One of the central teachings of Mahayana Buddhism is that all beings have Buddha-Nature (buddhata). Awakening to this Buddha-Nature allows one to attain unsurpassed enlightenment, so it is clearly pure, good, and redemptive. But what is Buddha-Nature? Sometimes it is presented as our potential for awakening. Sometimes it is associated with our bodhi-mind – that which causes us to seek the Buddha Way. Not surprisingly, the teaching of buddhata is difficult to grasp. Even so, we can have a sense of it, and this offers an experience of personal redemption and deep faith in the Dharma.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Original Buddhist View of Human Nature
The Teaching of Buddha-Nature in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra
The Beauty of the Buddha-Nature Teaching
The Potential Pitfalls of the Buddha-Nature Teaching
In this episode I introduce the teaching of Buddha-Nature and reflect on why it may have arisen in response to the view of human nature predominant in original Buddhism. I then reflect on the beauty of the teaching as well as some associated pitfalls. In the next episode I’ll talk about how to engage the teaching of Buddha-Nature without falling into dualistic thinking, the process of awakening to it, and what it means to have Buddha-Nature even before that awakening happens.
I want to start with two disclaimers. First, I am not a professional Buddhist scholar. My treatment of the topic of Buddha-Nature is that of a practitioner and long-time student of Buddhism. I’m sure a scholarly discussion of this topic would be much more precise, complex, and deep – but then it would also probably be pretty dense and philosophical as well. I’ll base my discussion on a few sources I am somewhat familiar with, and on my own experience. The second disclaimer is that I do not presume to explain what Buddha-Nature is in any definitive sense. This is easily one of the most challenging teachings in all of Buddhism, and I’m sure that over the millennia there have been many different views about what it means.
The Original Buddhist View of Human Nature
To understand the teaching of Buddha-Nature, it’s helpful to reflect on the view of human nature in original Buddhism, as least as far as we can know it by reading a source like the Pali Canon.
Original Buddhism recommends the Buddhist path to anyone, but there’s no guarantee you’re going to achieve liberation. The practice of the path is tough. To achieve complete liberation, you must practice as a monastic. However, Buddhism evolved in the context of the belief in rebirth; it was assumed you would have many lifetimes to work on spiritual perfection, so there was no reason for discouragement.
Still, original Buddhism seemed to view human nature as something of a tabula rasa, or blank slate. That slate has been written on by actions and experiences in previous lives, so even at birth our slate isn’t blank. After birth we get worked on by more conditioning and come under the influence of the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion. We further shape body and mind through our actions. Having generated karmic repercussions throughout our lives, we are reborn yet again.
According to the original Buddhist teachings, practice must counteract all the conditioning we have accumulated over lifetimes. It must purify us, until we reach a liberated state where we are not longer subject to greed, hate, and delusion. When we practice, we carefully choose actions that lead toward purification and liberation. Spiritual improvement is an arduous, slow process, and quite objective. It’s about human choice. We have no true nature; we are simply the result of our actions. If we choose greed, hate, and delusion, our life will be filled with misery, and we will harm others as well. If we choose the path of practice, over time we cleanse ourselves and free ourselves from the three poisons. We end up leading a life that at least does no harm, and hopefully will involve helping other beings find liberation.
The Teaching of Buddha-Nature in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra
You may find this original Buddhist view a helpful framework for practice. It is very straightforward, realistic, down to earth, and focused on your behavior here and now. It doesn’t promise you instant redemption, but it does promise you redemption if you dedicate yourself to practice for as long as it takes – perhaps multiple lifetimes.
It seems to me that some Buddhists of long ago found something lacking in the original Buddhist view of human nature, and to address that lack they created the concept of Buddha-Nature (along with a bunch of other Mahayana teachings). I’m not a scholar so I can’t speak to the historical evidence of what motivated early Mahayana Buddhists, but it seems pretty obvious to me that teachings like Buddha-Nature are a response to what had come before. The Mahayana Sutras often say exactly that.
