depicted as "having no capacity for the [true] Dharma"[11] such that he can never be rehabilitated by the instruction of the Buddha and so will never attain supreme enlightenment. Taken at its face value, this picture of a being condemned forever to spiritual darkness appears to contradict the proposition of the MNS that all sentient beings possess the Buddha-nature and so are destined for Buddhahood, and commentators of the MNS have been hard pressed to find a viable way out of this apparent dilemma.
Notes
- An excellent summary of the positions put forward by the proponents of the idea that buddha-nature is not Buddhist, on the one hand, and criticism of this position, on the other, is found in Hubbard and Swanson, 1997. It is my understanding that the representatives of the so-called Critical Buddhism movement (hihan bukkyō 批判仏教) started out with the aim of reforming certain deplorable states of affairs in Japanese Buddhism, but quickly turned against much of what characterizes the history of Buddhist ideas in India and beyond. Though their immediate aim was thus laudable, the normativity of their approach makes it difficult for a critical scholar of the intellectual history of Buddhism to accept their criticisms.
- The most comprehensive discussion of the scriptures on buddha-nature in India is still Takasaki, 1974.
The seventh Karma pa also influenced the great Sa skya scholar Shākya mchog Idan's later writings. While the seventh Karma pa is remembered as one of the most outstanding masters of the lineage and the founder of the Karma bka' brgyud bshad grwa at Mtshur phu, Shākya mchog Idan is described as "the most influential advocate of the gzhan stong in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries."'"`UNIQ--ref-00000BF9-QINU`"' Both masters are, in their own ways, still sources of the continued presence of an influential type of modified gzhan stong in the Bka' brgyud tradition,'"`UNIQ--ref-00000BFA-QINU`"' distinct from Dol po pa's position.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000BFB-QINU`"' The seventh Karma pa's Rigs gzhung rgya mtsho was studied at all the bshad grwas of the Karma Bka' brgyud tradition, with special emphasis on the first and the third part of the text,'"`UNIQ--ref-00000BFC-QINU`"' while Shākya mchog ldan's writings have played an important role in the 'Brug pa Bka' rgyud bshad grwa tradition of Bhutan.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000BFD-QINU`"'
The well-known motto of Ch'an Buddhism is that "perceiving the true self, one becomes a Buddha." The "true self" signifies the Buddha nature inherent in all sentient beings. The discovering of the "true self" has become the single most important pursuit of the Buddhist, especially in Sino-Japanese Buddhism. On the contrary, early Buddhism teaches that ultimately no substantial self (i.e., 'anatman') can be found, since the self is nothing but the union of the five aggregates. Modern Buddhologists as well as the Buddhists have been intrigued by the inconsistency that one single tradition teaches both that there is no self on the one hand, and that the goal of religious life is to discover the true self, on the other hand.
The big questions concerning these two contradictory doctrines include:
- How did they develop during the course of Buddhist history?
- How can they be reconciled?
- Are these two ideas actually as contradicting as they appear to be?
- Is the concept of the Buddha nature an outcome of the influence of other Indian religious thought upon Buddhism?
It is out of the scope of this short paper to answer all these questions. Therefore, this paper will deal with the antecedent and synonymous concept of the Buddha nature, that is, 'tathagata- garbha' ('ju lai tsang'). Specifically, this paper will examine the meaning and significance of the 'tathagatagarbha' (Buddha nature) based on three 'tathagatagarbha' texts and argue that the 'tathagatagarbha'/Buddha nature does not represent a substantial self ('atman'); rather, it is a positive language and expression of 'sunyata' (emptiness) and represents the potentiality to realize Buddhahood through Buddhist practices. In other words, the intention of the teaching of 'tathagatagarbha'/Buddha nature is soteriological rather than theoretical.
Read more here 4.1.1 The Nirvāṇa Sūtras. Like many other ancient cultures, the Chinese, too, have a concept of a soul or abiding entity that survives the person‘s death. The Chinese word for such an abiding entity is línghún 靈魂. One of ancient China‘s largest and wealthiest temple, built in 328 (Eastern Jin dynasty) by the Indian monk, Huìlǐ 慧理,[1] is called Língyǐn Sì 靈隐寺, the "Temple of the Soul‘s Retreat," belonging to the Chán school, located north-west of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. In its heyday, during the kingdom of Wúyuè guó 吳越國 (907-978) [5.1.2.1], the temple boasted of 9 multi-storey buildings, 18 pavilions, 72 halls, more than 1300 dormitory rooms, inhabited by more than 3000 monks. Many of the rich Buddhist carvings in the Fēilái fēng 飛來峰 grottos and surrounding mountains also date from this era.
