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Your Buddha-Nature

Buddha-nature is the teaching that all people are fundamentally good. We have no "original sin" or any sort of imperfection that we need to rid ourselves of or transform. All our failings are actually the result of mistaken perceptions of our own experiences and of the world around us.

Everything Is Buddhanature

By casting off that ignorance we can come to realize our natural state, which is buddha-nature. This not only frees us from our own petty concerns, it also opens us up to a compassion for all beings through which we are liberated from suffering.

What Then?

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

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The Questions

What is Buddha-Nature?

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

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

Not all Buddhist traditions are comfortable with language that describes buddha-nature as the mind's fundamental state, suspecting that such descriptions promote the idea that buddha-nature is some kind of abiding individual self. The Buddha, of course, famously taught that such an idea of a self is wrong, a delusion we create but which causes us suffering. However, buddha-nature is not taught as an individual self, but more like the natural characteristic of mind, akin to wet being the natural characteristic of water. Some Buddhist philosophers have rejected buddha-nature simply because it uses positive language. They maintain that ultimate reality cannot be described by language, because language is limited by dualism (self and other, good and bad, and so forth), whereas the ultimate is nondual. Such philosophers will only say what the ultimate is not—not permanent, not individualistic, not ignorant, and so forth. The limitations of such a position for teaching about experience are obvious; how can one describe anything without language? Still others have argued that buddha-nature is misguided because it undermines the drive to improve ourselves, as though we must think of ourselves as bereft of good qualities in order to become better people.

In Indian and Tibetan traditions philosophers have also debated whether buddha-nature is a teaching to take literally, or if it was meant to promote and encourage the student to move in the right direction. Early scriptural evidence in fact points to the provisional interpretation: buddha-nature was offered to help those who were discouraged by the difficult philosophical teachings of emptiness or by the daunting project of attaining enlightenment. Most teachers, however, take the position that the mind's natural luminosity is self-evident, and need not be explained as a rhetorical trick. They maintain that if the mind were not already enlightened by nature, then enlightenment would have to be produced. This would contradict the definition of ultimate reality—that is, nirvāṇa—as unproduced and unconditioned.

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What is buddha-nature?

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The Traditions

The Questions

Are buddha-nature teachings controversial?

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

Is buddha-nature the same as a self our soul?

One of the most common questions about buddha-nature is whether it is the same, or similar, to the Christian or Hindu notions of a soul. It is not. Buddha-nature is not an individual entity—there are not separate buddha-natures in each being. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that each person's soul exists independently and will survive that person's death. There is plenty of debate across traditions, but in general the soul is said to be fundamentally polluted by Original Sin, and that it requires god's intervention to be saved. The Hindu ātman is similarly understood to be real, but only in the sense of partaking in a universal divine presence called Brahmā, while the individuality of the ātman is believed to be illusory.

Buddha-nature, in contrast to both of these ideas, is neither individualistic or a manifestation of a divine presence. Rather it is the basic faculty of awareness—a natural luminosity that is unchanged no matter how ignorant or benighted we are. It is like water that has been muddied; the water is fundamentally clear, and will return to that state when left to settle. Or like a cloudy sky, the clarity of which remains constant even as clouds pass through. Buddha-nature is not something belonging to an individual, but is rather a basic characteristic of having a mind. Because buddha-nature is not dependent on or affected by anything, it is fundamentally pure, no different from the enlightened state of a buddha. For that reason we all have the potential to cast off ignorance and suffering and achieve buddhahood, and are solely responsible ourselves for doing so.

What does it mean if we did not have buddha-nature?

Most teachers would say that without buddha-nature we are not guaranteed liberation or enlightenment. The doctrine of buddha-nature is the codification of the idea that all people are capable of attaining the same enlightenment that the Buddha attained. Some teachers, however, in the Theravada Buddhist community, say that not having buddha-nature is the motivating factor to pursuing liberation. If we already had it, they argue, we wouldn't be inspired to pursue it.

Are buddha-nature teachings supposed to be taken literally?

Not all Buddhists have accepted buddha-nature as a literal teaching. Some proponents of buddha-nature classify the teaching as "provisional," meaning a teaching of practical value that is not literally true. They argue that it is useful for motivating people who might otherwise become discouraged by the seeming difficulty of the Buddhist Path. Such teachers argue that buddha-nature cannot be taken as "definitive"—that is, literally—because, they argue, reality cannot be accurately described by language. Language is inherently dualistic, and only the ignorant perceive reality dualistically. We think "self and other," "good and bad," and so forth, thinking these are real things in the world. An enlightened buddha does not. Rather, a buddha perceives all things as dependent on everything else and in constant flux. So, to say that buddha-nature exists is to use dualistic language to describe something that is beyond the reach of language. Therefore, for many Buddhist philosophers, it can not be taken literally.

Not all Buddhists worry so much about the pitfalls of language, and some respond by pointing out only buddha-nature theory can solve a philosophical paradox of enlightenment. Enlightenment is by definition unconditioned, meaning it is not dependent on anything else. If that is the case, then it cannot be produced from a state of unenlightenment, because it would then be dependent on causes and conditions. So it must somehow already exist: buddha-nature. Thus many teachers maintain that buddha-nature is taught to be a literal teaching of the Buddha, and that it is universal and innate to all beings with a mind, including both human beings and animals.

