The doctrine of buddha-nature—the innate enlightened nature of mind—is found in all Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions, but explaining what that really means differs considerably across traditions.[1] All Mahāyāna traditions also teach that because all phenomena arise in dependence on other phenomena they are empty of any special nature. How to describe that emptiness and what it means for the Buddhist practitioner, however, is a matter of considerable disagreement and often defines key differences between traditions. Whereas Indian Yogācāra masters use positive language to describe the mind and the true nature of reality, in the ancient Indian Madhyamaka school of Nāgārjuna and his disciples, negative language is used to describe reality. "Because there are no phenomena that are not dependently arisen," Nāgārjuna wrote, "there are no phenomena that are not empty."[2] Thus while buddha-nature is generally accepted in Yogācāra, in Madhyamaka it is considered either provisionally (that is, not literally) true or as a synonym for emptiness.
Buddha-nature is a central doctrine in most East Asian Buddhist traditions with the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, a Chinese composition that introduced the concepts of original enlightenment and actualized enlightenment, as one of the most influential Buddhist scriptures. Original enlightenment refers to the fundamental nature of mind obscured by temporary stains, while the actualised state 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 accepted buddha-nature, as did the tantric Shingon school in Japan, although they differ in terms of approaches and significance they attribute to these teachings. Dōgen, one of the founders of Japanese Zen, taught that meditation is practiced not to attain enlightenment but to express one's innate enlightenment. This is expressed in the famous Zen proverb "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." That is, if you think that the Buddha is someone or somewhere else, you're wasting your time; destroy that idea and realize your own innate enlightenment. In Pure Land there remains some disagreement, with some sects arguing that ordinary beings do not have buddha-nature but only acquire it upon being saved by the Buddha Amitābha and being born in the Pure Land.
Among dominant Tibetan and Himalayan traditions of Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu, and Geluk, which are better understood as transmission lineages, there is a wide range of understanding and practical application of buddha-nature. Buddha-nature in Tibet is a common topic of debate and discourse, two points being whether buddha-nature teachings are provisional or definitive and whether buddha-nature is simply another word for emptiness or an innate nature with its own qualities. These conversations began in India but took on new life in Tibet through the analytic and meditative traditions of Ratnagotravibhāga exegesis. The analytic tradition largely relies on strict Madhyamaka presentations of emptiness and rejects any attempt to describe ultimate reality with positive characteristics. The meditative tradition encompasses a wide body 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. Great detail can be found on these positions and their counterparts throughout this website.
In the emerging Buddhist traditions of America and Europe, most Buddhist follow the tradition they received from Asia while some of them opt for a more eclectic approach to teachings and practices. Almost all of them embrace buddha-nature as a core tenet, explicitly or otherwise. Among those adopting the eclectic approach, Jack Kornfield, for example, has a teaching series called "Your Buddha Nature" and leads retreats on the topic. Sharon Salzberg uses the practice of loving kindness and mindfulness, through her Metta Hour series, to realise buddha-nature, the highest potential. 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 Tibetan Dzogchen and Zen with the Theravada Vipassanā tradition of the Burmese, Thai, and Bengali teachers that formed the major part of his training. Goldstein puts forward buddha-nature (or its synonyms) as the definition of wisdom in his One Dharma synthesis. He writes,
"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."[3]
- The doctrine of buddha-nature in its full form was not present in early Buddhism and is not accepted by most contemporary Asian Theravada Buddhist traditions. In mainstream Theravada, consciousness is one of the five aggregates, the conditioned aspects of existence which are left behind upon the attainment of 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 hinder one's progress on the path: "If you assume that the mind is basically good, you'll feel capable but will easily get complacent." See "Freedom from Buddha Nature," para. 18–19, dhammatalks.org. 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, nondual awareness, and that it continues to exist in nirvāṇa.
- Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XXIV, 19
- Joseph Goldstein, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 4. See this book on the publisher's site.