The Chinese word for anattā (P) or anātman (Skt) (non-self) is wúwǒ 無我, literally meaning "not-I." There is no Chinese word for not-linghun. As such, although a Chinese Buddhist would intellectually or verbally accept the notion that there is no I (that is, an agent in an action), he would probably unconsciously hold on to the idea of some sort of independent abiding entity or eternal identity, that is, the linghun, which is in effect the equivalent of the brahmanical ātman. The situation becomes more complicated with Mahāyāna discourses, such as the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, that speak of a transcendent Buddhanature as the true self.[2]
Notes
- Not to be confused with Huìlì 慧立/惠立 (615 -?), a Táng monk, who respected the works of Xuánzàng Sānzàng 玄奘三藏, and wrote a biography on him entitled Dàcíēnsì sānzàng fǎshī zhuàn 大慈恩寺三藏法師傳. When Huìlǐ 慧理 came to Hángzhōu in 326, he was drawn to the mountainous ambience as a place of "the soul‘s retreat," and founded Língyŭn monastery there. In the Liáng 梁 dynasty, Wǔdì (武帝, emperor 502-550) who generally had a positive attitude toward Buddhism endowed Língyǐn Temple with rich land properties. Emperor Jiǎnwén (簡文, r 550-552) wrote a report on this donation, one which is titled Cì língyǐnsì tián jì (賜靈隱寺田記 Report Concerning the Donation of Land to Língyǐn Temple). See http://www.buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?97.xml+id(‗b9748-96b1-5bfa‘).
- See Dictionary of Buddhism, sv ātman
exegetical literature connected with the Buddhist Scripture of the
latest and, partly, of the intermediate period is contained in the
5 treatises ascribed to the Bodhisattva Maitreya. These are:—
1) The Sūtrālaṁkāra,
2) " Madhyānta-vibhanga,
3) " Dharma-dharmatā-vibhanga
4) " Abhisamayālaṁkāra, and
5) " Uttaratantra
Of these 5 treatises the original Sanskrit text of the Sutrālaṁkāra has been edited by Prof. Sylvain Levi, who has likewise given a French translation of it. The Sanskrit text of the Abhisamayālaṁkāra and its Tibetan translation have been recently edited by Prof. Th. Stcherbatsky and by myself in the Bibliotheca Buddhica and will be followed by an analysis of the 8 subjects and the 70 topics which form its contents. The 3 other works have not, till now, met with the full appreciation of European scholars. The reason perhaps is that we possess only their Tibetan translations in the Tangyur (MDO XLIV), the original Sanskrit texts having not, up to this time, been discovered. An investigation of this branch of Buddhist literature according to the Tibetan sources enables us to ascertain the exclusive importance of the said 3 treatises as containing, in a very pregnant form, the idealistic and monistic teachings of later Buddhism. In particular the Tibetan works draw our attention to the Uttaratantra, the translation and analysis of which forms the subject-matter of the present work. It is indeed the most interesting of the three, if not of all the five, being the exposition of the most developed monistic and pantheistic teachings of the later Buddhists and of the special theory of the Essence of Buddhahood, the fundamental element of the
Absolute, as existing in all living beings. (Obermiller, introduction, 81–82)The Sutra of Liberation and Breaking the Attributes of the Mind through the Wisdom Stored in the Ocean of Buddha-nature (Foxinghai zang zhihui jietuo po xinxiang jing 佛性海藏智慧解脫破心相經; hereafter: Sutra on the Wisdom Stored in the Ocean of Buddha-nature) is a Chinese apocryphal scripture whose origin is still obscure. For a long time, the sutra was thought to be missing. Following the discovery of the Dunhuang 敦煌 manuscripts and the stone sutras in the Grove of the Reclining Buddha (Wofoyuan 臥佛院; hereafter: the Grove), an overall version of the text can now be restored.
The sutra, consisting of two scrolls, is included in the Taishō edition in the volume on the “sutras in Dunhuang manuscripts whose origins are in doubt 敦煌寫本類疑似部”. The version in the Grove is an incomplete engraving of the first scroll of the sutra. For reasons that still await clarification, the text on wall e in cave 46 reads from left to right. It is preceded on wall d by scroll 22 of the Nirvana Sutra, and followed on wall f by the Diamond Sutra. Neither the author nor the translator of this scripture is mentioned in the Dunhuang and the Grove versions. (Shih-Chung, introductory remarks, 101)
Until now several scholars have dealt with Tibetan texts of the manuscript collection of Tabo monastery in Spiti District, Himachal Pradesh, India.[1] With this short contribution I would like to throw light on the Tabo fragments of one of the Tibetan translations of the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, in Tibetan De bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po'i mdo. l shall focus on the textual characteristics and the relation of the Tabo fragments to the versions of the sūtra contained in the other main Kanjurs. It is strictly to be kept in mind that all conclusions drawn from the presentation of the material and its evaluation can only claim validity for the De bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po'i mdo. My conclusions are not meant to provide a characterization of the Tabo Kanjur in general. Though, regarding the position of the manuscript in the general, Kanjur stemma, there seem to be certain tendencies common to all the texts of the Kanjur found in Tabo and analysed until now, each work should be seen as an individual case. Only when a sufficient number of studies will have been executed and will repeatedly confirm the results shall we be able to draw conclusions of a more general nature. (Zimmermann, introductory remarks, 177)
Notes
- See the studies in East and West 44–1, 1994, and SCHERRER-SCHAUB / STEINKELLNER 1999; further PAGEL 1999: 165–210.
