Kûkai (774–835), who was mainly responsible for starting the Japanese Shingon school is credited with bringing to light to the Japanese mind the notion of “original enlightenment” (hongaku). He postulated, for example, that plants and trees have the Buddha-nature. This somewhat lays the foundation or shows at least the tendency of Japanese Buddhists to ontologize or absolutize phenomena.
At about the same time Japanese Tendai marketed the idea of original enlightenment. In a nutshell, it is the belief that all beings are inherently enlightened, including even inanimate things like mountains and rivers. A more simplistic overview, this is the belief that phenomena are intrinsically enlightened or the same, phenomena are the absolute! One could even take this to mean the average run-of-the-mill individual is already a Buddha. He only has to believe he is to make it so. This, I hasten to add, makes religious practice no less important.
Religious practice does not necessarily run counter to hongaku's this-worldly absolutism. In fact, it serves as a means of affirming the belief that I am enlightened whether it be in the act of chanting the Nembutsu (recitation of Amitabha Buddha’s name) or sitting in meditation on a zafu I ordered off the Internet. As to the possible reason practice works is because it takes place in the immediacy of original enlightenment but more importantly, it works because it confirms primordial enlightenment, although we, the practitioner, may not realize it at the time. However, this view is not without its problems especially if Japanese hongaku thought proves to be mistaken.
Turning now to Dogen who was originally a Tendai monk as were both Eisai and Nichiren, it seems he never completely left his Tendai roots. Judging from the literature attributed to him, nowhere in his writings does he make a direct attack on hongaku (keep in mind that Dogen studied Tendai on Mt. Hiei from 1212 until 1217). In other words, Dogen is not adverse to Tendai’s unique original enlightenment theory probably modifying it in such a way that meditation or “just sitting” (shikan taza) complements it—being a means of shoring up one's faith that “I am a Buddha whilst I sit.”
Oddly, and unexplained, Dogen certainly feels a strong need to alter the Mahaparinirvana Sutra's idea of Buddha-nature thereby converting it into something that chimes more with hongaku which ends up absolutizing phenomena. Here is an example. Where the Sutra pericope reads: “The sentient beings possess the Buddha-nature; the Tathagata abides constantly and without change,” Dogen with some of his own additions, twists it to read, “All are sentient beings, all things are the Buddha-nature; the Tathagata exists eternally and is nonexistent and yet existent, and changing.”
The last pericope is no doubt meant to be understood that all things and sentient beings are the Buddha nature. And the presence of the Tathagata is to be recognized as our phenomenal world which is at once nonexistent, existent, and ever changing eternally.
Evidentially, Dogen was uncomfortable with the Mahaparinirvana Sutra. By reading the Mahaparinirvana without tinted hongaku spectacles, Buddha-nature means the character or nature of a Buddha which is different than the character of nature of a sentient being. To be sure, sentient beings neither sit under a Bodhi-tree and battle Mara and his armies, nor do they have the 32 marks of a Buddha! One becomes a Buddha only at the end of a long process of self transformation—not before.
A number of times the Mahaparinirvana Sutra uses the example of cream being obtained from milk this being analogous to the Buddha-nature being attained by sentient beings using the correct religious methodology. But throughout this bulky Sutra we are never led to believe that cream preexists in the milk. Strictly speaking, sentient beings do not possess the Buddha-nature anymore than fresh cream comes from out of a cow's teats! In fact the Mahaparinirvana says:
“The Buddha-nature is apprehended [by sentient beings] at the fulfillment of various conditions....Since [sentient beings] attain the Buddha-nature dependent on various conditions, they do not have any [definite] nature; and since [sentient beings] do not have any [definite] nature, they an attain the most perfect enlightenment" (trans. Ming-Wood Liu).
That sentient beings have the potential for being able to attain the character or nature of a Buddha is not in dispute as regards hongaku. Where the problem lies is the process is not automatic or by any means natural. This also means that our ordinary life is not the life of a Buddha and this world is not the manifestation of the Tathagata. No matter how many times we drive our SUV to work, we are not getting any closer to realizing our Buddha-nature. As long as sentient beings wallow in the mire of samsara they will be unable to reach Buddhahood.
Ohh, snap, now we be talkin' bout zen and stuff. That be deep yo
Posted by: Lama Guru Shining Path Holy Light | April 25, 2010 at 05:15 PM