In Mahayana, Buddha-nature is the Universe Itself

[Coemgenu]

Regarding the Chinoiserie or Tiāntāi specificity of what I said: I have it on good faith that you will have a very hard time finding a Tibetan who will reject the above when contextualized.

There is no such thing as pure and impure. There is no difference between samsara and nirvana. There is no difference between the awareness of a Buddha and an ordinary being. All of these things are argued by the Mahāyāna.

Regarding the “universe” being Buddha-nature: I think of the Sabbasutta. The universe is illuminated by your mind. The universe is in your mind. That is what, IMO, the teachers alluded to in the OP mean. It is similar to the famous phrase from Zen: there is no Buddha apart from the mind.

[Javier]

I think you’re over simplifying it. For example in TB Buddha nature is either “other empty” or “self empty”. Other empty means that it is empty of all things that are not Nirvana. The idea of interconnectedness does not arise in TB.

With regards to the universe thing, sure if you interpret it in a phenomenological sense you could say that, but I am not sure that phenomenological explanation is de rigeour in all of Mahayana. Many, for example cittamatra, mean it quite literally as idealism.

Either way, you can see how this can easily devolve into philosophical squabbling which does nothing to help one on the Path.

[Coemgenu]

If I may disagree, my apologies, from my perspective, I’m not getting phenomenological only. From the beginning, I said, skandhas, sense gates, and sense realms. All three of them, not only two.

[Kensho]

Another common misconception of Mahayana doctrine is in regard to the eternality of the Buddha, which does not refer to Shakyamuni Buddha as a historical person. Nagarjuna and others made clear that the Buddha, in entering final Nirvana, is beyond existence and non-existence, just as the Buddha described in the Pali scriptures:
https://dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=Nibbana#Nagarjuna

What is eternal is the Dharma-body of the Buddha, which is the one and the same Dharma-body in all buddhas, that all buddhas share:

Enough, Vakkali! What is there to see in this vile body? He who sees Dhamma, Vakkali, sees me; he who sees me sees Dhamma. Truly seeing Dhamma, one sees me; seeing me one sees Dhamma.
Vakkali Sutta: Vakkali

The Dharma-body is also referred to as the Buddha-nature in all beings, our innate potential for enlightenment. In the Lotus Sutra, for example, the Buddha says that all other buddhas are a manifestation of himself. This is in reference to the Dharma-body of the Buddha, rather than Shakyamuni as a particular historical person.

A common phrase in Mahayana Buddhism is that there is no Buddha outside the mind. This means that if you are looking for the Buddha, as in the historical Buddha who passed away into Nirvana 2,500 years ago, you will not find him. The living Buddha is the Buddha within your own body and mind, waiting to be awakened as your own Buddha-nature.

The celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas, such as Amitabha and Avalokitesvara, are symbolic of our own Buddha-nature and the Dharma-body in all things, rather than literal historical persons like Shakyamuni Buddha.

The Eternal Buddha, the Dharma-body, is an eternal principle rather than a personal being.

[Charlie]

@Kensho

One can easily fall into a sectarian trap which looks at the different terminology used in Mahayana Buddhism as a reason to believe that it’s entirely divorced from the Buddha’s original teachings.

Yes. Absolutely. The key to Buddha’s teaching is that it points to a certain type of practice. Traversing the path is what does the job. Any teaching that puts one on the proper path is a functional equivalent. Obviously Mahayana is textually different. But to assume they are not effectively the same from a path and fruition perspective solely based on textual differences is like saying two fingers are not pointing in the same direction because the fingerprints don’t match.

[Kensho]

@Charlie

@Kensho

One can easily fall into a sectarian trap which looks at the different terminology used in Mahayana Buddhism as a reason to believe that it’s entirely divorced from the Buddha’s original teachings.

Yes. Absolutely. The key to Buddha’s teaching is that it points to a certain type of practice. Traversing the path is what does the job. Any teaching that puts one on the proper path is a functional equivalent. Obviously Mahayana is textually different. But to assume they are not effectively the same from a path and fruition perspective solely based on textual differences is like saying two fingers are not pointing in the same direction because the fingerprints don’t match.

Yes, they are both like a finger pointing at the moon.

@llt

Here it’s useful to know some background about this simile, because most people who are into Zen also mistakenly think it’s a Zen thing. It’s not really a Zen thing, although it was picked up by Zen. It’s actually a simile from Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism that appeared in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, and it is not about sectarianism.