I understand the phrase 'tathagata-garbhaḥ' as the womb that gives birth to tathāgatas, the womb for tathāgatas, which is a conclusion I have arrived by taking into consideration the contents of scriptures down to the Laṅkāvatāra sūtra, as well as the latter's expression, 'garbhas-tathāgatānām' (VI k. la).
Previously I understood the phrase (t. g.) as tathāgata abiding in the womb, which now I find inappropriate because it does not cover the whole phrase, the key-point of which is that the womb is empty of the thick coverings of kleśas.
For the understanding of the phrase t. g. I went through Śākyamuni's life-stories like the Mahāvastu (MV) and the Lalitavistara (LV), the Māyā chapter of the Gaṇḍavyūha (GV), the Śūraṃgama-samādhi sūtra (sss), the Tathāgata-garbha sūtra (TG), the Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra of mahāyāna (MPN), the Śrīmālādevi-siṃhanāda sūtra (SM), and the Laṅkāvatāra sūtra (LS). Now I am certain that it constitutes the core of the philosophy of religion of Buddhism. (Tokiwa, preliminary remarks, 13)
The idea of the tathāgatagarbha was later to form the nucleus of the concept of buddha nature (buddhadhātu) in the Sino-Japanese Buddhist tradition. And concepts of both the tathāgatagarbha and the buddha nature underwent extensive doctrinal development in important Mahāyāna sūtras and influential commentaries. But whereas later treatises generally give a highly philosophical interpretation to the tathāgatagarbha, it is doubtful that any such sophisticated understanding was intended by the author(s) of the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra. In the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra, the concept of the tathāgatagarbha is promulgated primarily to inspire beings with the confidence to seek buddhahood, and to persuade them that despite their poverty, suffering, and bondage to passion, they still have the capacity to attain the ultimate goal of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the perfect enlightenment of the Tathāgata.
The term tathāgatagarbha has often been translated by Western scholars as "matrix of the tathāgata," but "matrix" does not exhaust the wide range of meanings of the Sanskrit term garbha. The author of the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra seems to have been well aware of this, since he employs many of these different meanings of garbha in the various similes with which he illustrates the meaning of the tathāgatagarbha. In its most common usage, garbha means "womb," and the eighth simile of the sūtra likens the tathāgatagarbha to an impoverished, vile, and ugly woman who bears a noble, world-conquering king in her womb. But garbha can also mean "fetus," so the garbha in the eighth simile may also refer to the son who is within her womb. Garbha can also refer to the calyx of a flower, the cuplike leafy structure that enfolds the blossom, and the image in the sūtra's opening scene of conjured buddha forms seated within lotus flowers seems to be predicated on this meaning. Garbha can also mean "inner room," or "hidden chamber," or "sanctuary" (as in the garbhagṛha of a Hindu temple, which houses the image of the deity, or the rounded dome [garbha] of a Buddhist stūpa, which houses the precious relics of the Buddha). It is probably this meaning of garbha that the author of the sūtra intends in the fifth simile of the sūtra, when he speaks of the tathāgatagarbha as being like a hidden chamber or a secret store of treasure hidden beneath the house of a poor man. (The Chinese may have had this simile in mind when they chose the term tsang, "secret store," to translate garbha). Garbha can also refer to the outer husk that covers a fruit or seed or, by extension, to the seed itself. The third and sixth similes of the sūtra, which compare the tathāgatagarbha to the useless husk surrounding an edible kernel of wheat and to the mango pit that can grow into the most regal of trees, make direct use of this sense. Finally, garbha can refer to the inside, middle, or interior of anything, and it is this widest meaning that the author of the sūtra is employing when he likens the tathāgatagarbha to gold hidden inside a pit of waste, to honey hidden inside a swarm of angry bees, or to a golden statue hidden inside a wrapping of dirty rags or within a blackened mold.
The majority of the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra's similes portray something extremely precious, valuable, or noble (such as buddhas, honey, kernels of wheat, gold, treasure, golden statues, or future princes), contained within something abhorrent and vile (such as rotting petals, angry bees, useless husks, excrement, poor hovels, dirty rags, soot-covered molds, and impoverished, ugly women). So the central meaning of the tathāgatagarbha concept is clear: within each and every person there exists something extremely valuable—the possibility of becoming a tathāgata—but that valuable potential for buddhahood is hidden by something vile—the sufferings and passions and vicissitudes of life. But to carry the interpretation further and to look for a deeper meaning to the tathāgatagarbha concept of this early text would probably be wrong, for when one looks more closely at the various similes used to illustrate the tathāgatagarbha, certain inconsistencies begin to emerge. For example, although most of the similes portray the precious reality within as something already complete in itself, two of the similes clearly indicate that the precious reality will only reach its perfected state in the future. The conjured buddhas within the lotus flowers are already fully enlightened, the honey and the wheat kernel are already edible, the gold in the waste pit is already pure and in no need of refinement, and the golden statues are already fully cast, whereas, by contrast, it will take many years for the embryo in the poor woman's womb to become a world conqueror, and more years still for the mango pit to become a full-grown tree. (Grosnick, "The Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra," 92–93)