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The Buddha Nature: True Self as Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Sallie Behn King
Sallie Behn King
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University
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Extract

Buddhism, and especially early Buddhism, is known for the anātman (no self) teaching. By any account, this teaching is central to both doctrine and practice from the beginning. Zen Buddhism (Chinese Ch'an), in contrast, is known for its teaching that the single most important thing in life is to discover the ‘true self’. Is there a real, or only an apparent, conflict between these two versions of Buddhism? Certainly there is at the least a radical change in the linguistic formulation of the teaching. Examining the two teachings on the linguistic level, we note that the use of the term ‘true’ in the phrase ‘true self’ may indicate that we have here a conscious reformation of the place of the term ‘self’ in the tradition, or perhaps that the use of this phrase in Zen is the product of such a conscious formulation. Thus we may expect, upon investigation, to find an evolution from one teaching to the other, rather than a true doctrinal disparity. The apparent, or linguistic, conflict between the two, however, remains; hence we must also expect to find a doctrinal formulation at some point in this evolution in which the apparent conflict is consciously apprehended and resolved.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 255 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

page 257 note 1 Kim, Hee-Jin, Dögen Kigen – Mystical Realist (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1975), p. 217.Google Scholar

page 257 note 2 Wu, John C. H., The Golden Age of, Zen (Taipei: The National War College in co-operation with the Committee on the Compilation of the Chinese Library, 1967), pp. 219 f.Google Scholar

page 257 note 3 Lun, Fo Hsing, attributed to Vasubandhu, translated into Chinese by Paramârtha. Taishō Daizōkyō, XXXT (1610), 787–813.Google Scholar The Buddha Nature Treatise will be cited in these notes hereafter as BNT. While the BNT is attributed to Vasubandhu (fourth century) and said to have been translated into Chinese by Paramārtha (sixth century), only the Chinese translation is extant; neither a Tibetan translation nor a Sanskrit original survives. There is a considerable degree of doubt as to whether Vasubandhu actually wrote the text. No record of the date and place of translation is found on the manuscript.

page 257 note 4 Jikidō, Takasaki, ‘Busshbron’. In Buttenkaidajiten, 2nd edn (edited by Mizuno, et al. ), p. 1 (Tokyo: Shunjúsha, 1977).Google Scholar My translation.

page 257 note 5 BNT, p. 788c.

page 258 note 1 Ibid. pp. 802 a, 80 l b, 798C and 809a.

page 259 note 1 Ibid. p. 801 b.

page 259 note 2 Ibid. p. 798c.

page 259 note 3 Cf. Ruegg, D. Seyfort, La Théorie du Tathāgatagarbha et du Gotra (Paris: École Française d'extrême orient, 1969), p. 368Google Scholar, for a Sanskrit version of this chart.

page 261 note 1 BNT, pp. 812c–813a.

page 262 note 1 Conze, Edward, Buddhist Wisdom Books (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), p. 53Google Scholar

page 262 note 2 BNT, p. 793C.

page 262 note 3 Ibid.

page 262 note 4 Ibid. p. 810a-b.

page 263 note 1 Ibid. p. 802a.

page 263 note 2 Ibid. p. 796b-c.

page 264 note 1 Ibid. p. 797a.

page 265 note 1 Yampolsky, Philip, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 130 and 132.Google Scholar There are two versions of Hui-neng's poem.

page 265 note 2 See Nagao, Gadjin M., ‘Amarerumono’, Indogakubukkyógakukenkyü XLT (1968), 23–7.Google Scholar An English version of this article is “What Remains” in Śūnyatâ: A Yogâcâra Interpretation of Emptiness’. In Mahnläna Buddhist Meditation: Theory and Practice (edited by Kiyota, Minoru), pp. 66–82. (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978.)Google Scholar

page 265 note 3 Chang-Yuan, Chang, Original Teachings of Ch’ an Buddhism (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 149.Google Scholar

page 266 note 1 Ibid.

page 266 note 2 Adapted from the translation of Sessan, Amakuki, ‘Hakuin's “Song of Meditation”’, in Leggett, Trevor, trans. A First, Zen Reader (Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle, 1960), p. 67.Google Scholar

page 267 note 1 BNT, p. 787b.