In any case, one of the earliest texts to mention Buddha-Nature was the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which probably was written in Kashmir in the 3rd century CE.[i] In it, two terms seem to be used fairly interchangeably: “tathagatagarbha,” meaning “Buddha-Womb, Buddha-Embryo, [or] Buddha-Nature,” and “buddhata” meaning “Buddha-Nature, Buddha-Essence, or Buddha-ness”[ii]. The sutra is extremely long and involves prolonged discussion between the Buddha and his disciples about the teaching of Buddha-Nature – what it means and doesn’t mean, and the implications of its existence. In Chapter Twelve, “On the Nature of the Tathagata” (or Buddha), the Buddha says (italicized additions are mine):
“Self” means “Tathagatagarbha” [Buddha-Womb, Buddha-Embryo, Buddha-Nature]. Every being has Buddha-Nature. This is the Self. [Note Self is capitalized] Such Self has, from the very beginning, been under cover of innumerable defilements. That is why man cannot see it. O good man! [Imagine that] there is a poor woman here. She has true gold concealed in her house. But none of the people of her house, whether big or small, know of it. But there is a stranger, who, through expediency, says to the poor woman: “I shall employ you. You must now go and weed the land!” The woman answers: “I cannot do this now. If you let my son see where the gold is hidden, I will soon work for you.” The man says: “I know the way. I shall point it out to your son.” The woman further says: “Nobody of my house, whether big or small, knows [of this]. How can you?” The man says: “I shall now make it clear.” The woman says further: “I desire to see. Pray let me.” The man digs out the gold that had lain hidden. The woman sees it, is gladdened, and begins to respect that person. O good man! The case is the same with the Buddha-Nature which man has. Nobody can see it. This is analogous to the gold which the poor woman possessed and yet could not see. O good man! I now let persons see the Buddha-Nature that they possess, which is overspread by defilements. This is analogous to the poor woman who cannot see the gold, even though she possesses it. The Tathagata now reveals to all beings the storehouse of Enlightenment, which is the Buddha-Nature, as it is called. If all beings see this, they are gladdened and will take refuge in the Tathagata. The good expedient is the Tathagata, and the poor woman is all the innumerable beings, and the cask of true gold is the Buddha-Nature.[iii]
Elsewhere, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra says that “When one sees the Buddha-Nature, one attains unsurpassed Enlightenment.” And “the Buddha-Nature is strong and vigorous. It is hard to destroy. Therefore, there is nothing that can kill it. If there were something that could indeed kill it, Buddha-Nature would die. [But] nothing can ever destroy such Buddha-Nature. Nothing of this nature can ever be cut.”[iv] On the other hand, the sutra says, the Buddha-Nature of beings rests within the five skandhas, so if they are destroyed it is considered killing even if doing so does not destroy Buddha-Nature.
The bodhisattva students listening to the Buddha preach about Buddha-Nature in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra ask many questions, and the Buddha offers all kinds of explanations and parables to elucidate the teaching of Buddha-Nature and clarify how it relates to the classic teaching of no-self. The sutra is extremely philosophical and dense, but I think one can take comfort in the fact that the Buddha’s foremost disciples were clearly struggling with the concept of Buddha-Nature and its implications.
One of the main questions that arises when you think about all beings possessing something called Buddha-Nature is, “Why do we need to practice?” Why doesn’t this nature result in us being at peace, selfless, and moral? The Buddha warns:
A person might say: “I have already attained unsurpassed Enlightenment! Why? Because I have the Buddha-Nature. Any person possessing the Buddha-Nature has assuredly attained unsurpassed Enlightenment. Consequently, I attain Enlightenment.” Then, one should know, such a person infringes the parajika. [that is, commits the most serious kind of offense] Why so? There surely is the Buddha-Nature. But not yet having practised the best expedient of the Way, the person has not yet seen it. Having not yet seen it, there can be no attaining of unsurpassed Enlightenment. O good man! On this account, the teaching of the Buddha is profound in its meaning and difficult to fathom.”[v]
The Beauty of the Buddha-Nature Teaching
Why did the concept of Buddha-Nature arise in Buddhism? There is nothing whatsoever like it in the Pali Canon. As I have discussed in previous episodes (e.g. Episode 14 – Buddha’s Teachings Part 1: The Three Marks and the Teaching of Not-Self and Episode 108 – Buddha’s Teachings 14: The Five Skandhas as Focus for the Practice of Not-Self), the doctrine of not-self was central to practice as the Buddha taught it, and any view whatsoever of self – any speculation or obsession with its nature – was seen as completely counterproductive to practice. Therefore, proposing something like a Buddha-Nature was a big leap for the early Mahayana Buddhists; they had to be really motivated to do it, and once they did, they had a lot of work to do to explain how it was compatible with the not-self teachings of the Buddha.
