Buddha Nature in Western Lexicon
An interrogatory with Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick
Question: When listening to Western Buddhists, from almost all traditions, they all seem to be saying the same thing about the universality of Buddha Nature and that all people can become a buddha. Anne C. Klein (Rigzin Drolma) a professor of religious studies at Rice University and a teacher at Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism in Houston, writes that everyone, including her, “is already a buddha.” This sounds like mutual possession of the ten realms and Ichinen Sanzen. Where do these other teachers get this idea, that everyone has buddha nature? I thought that this teaching was only in the Perfect Teaching of the Lotus Sutra and Nirvana Sutra?
Answer: The first source of “buddha-nature” rhetoric in English discourse about Buddhism is through D.T. Suzuki (who also translated the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana much earlier than Hakeda) and other Zen Buddhist. So, the primary source was not sutras at all.
Then the Tibetans such as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and other came in with buddha-nature teachings that they associate with the “third turning of the Wheel of the Dharma” (the first is the Deer Park, the second is the Perfection of Wisdom teachings). So again, commentaries and not sutras were the source.
As far as sutras go - the Lotus Sutra doesn’t even use the term buddha-nature, and the Nirvana Sutra is far from the only one that does. A primary source would be the Flower Garland Sutra where the Buddha says upon awakening that all beings are buddhas but don’t realize it. The Queen Shrimala Sutra teaches buddha-nature and the One Vehicle. The Lankavatara Sutra is probably the main source for the Zen school of buddha-nature rhetoric. There are others but those are the ones that immediately come to mind and which I have translations of at hand.
As for commentaries, there is of course the Awakening of Faith. However, a major source is the Ratnagotravibhāga-Mahāyāna-Uttaratantra or Analysis of the Lineage of the Three Treasures and the Tathagatagarbha Sutra. It is referred to occasionally in East Asian Buddhism (including by Zhiyi) but had much more influence in Tibet. It is the go to source for buddha-nature teachings because it draws upon all the other sources and attempts to make a coherent doctrine out of them.
I would also point out that most modern commentators understanding of buddha-nature is just a kind of blithe optimism about human nature. I doubt many of them have ever read the Uttaratantra or Dogen’s essay on Buddha-nature. Between those two I don’t think there is much to add unless you go the Tiantai-Nichiren route of talking more about mutual possession of the ten realms.
Question: Is Nichiren and Tiantai unique? And if so how so…
Answer: Yes, because we don’t put all the emphasis on buddha-nature teachings at all! The mutual possession of the ten worlds and also the threefold buddha-nature is something that Nichiren specifically calls on as superior to the buddha-nature teachings of the other schools.
The other buddha-nature teachings do not in fact guarantee that everyone will attain buddhahood. They simply assert that Buddha-nature is part of everyone’s ontological make up. The Gelukupas in Tibet assert that buddha-nature is just another way of talking about emptiness (as far as this goes I would agree).
However, with Zhiyi’s threefold buddha-nature, he is asserting not only that all beings have buddha-nature as their ultimate reality but also buddha-nature as incipient wisdom and as incipient causal activity to realize buddhahood.
The mutual possession of the ten realms is also about how not only do beings have the realm of buddhahood not just as potential but ongoing (though most often inconspicuous) activity but how the buddha as buddha continues to embrace the other nine realms, so there is a constant dynamic interplay. Nichiren points out that other buddha-nature texts (like Awakening of Faith) assume buddha-nature as a potential that when realized will cut off the other nine realms because its purity is incompatible with them.
Nichiren Buddhists just fail at understanding the most developed form of Buddhist doctrine, and barely even speak from a Tripitaka level let alone the distinct or perfect teaching about buddha-nature and the related idea of the ninth consciousness, and in this case they almost always slip right into Vedantic monism or New Age thinking that is also barely Buddhist or outright non-Buddhist (as it completely breaks the teaching of dependent origination and emptiness let alone the threefold truth).
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick