Buddha Nature: Awareness and Emptiness Views

"Buddha-nature that knows"

"Buddha-nature that is known"

"Dharma nature in the Non-Sentient"

The enriched understanding of the Buddha Nature, which is the natural physiological disposition for natural and correct survival, did not begin until over a hundred years had passed after the Chinese translations of the Nirvana sutra gained prominence.

Huiyuan (523-592) Master of Awareness

At that point, 慧 遠  Huiyüan (523-592), a  Dharma heir of Dao-an, became interested in the relationship between the Buddha-nature as it was presented in the 涅槃經, Nirvana sutra (Nièpánjīng) and the concept of an "originally pure mind," which now in Chan we know of as the ninth consciousness, not the eighth, with its source in the right hemisphere.

The first important step by Huiyuan was the distinction he made between "Buddha-nature that knows" and the "Buddha-nature that is known" in his 大乘 要, Essentials of the Mahayana (Da cheng yi-chang).

The "Buddha-nature that knows" is the "mind of true consciousness" that is capable of awakening to Buddha-nature through the elimination of all Identity stains.

The "Buddha-nature that is known" is that of the Nature of Dharma, which can be described as the Un-carved Wood, the direct access to which is attained through contemplations by way of the Ultimate conceptualizations of Emptiness, Awareness and the Living Force, which correspond to access to to the direct experiences of Undifferentiated Form, Essence and Function.

When the scriptures call the highest teaching "Buddha-nature," or when they call the middle-way "Buddha-nature," they are referring to the "nature that is known," which Huiyüan explicitly declares penetrates everywhere, both within and without.

Our Chan position holds to the existence of Buddha-nature, not only in human beings but in all living creatures... In all creatures the "Buddha nature that is known" is naturally in operation and is unstained and the access to that direct experience is not only unnecessary for a life of harmony within a stained Samsara but the experience is impossible to describe and the contemplations only take us to the experience which is equivalent to that of a newborn child, the uncarved wood.

The Awakening then is the closest the human creature can get to the Life Force. It provides what can best be described as a "clear comprehesion" of the true state beyond undiscriminated Form, Essence and Function.

So what utility is there in that? The truth is none whatsoever.

It is rather like disovering the secret of a performer of magic on a stage. All one can say upon discovering, although certainly with awe at the simplicity, is, "Ah, so that's how it is." It brings no sudden knowledge about the truth of all things, but it brings the certain knowledge that every experience is useful illusion.

Huiyüan's division of the Buddha-nature distinguishes between "Buddha-nature" as the "force" which presents a non-dualistic mode of cognition, the Masculine Principle, and "Buddha-nature" as the ground of the Feminine principle, being that which makes such an eventual balanced cognition possible.

While Huiyüan, depending upon one's interpretation, opened the door to arguments favoring the idea that Buddha Nature pervades even insentient objects, he never actually stated that insentient objects possess a Buddha-nature.

吉藏  Jizang  (Chi-tsang) 549-623: Master of Emptiness

"Buddha-nature"  affirms Emptiness

Jizang  takes a somewhat different approach to the issue than does Hui-yüan: rather than beginning with a bifurcation of Buddha-nature into two aspects, he looked at the position with regard to what creatures possess a Buddha nature. He took the position that the distinction between sentient and insentient is itself ultimately empty.

So what is a sentient being? Well, if we define sentient as meaning "endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness, with a consciousness capable of perceiving itself to exist," then only human creatures are sentient.

But if sentient means that the unstructured consciousness only has to have the capacity of all living things to respond differentially, then all life is sentient.

Thus if you are going to deny Buddha-nature to something, then not only are grass and trees devoid of Buddha-nature, but living beings are also devoid of Buddha-nature.

While we do understand that all dharmas are equal, then in reality there are no marks of attainment or non-attainment. Since there is no non-attainment, we can only provisionally speak of attaining Buddhahood. Thus while we can claim that all human sentient beings can attain Buddhahood (being in a stained condition), all Life Force creatures have a natural attainment of Buddhahood.

For Jizang, the concept of "Buddha-nature" is another way of affirming emptiness, as well as "dependent origination" and "the practical operation of middle way," from which vantage point all distinctions, including that between even sentient and insentient, must be relinquished. From his position, Buddha-nature is not something that could be possessed or reside anywhere.

Jizang is in accord with our position: "Since sentient human beings have mental delusions, they can attain the truth of awakening. But since non- human life forms down to simple grass and trees have no mind, thus they have no delusion.

Therefore it is said (Nirvana sutra) that since sentient beings possess Buddha-nature they can attain buddhahood, but since grass and trees are devoid of Buddha-nature they cannot attain Buddhahood."

In the Sutra of Perfect Awakening (圓覺經, Yuan jue jing), composed in China during the second half of the seventh century, the following is stated:.

"Wisdom and foolishness interfuse as prajna. The teachings accomplished by both bodhisattvas and heretics are equally bodhi. The realms of ignorance and true suchness are not different. Morality, meditation, wisdom, and greed, anger, and delusion are all noble practices.

All the worlds of sentient (human) beings share the same dharma-nature; the hells and the heavens are all pure lands. Those with and those without [Buddha] nature all attain the Buddha way. The defilements are all ultimate liberation. The dharma-dhatu's ocean of wisdom illuminates all phenomena as if it were empty space."