[Coemgenu]

@Kensho

What is eternal is the Dharma-body of the Buddha

To be fair, though, the eternity of the dharmakāya is like my grandfather’s ax, rather than “properly eternal”.

To illustrate:

This is my grandfather’s axe, I tell you, handed down to me through my father’s line. I got this axe when my father died when I was 21. I used it all my life to make a living. Over time, the head had to be replaced, of course. And at one point, the handle got a chip in it, and that had to get replaced to, but this is my grandfather’s axe, I tell you.

[Kensho]

@Coemgenu

@Kensho

What is eternal is the Dharma-body of the Buddha

To be fair, though, the eternity of the dharmakāya is like my grandfather’s ax, rather than “properly eternal”.

To illustrate:

This is my grandfather’s axe, I tell you, handed down to me through my father’s line. I got this axe when my father died when I was 21. I used it all my life to make a living. Over time, the head had to be replaced, of course. And at one point, the handle got a chip in it, and that had to get replaced to, but this is my grandfather’s axe, I tell you.

How does that relate to the Dharmakaya as described in the sutras and commentaries?

The Dharma-body isn’t an individual entity, passed down from Buddha to Buddha. It’s instead the true nature of reality itself:

The dharmakaya is the Absolute; the essence of the universe; the unity of all things and beings, unmanifested.

The dharmakaya is beyond existence or nonexistence, and beyond concepts. The late Chogyam Trungpa called the dharmakaya “the basis of the original unbornness.”
The Dharmakaya, or Truth Body of the Buddha

Dharmakaya is just another way of describing the Buddha-nature in all things and beings:

The Dharma body is the same as the intrinsic, pure Buddha nature that resides in all things everywhere. The deluded self can find peace when it understands that it inherently possesses Buddha nature, that this nature pervades all things. Our wish to find what is real and permanent can only be resolved by attaining the Dharma body.
Hsingyun.org

In other words, Dharmakaya is samsara and Nirvana when seen as a whole, rather than as separate from each other, since Dharmakaya is the body of all reality.

[Coemgenu]

@Kensho

The Dharma-body isn’t an individual entity, passed down from Buddha to Buddha. It’s instead the true nature of reality itself

But it is. It is definitely ‘one’. There is only ‘one’ awakening. Which has to be realized by someone. By that Buddha it is passed down to. By me. By you. Otherwise it’s just “reality”. “Out there”. Not relevant. IMO, at least.

[Kensho]

@Coemgenu

@Kensho

The Dharma-body isn’t an individual entity, passed down from Buddha to Buddha. It’s instead the true nature of reality itself

Which has to be realized by someone. By that Buddha it is passed down to. By me. By you. Otherwise it’s just “reality”. “Out there”. Not relevant. IMO, at least.

I can agree with that. I believe that true Zen masters are enlightened, passing it down from generation to generation.

[Coemgenu]

@Kensho

I can agree with that.

And that statement is what I meant by referring to my grandfather’s axe. Me. You. The ascetic Gautama. That is the permanence of my grandfather’s axe. Not proper straightforward persistence at all. The head got replaced, the handle got replaced, but this is my grandfather’s axe.

Buddha-nature. The topic of the thread, I suppose.

The Mahāyāna, historically, has had to deal with different heretical tendencies than contemporary Theravāda, much moreso, I can imagine, than the Buddhadharma of the EBTs. I speculate such based on chronology alone.

With this in mind, I see Buddha-nature as an attempt, by the Mahāyāna, to subvert it’s own tendencies towards reification and objectification of emptiness. If there are any latent potentialities for slippery slopes within Mahāyāna, IMO, it is the hypostatization of emptiness that is foremost.

[Kensho]

@Coemgenu

With this in mind, I see Buddha-nature as an attempt, by the Mahāyāna, to subvert it’s own tendencies towards reification and objectification of emptiness.