I think the motivation for the teaching of Buddha-Nature arose because those early Buddhists examined their own direct experience of life and practice, and concluded human nature was not a tabula rasa/blank slate after all. A powerful force within them led them to practice and motivated them to seek liberation. They knew right from wrong like they knew hot from cold. Each step of insight and healing on the path resulted in a sense that they were coming home to themselves, that they were approaching a way of being that was meant to be. Functioning free of self-concern allowed the energy of the universe to flow through them and resulted in actions that were more harmonious and skillful. They had a sense that something right and fundamental was being revealed or released from beneath the burden of karma – that some kind of true nature was emerging, instead of them having to build a positive character from scratch, one practice at a time. In addition, beyond the experience individuals had of themselves, I suspect their new perspective on the world after many years of practice was full of amazing qualities that were worth celebrating, including interdependence and suchness.
In other words, the teaching of Buddha-Nature says your true nature is that of a Buddha, you have just lost touch with it. Because Buddha-ness is incompatible with petty self-concern, most of our human activities and obsessions obscure our true nature. From birth, we are surrounded by people and cultures which are also out of touch with their Buddha-Nature, so over time our separation from it can get very extreme. Practicing to awaken to it – to find our true gold, like the woman in the story from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra – is not easy. It can take a long time, and lot of hard work.
However, all the way along a spiritual path based on the idea of Buddha-Nature is fundamentally different from one based on an idea of incremental improvement of a human nature which is simply the sum of your past actions, good and bad. Buddha-Nature means you already are what you seek. You have everything you need from the beginning. Morality and discipline are necessary tools for keeping us on the path of practice before we have learned to turn toward our Buddha-Nature, but soon enough we can start trusting ourselves. We can listen to the still, small voice within us which knows the way to the truth, and recognizes we belong to a vast, interdependent universe. What we are uncovering through our practice is something beautiful and beneficial as opposed to something which is simply the absence of negative karma. Our ideal is to help all beings become free, to embrace them with love and generosity, not to escape a world of misery as soon as possible.
(Note: I am inadvertently characterizing original Buddhism, and modern schools which follow ancient teachings like the Pali Canon, rather negatively and simplistically here. Theravadin Buddhism, for example, is a full and meaningful path which produces wonderful, loving, wise people. Inevitably, explaining a concept that arose in response to the teachings of another branch of Buddhism will end up sounding rather sectarian or even judgmental. I take solace in knowing that a Theravadin writing about Buddha-Nature is very likely to return the favor. When it comes to what really matters, in actual practice there is not so much difference between Mahayana and Theravadin Buddhism.)
The Potential Pitfalls of the Buddha-Nature Teaching
So, the teaching of Buddha-Nature can be very affirming and encouraging. However, it opens up many potential pitfalls for the practitioner, as the prolonged discussion in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra makes obvious. If we have Buddha-Nature, why do we need to practice? Is Buddha-Nature an eternal self-nature, which Buddhist teachings have clearly established we don’t have? If not, then what the heck is it, and how can it even be a thing? If we have Buddha-Nature, why do we still suffer and do harmful things? Why is it so hard to realize one’s Buddha-Nature? If the Buddha-Nature is an extremely subtle and difficult thing to see, what good is it? Someone could easily take the Buddha-Nature teaching and decide practice was unnecessary, or assume it means they have a soul, or use it to justify harmful behavior.