This is not at all easy to understand and can lead to multiple misinterpretations. Its meaning is more philosophical than practical and simply states that since all Dharmas are empty, then an act of wisdom is empty and an act of folly is also empty. Taken to its extreme, Awakening is no different in that sense than a fall into a mental purgatory, for both are empty.

Yet we can declare that, beyond consciousness, when the last conceptualization of emptiness is exploded one reaches beyond to the internal operation of the apparent human creature and while there is no Buddha Nature, since all is empty, the natural system operates altogether differently when the attainment-no attainment has been made.

From the cognitively conscious viewpoint of intellect, the non-existent Life Force is served best when the non-existent Buddha Nature is released from the non-existent chains of a non-existent Cognitive Identity.

     法藏 Fazang  (Fa-tsang ) 643-712

              Dharma Heir of the Huayan Model

 Dharma Nature

Fazang handles the issue in a discussion of the meaning of 法性 "dharma-nature" (fa-xing), better perhaps translated as "natural-law" in the 大乘起信論, Treatise on Awakening of Faith in Mahayana (Dacheng qi chin lun). 

He explains that "true suchness  pervades both the defiled and the pure, the sentient and the insentient."

He declares that, with regard to sentient  beings, suchness is called Buddha-nature, and with regard to non-self-sentient beings it is called Dharma-nature. 

In his 大莲华法藏界, The Record of Probing the Hsüan of the Avatamsaka (Huáyán jīng sōuxuán jì), he further declares that "while the nature of true suchness taught by the three vehicles permeates both the sentient and the insentient, only sentient beings can awakening to Buddha-nature."

湛然 Zhanran (Chan-jan or Ching-hsi)  711-782

Dharma Heir of the Tientai Model

The full development of the doctrine that insentient things have Buddha-nature is usually associated with the T'ien-t'ai school, and 湛然, Zhanran,  was the first on record to directly challenge the authority of the Nirvana sutra on the issue.

Zhanran denies the originality of his position, claiming to find precedent in the 摩訶止觀, Mohe zhi guan by 智顗, Zhi yi (I-chih, 538-597). Specifically, he refers to a passage from the position of 關定, Guan Ding (Kuan-ting) in his (561-632) preface.

Speaking of the "perfect and sudden," practice Guan Ding declares, "When [the mind] is fixed on the dharma-realm--when [each] moment of thought [is as one with] the dharma-realm--then there is not a single form nor a single smell that is not the middle way" 

In his commentary on the Nirvana sutra, Guan Ding unambiguously states that insentient beings do not possess Buddha nature: "While there is Buddha-nature in sentient beings, there is no Buddha-nature in grass and trees; rather, they have the nature of grass, trees, etc."

Indeed in accord with the Dharma Nature of lesser-order living entities.

We have then the extended position of:

1.   The"Buddha Nature that knows" as the "mind of true consciousness" that is capable of awakening to Buddha-nature through the elimination of all Identity stains.

2. The "Buddha-nature that is known" is that of the Nature of Dharma, which can be described as the Un-carved Wood.

3.  The Dharma Nature for all that is natural but Non-self- Sentient. In this latter sense it refers to living entities like grass and trees

Zhanran's position is straightforward: (1) insists that the Buddha-nature is universal, and (2) there is no distinction between sentient and insentient things:

"The individual of the perfect [teaching] knows, from beginning to end, that the absolute principle is non-dual, and that there are no objects apart from mind. Who then is sentient? What then is insentient? Within the Assembly of the Lotus there is no discrimination. What difference is there between the herbs and the trees, and the soil, or between the four elements?"

Now here the Buddha Nature concept has been extended to the inanimate, the soil and the four elements.

Does not the stone have a "stone nature" and a grain of and "the grain of sand nature" and every single elementary partacle the approprite nature?.

Acknowledging that this idea may hurt human pride, it none the less enhances an understanding of all the elements around us that support life.

Is it not also true that the cosmos constitutes a single, connected and interdependent whole?

The early Chinese held that the cosmos is comprised entirely of multiple "ethers," the transformations of which can be analyzed in terms of 五行, wu-hsing, also known as ‘five movers’, the five elements or five phases which work as agents, fundamental in Chinese and Taoist understanding of the cosmos.

The five are not the physical substances fire, water, earth, air, and ether as they are understood by the Western mind, but the metaphysical forces associated with the nature of the characters of these substances. The five are the principle of "sympathetic resonance", the principle of

The four directions of resonance—ascending, descending, within to without, and without to within—and a fifth, a stillpoint of wholeness (Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Ether).

火, huo, resonances attuned with the ascending, solar, centrifugal force, radiating from the nucleus of our system (the force of the fire element)

水, shuǐ​, resonances attuned with the descending, centripetal, negative pole of the Earth (force of the water element)

空, kōng, resonances attuned to the flow from within to without, from the finer forces of a unified field (the force of the Air element)

地, dì, resonances attuned to the flow from without to within, from the periphery of the energy field back toward the core (Force of the Earth element).

These ideas allow no distinction between mind and matter, the sentient and the insentient, so the Buddha Nature become coincident if not identical to these forces.

Then all things are Buddha nature.

  Given then:

1.   The"Buddha Nature that knows" as the "mind of true consciousness" that is capable of awakening to Buddha-nature through the elimination of all Identity stains.

2. The "Buddha-nature that is known" is that of the Nature of Dharma, which can be described as the Un-carved Wood.

3.  The Dharma Nature for all that is natural but Non-self-Sentient.

we must add:

4. The Nature of Dharma (thus Dao) is in all things.