There have been teachers who say that Buddha-nature is a way of describing emptiness in more positive terms:

According to Heng-Ching Shih, the tathāgatagarbha/Buddha-nature does not represent a substantial self (ātman). Rather, it is a positive language expression of emptiness (śūnyatā), which emphasizes the potentiality to realize Buddhahood through Buddhist practices. The intention of the teaching of tathāgatagarbha/Buddha nature is soteriological rather than theoretical.[72]

Paul Williams puts forward the Madhyamaka interpretation of the Buddha-nature as emptiness in the following terms:
… if one is a Madhyamika then that which enables sentient beings to become buddhas must be the very factor that enables the minds of sentient beings to change into the minds of Buddhas. That which enables things to change is their simple absence of inherent existence, their emptiness. Thus the tathagatagarbha becomes emptiness itself, but specifically emptiness when applied to the mental continuum.[111]
Buddha-nature - Wikipedia

I agree with this in the sense that realizing Buddha-nature is one and the same as realizing non-self or the emptiness of the self.

As explained by Dogen and other Zen masters, realizing one’s Buddha-nature is simply the same as realizing emptiness, that you are not separate or ultimately distinct from the whole of reality. Because of dependent origination, all things are dependent on everything else.

[Coemgenu]

@Kensho

According to Heng-Ching Shih, the tathāgatagarbha/Buddha-nature does not represent a substantial self (ātman). Rather, it is a positive language expression of emptiness (śūnyatā), which emphasizes the potentiality to realize Buddhahood through Buddhist practices.

Indeed. Since we are on a board catering towards EBT studies, this brings up perhaps the most controversial and problematic piece of Mahāyāna Buddhavacana, in light of the above framing of “positive expressions of emptiness”:

迦葉菩薩白佛言：「世尊！我從今日始得正見。世尊！自是之前，我等悉名邪見之人。
Mahākāśyapa Bodhisattva asked the Buddha to speak: "Bhagavān! I from today start in obtaining samyagdṛṣṭi. Bhagavān! Until now, we all entirely abided in mithyādṛṣṭi.

世尊！二十五有，有我不耶？」
Bhagavān! In the twenty five existences, is there ātman definitely?

佛言：「善男子！我者即是如來藏義。一切眾生悉有佛性，即是我義。
The Buddha said: "Kulaputra! Ātman, prompt and exact, is Tathāgatagarbha in meaning. All sentient beings in entirety have the Buddha’s nature, prompt and exact, ātman is it’s meaning.

如是我義，從本已來，常為無量煩惱所覆，是故眾生不能得見。
Thus so ātman’s meaning is, from root proceeding onwards, constantly without limit under kleśāḥ covered, therefore sentient beings cannot obtain sight of it.

-Mahāyānaparinirvāṇasūtra

A fair many decided that this was too far, I imagine, when this vaipulya obtained prominence.

[Dhammanando]

@Kensho

The Buddha told the parable of the blind men and the elephant, and any Buddhist who is also a blind sectarian probably didn’t learn anything from it

If this is aimed at me, then I would reply that it’s in nowise “sectarian” to state that paṭiccasamuppāda in the suttas is a teaching concerned solely with how dukkha arises, and how it can be made to cease, and is not a metaphysics of universal interconnectedness. It’s not sectarian to state this for it appears to have been the shared and uncontested understanding of all of Indian Buddhism’s “eighteen” schools. What might well be sectarian, however, would be to privilege and treat as normative an eccentric 4th century Chinese interpretation based on a 1st century apocryphal sūtra.

And so to continue with the Nānātitthiyasutta’s elephant simile (Ud6.4)…

Studying the suttas that treat of paṭiccasamuppāda and taking them to be concerned with dukkha and its cessation is as if a normal-sighted man were to behold an elephant and perceive it as an elephant.

Studying those same suttas and mistaking paṭiccasamuppāda for a doctrine of universal interconnectedness is as if a normal-sighted but mentally deranged man were to behold an elephant but hallucinate that it’s a lawnmower.

Merely trusting that paṭiccasamuppāda is a doctrine of universal interconnectedness upon the authority of a fringe Mahayana school, without bothering to study the relevant EBTs at all, is as if a blind man were to be hoodwinked into purchasing a lawnmower by an unscrupulous elephant-dealer who tells him that it’s an elephant.

[Coemgenu]

@Kensho

As explained by Dogen and other Zen masters, realizing one’s Buddha-nature is simply the same as realizing emptiness, that you are not separate or ultimately distinct from the whole of reality.

At the same time, this brings up the tendencies I spoke up with regards to the reification of emptiness in the Mahāyāna, which all of the great Mahāyāna masters have recognized and spoke of, IMO in the very least:

When the first type of fool hears that “all dharmas are reducible to the neither defiled nor non-defiled,” they take it to mean that all dharmas are inseparable from emptiness and that even if one were to traverse the entire universe, everywhere would be the same suchness [i.e. emptiness] as that found here as the suchness of, for example, this vase.