I once heard a Theravadin monk describe an experience of awakening. His description was, naturally, very similar to those of Mahayana practitioners – the relief and joy of transcending limited self-view, a perception of a spacious and luminous universe, etc. I think the idea behind the Theravadin approach to awakening is to emphasize practice and set aside any celebratory descriptions of the joys of awakening so you don’t get confused, attached, or distracted by them. In other words, you will taste the joy of Nirvana yourself if you practice long and hard enough, and any attempt to describe or conceptualize what we are working towards will only become an obstacle. There is a lot of wisdom in this approach, because the concept of Buddha-Nature can be very confusing.
Having adopted the teaching of Buddha-Nature, Mahayana Buddhism has to spend a lot of time clarifying what it really means and what it doesn’t mean. For example, there are many analogies about Buddha-Nature in Buddhist literature similar to the story about the woman and the gold, which seek to illustrate that, while you should be joyful and encouraged to know you possess Buddha-Nature, it doesn’t do you any good until you see it for yourself. One of the most famous of these stories is the parable from the Lotus Sutra,[vi] in which a man wanders in poverty and squalor because he is unaware that his friend has sewn a valuable jewel into the fabric of his cloak. Only when the friend shows it to him – after many years of misery – does the man realize he has had access to everything he needed from the beginning. Even so, the jewel in the cloak, before we have found it, does not do us any good.
Of course, the parable of the jewel in the cloak doesn’t convey the fact that our redemption doesn’t come the minute someone tells us we have Buddha-Nature. At one level it’s encouraging to be told this, I suppose, but it can also be terribly frustrating. If we have Buddha-Nature, why don’t we feel and act more like a Buddhas? We long to know our Buddha-Nature – to know for ourselves that our fundamental nature is good, that we can trust our deepest Self, that we belong in the lineage of Dharma ancestors – but direct, personal knowledge of Buddha-Nature is elusive. We may strive to touch it but usually the more we strive, the more separate we feel.
The moment the first person said words “Buddha-Nature,” people have been falling into the trap of conceptualizing and concretizing the concept, creating duality by imaging Buddha-Nature is a thing we can find, even if we understand that we’re supposed to be looking within ourselves. Great confusion arises because Buddha-Nature is not what we think it is. It is nothing like anything we have every conceived. The realization of it is unlike any other endeavor we have ever undertaken. It blows our minds to contemplate the fact that Buddha-Nature is what we already are, and we experience it only when we drop all concepts, all agendas, and all dualities.
In Fukanzazengi Zen master Dogen states the koan of Mahayana practice: “It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to find it? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth.”[vii] What is the nature of the spiritual search for redemption? Our teachers tell us it is right here under our noses, but we still can’t see it. It might as well be as far away from us as heaven is from earth. Although Dogen eventually concluded there was no use in “traveling around to find it,” he himself made the long and dangerous journey from Japan to China, in the 1200’s, to find It. Go figure, this is just the way life is. When we recognize it, we realize it has been there all along, but in order to awaken to it, we still have to practice, and we still have to go on our journeys. It’s all part of the process.
In the next episode I will explore more about what Buddha-Nature is, and is not, and how we can work toward awakening to it ourselves.
Read/listen to Buddha-Nature: What the Heck is It and How Do We Realize It? Part 2
Endnotes
[i] “What is buddhanature?” Tricycle magazine: https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/what-is-buddhanature/
[ii] The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Translated into English by Kosho Yamamoto, 1973, from Dharmakshema’s Chinese version. (Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 12, No. 374) Edited, revised and copyright by Dr. Tony Page, 2007. http://lirs.ru/do/Mahaparinirvana_Sutra,Yamamoto,Page,2007.pdf Chapter Two.
[iii] The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Translated into English by Kosho Yamamoto, 1973, from Dharmakshema’s Chinese version. (Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 12, No. 374) Edited, revised and copyright by Dr. Tony Page, 2007. http://lirs.ru/do/Mahaparinirvana_Sutra,Yamamoto,Page,2007.pdf Chapter Twelve.
[iv] Ibid, Chapter 12, page 103.
[v] Ibid, Chapter 9, page 94.
[vi] Reeves, Gene (translator). The Lotus Sutra: A Contemporary Translation of a Buddhist Classic. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2008. Chapter 8.
[vii] See Soto Shu Scriptures, https://www.sotozen.com/eng/practice/sutra/scriptures.html; Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen （Fukan zazengi普勧坐禅儀）
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