Does Theravada Buddhism or modern Vipassana include buddha-nature teachings?

No and Yes. In mainstream Theravada consciousness is one of the five aggregates, the conditioned aspects of existence which are left behind upon attaining nirvāṇa. The notion of a mind that exists apart from the aggregates, which is primordially pure and somehow innately enlightened, would be heretical to most Theravada Buddhists. As the contemporary Western Theravadin teacher Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu has written, "the Buddha never advocated attributing an innate nature of any kind to the mind—good, bad, or Buddha." Not only are the buddha-nature teachings not true, he continues, but they are a hindrance to the progress on the path: "If you assume that the mind is basically good, you’ll feel capable but will easily get complacent." This is not a universal view; the Thai Forest tradition that began at the turn of the Twentieth Century espouses the view that the mind is "luminous" in the sense of being innately pure, non-dual awareness, and that it continues to exist in nirvāṇa. And the concept of buddha-nature is taught by most contemporary Western Vipassana teachers, although philosophically this has not yet been fully drawn out.

What is buddha-nature?

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The Traditions

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The Traditions

The doctrine of buddha-nature—the innate enlightened nature of mind—is found in all Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions. It was not present in early Buddhism and is not accepted by most contemporary Asian Theravada Buddhist traditions.

All Mahāyāna traditions teach that because all phenomena arise in dependence on other phenomena they are empty of any self-nature. How to describe that emptiness is, however, a matter of considerable disagreement. There were two main philosophical traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India, known as Madhyamaka, meaning "Middle Way" and Yogācāra, meaning "The Practice of Discipline (yoga)." Although buddha-nature seems to have developed outside of either of these schools, both eventually adopted the teaching. Madhyamaka was primarily concerned with language, and Yogācāra with the nature of mind. In general Madhyamaka philosophers rejected any use of positive language to describe reality and so were suspicious of buddha-nature, tending to view it as a "provisional" teaching, meaning one that is not literally true. The reputed founder of the school, Nāgārjuna, wrote, "because there are no phenomena that are not dependently arisen, there are no phenomena that are not empty." That was understood to include buddha-nature as well as everything else. Yogācāra philosophers, on the other hand, believed that consciousness existed and could be described with language, and so were willing to adopt buddha-nature as a definitive teaching.

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

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

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

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

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The History

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People have engaged with buddha-nature teachings since they first were taught. The Buddha is said to have given as sermons a core group of buddha-nature scriptures, collectively known as the buddha-nature sūtras, which first laid out the doctrine. Since then, teachers have expanded on these to create a vast corpus of literature in Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and later other Asian and then Western languages.

The first commentary on the buddha-nature sūtras is known as the Ratnagotravibhāga. We do not know for sure who its author was, but there are several theories. According to Chinese tradition the author was named Sāramati, a member of the kṣatriya clan from central or northern India. A northern Indian named Ratnamati is said to have gone to China from Madhyadeśa between 498 and 508 and translated the Ratnagotravibhāga between 511 and around 520 in the city of Luoyang. He may or may not have brought the manuscript with him, and may have been assisted by Bodhiruci, another famous Indian translator.

Later Indian and Central Asian traditions, however, holds that the Ratnagotravibhāga was written by Maitreya—either a man by that name or the bodhisattva. In the Tibetan tradition it is believed that the Bodhisattva Maitreya revealed the root verses of the treatise to the fourth-century founder of Yogācāra, Ārya Asaṅga, who then composed the prose commentary. It was translated into Tibetan by six different teams, including Atiśa Dīpaṃkara by Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab, who worked with his Indian teacher Sajjana. Many of the greatest Tibetan philosophers have written commentaries, including Ngok Lotsāwa, Pakpa Lodro Gyeltsen, the Third Karmapa, Dolpopa, Gyeltse Tokme, Gyeltsabje, Bodong Paṇchen, Go Lotsāwa, Śākya Chokden, Tāranātha, Jamgon Kongtrul, and Mipam, to name only a few masters from all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.

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

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

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What is it?

The History

The seeds of buddha-nature teachings were planted in some of the earliest Buddhist scriptures. Passages such as this one, from the Aṅguttaranikāya Sutta -- "Luminous, monks, is this mind, but sometimes it is defiled by adventitious defilements"-- suggest a natural state that is only temporarily obscured by the stains of saṁsāra. Buddhism before the rise of the Mahāyāna, however, had little use for such a notion, focused as it was on the long and arduous transformation of deluded sods into enlightened beings.

Only in the early centuries of the Common Era did scriptures teaching buddha-nature begin to circulate and gain attention. These were the so-called buddha-nature scriptures, such as the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, and the Śrīmaladevisūtra. Drawing on Mahāyāna doctrine of the unity of saṁsāra and nirvāṇa, and the recasting of the Buddha has an universal principle of enlightened mind, they taught that enlightenment is an essential factor of the human existence. Rather than be transformed into a buddha, these scriptures taught that one need only reveal one's true nature to become free.

The buddha-nature teachings spread to China starting in the fifth century where it inspired the composition of the Awakening of Faith and the Chinese doctrines such as original enlightenment and sudden enlightenment, becoming part of the standard doctrine of all East Asian Buddhist traditions. Tibetans knew of buddha-nature theory as early as the seventh century, but the teachings spread widely only in the eleventh century, following the translation of the Ratnagotravibhāga, a fifth-century Indian treatise.

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