-Ven Śr Zhìyǐ, 法華玄義 (The Dharma Flower’s Profound Meaning), Taishō 33.703a, citing the Mahāprajñāpāramitāsūtra Scroll 6, Ch 15, v 0561b20: “故一切法趣[…]”

You will have to forgive Ven Zhìyǐ for his harsh wording, and I was in no way directing this towards you, but this was brought to mind in relation to what I mentioned before with regards to how you phrased what you said.

[laurence]

@Kensho

Supreme and complete enlightenment, because it is impermanent, is the Buddha nature.

How is supreme and complete enlightenment impermanent? Does this mean the Buddha attained enlightenment but it is impermanent, hence, he returned to his earlier condition after a period of time? There is a Mahayana doctrine like this - that Arahants eventually fall-out of their realisation and return to samsaric existence to practice the Bodhisattva path. I wonder if Dogen had something like this in mind?

[laurence]

innate potential? or, just a possibility that emerges given the right causes and supportive conditions? innate would suggest something inherent that exists in a sentient being that can be realised or brought to fruition. like a seed that has the potential to grow into something beautiful - liberation. i think the language of Buddha-Nature may be a consequence of our all-to-human tendency to mistake the metaphorical for the real?

[Coemgenu]

@laurence

There is a Mahayana doctrine like this - that Arahants eventually fall-out of their realisation and return to samsaric existence to practice the Bodhisattva path.

It’s not quite like that. The dispensation of the EBTs does not have to deal with the issue of rival dispensations of Buddhadharma. As such, it is free to declare what it declares as the teaching of the ascetic Gautama and it is safe in knowing that there is only one ascetic Gautama.

Mahāyāna develops inside of an already extant, flourishing, and extremely diverse Buddhist world (which is about to become much more diverse).

Mahāyāna had an issue to deal with that the dispensation of the EBTs did not: how to address and deal with rival Buddhadharma dispensations, be them Sarvāstivāda, Sautrāntika, or whatnot.

Some of the early Mahāyāna Buddhavacana has arhats at a sort-of ‘dead-end’ in saṃsāra forever. Other Mahāyāna Buddhavacana has the arhats ultimately liberated as Buddhas, which, unfortunately, has them practicing bodhisattvaśīla, albeit at a profoundly high level, and in the dispensation of a profound master.

Which is better? Condemnation or backhanded salvation?

[Kensho]

@Coemgenu

@Kensho

As explained by Dogen and other Zen masters, realizing one’s Buddha-nature is simply the same as realizing emptiness, that you are not separate or ultimately distinct from the whole of reality.

At the same time, this brings up the tendencies I spoke up with regards to the reification of emptiness in the Mahāyāna…

There is a section on Dogen’s understanding of Buddha-nature in Mahayana Buddhism, The Doctrinal Foundations:
http://www.khamkoo.com/uploads/9/0/0/4/9004485/mahayana_buddhism_-_the_doctrinal_foundations_second_edition.pdf

I am sorry if I am not explaining it properly.

[Coemgenu]

@Kensho

I am sorry if I am not explaining it properly.

I think that what you said can have it’s place, when viewed from a certain perspective, but I think that many people here may be unfamiliar with that way of looking at things.

On terms of Buddha-nature “being” the universe, I can agree with that on certain terms. The world, experienced by these very minds, is the very same world that was experienced by the Buddha.

However, regarding the notion that insentient things are enlightened or delusional, that is far more controversial and less established even in Chinese Buddhism.

I think you already mentioned Ven Zhànrán. It was he who argued that the stones and the trees were Buddhas despite being insentient AFAIK. I’ve never read his works, and I’ve not read much about him.

Save to say, it is likely one of his more eccentric statements IMO.

@Kensho

There is a section on Dogen’s unerstaniding of Buddha-nature in Mahayana Buddhism, The Doctrinal Foundations:

Fascinating stuff. I’d never read Dogen before:

“Grass, trees, and lands are mind, thus they are sentient beings.”

The universe in your mind. The universe as a sentient being? It is an interesting idea. I’m just not sure how he jumps from sense objects being sense objects to having them have their own… not consciousnesses? Very confusing, all in all.