Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2023 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

BUDDHISTS OFTEN talk about suffering, emptiness, interdependence, and other philosophies and practices, but behind all of it is one simple teaching: buddhanature. Buddhism is notoriously complex, and sometimes it seems difficult for people to know where to start. From my perspective, we should always start with buddhanature. Simple, yet profound, the teachings on buddhanature are relatable for contemporary audiences, but more importantly, it is this most fundamental seed that precedes the entire path of Buddhist practice. Buddhanature is what makes Buddhist practice possible. It might even be the reason you are reading this magazine right now. When Tsadra Foundation decided to launch a series of online resource projects for education about Buddhism, we had many years of translation and publications on the most advanced philosophies and practices of Tibetan Buddhism…

Buddhanature, or tathagatagarbha: some say it is not Buddhist, some say it is quintessentially so. I do not want to push either judgment upon you; there is more than one way to be a Buddhist! Instead, I want to provide a roundup of some formative buddhanature texts and allow you to see what is unique about them, in the hope that you might explore these fascinating works for yourself. In the texts outlined below, we see innovative steps taken away from the philosophical preoccupation with emptiness (sunyata) and not-self (anatman) with which much early Buddhist scholasticism was concerned, with a focus instead on a type of liberative phenomenology that allows us to uncover our “true” nature and realize liberation. RATNAGOTRAVIBHAGA, third century (India), sixth century (China) As religion and philosophy…

AT FIRST GLANCE, one cannot find any more statements more at odds with each other than the two following emblematic stanzas. Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika XIII.7 says: If there were anything nonempty, there’d also be something “empty.” There is nothing that is nonempty, so how could there be the empty? Maitreya’s Uttaratantra I.155 declares: The basic element is empty of the adventitious, which has the characteristic of being separable. It is not empty of the unsurpassable attributes, having the characteristic of being inseparable Let’s explore the relationship between these stanzas, which seem to make arguments for what I’ll call here “not to be” and “to be.” Nagarjuna (considered to have lived during the second century CE) is of course most famous—or notorious—for his Madhyamaka approach of relentlessly nixing all phenomena, including even…

Buddhist traditions express our potential for awakening in diverse ways: natural luminous mind; suchness; nondual awareness; basic goodness; dharmakaya; the unity of emptiness, self-existing wakefulness; unconfined capacity; and so forth, all under the rubric of “buddhanature” (tathagatagarbha). Mahayana Buddhists understand this dimension of our mind to be an innate source of joy, compassion, courage, and wisdom. It is always operative and always available. Buddhanature can be a difficult concept to understand. Any attempt to engage “awakening” through conceptual understanding cannot fully capture the nonconceptual essence of our awareness. As a Buddhist practitioner and experimental psychologist, I have found that perspectives from cognitive science can help us relate to diverse expressions of buddhanature and inform our dharma practice. Innovations in cognitive science suggest that the mind organizes information centered around goals.…

IN 1959, SHUNRYU SUZUKI arrived in San Francisco and the religious landscape of America was forever changed. Among Suzuki’s earliest students was the late Mel Weitsman, who became a beloved and esteemed Zen teacher in his own right. Seeing One Thing Through: The Zen Life and Teachings of Sojun Mel Weitsman (Counterpoint), a posthumous collection of autobiographical writings and lectures edited by Hozan Alan Senauke, conveys the profound enchantment of those earlier days of Zen in America, as well as the remarkable wisdom of a humble life of practice. Weitsman’s remembrances are full of charm and told without pretension, and his teachings, too, are without frills, going straight to the point and to the heart. When asked about commitment, he answered: “In zazen, it means that you don’t move from…

ROSHI JOAN HALIFAX is the abbot and head teacher of Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her most recent book is Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, which explores how we can face the challenges of our current fraught political climate. ROSHI JOAN HALIFAX: I traveled to St. Simons Island, off the coast of Georgia, to sit on a hard, bare bench in a small white clapboard church that was a place of gathering for prayer and song for generations of the Black people on that island. Bessie Jones, a great singer of old songs from her culture, was someone whom I loved and respected. She was part of the group called the Georgia Sea Island Singers. Alan Lomax had introduced us and…

IT’S NOT NIGHT, yet it’s so dark down where she is that if she were to hold up her hand in front of her face, only the light of her lamp would help her recognize her palm, the line she has followed down, and not much else. It’s dark, and freezing, and though the light wetsuit she wears offers little protection against the cold, she doesn’t feel it. Rather, she’s not aware of the cold, nor of time, or space. She doesn’t remember, she doesn’t think, she doesn’t anticipate. All she knows is the weight of water. All she feels is its vastness and the blessed respite it gives her from her life above. As she descends, the pressure of the ocean squeezes her lungs, the corresponding lack of air…

RECOGNIZING OUR TRUE NATURE MARGARITA LOINAZ IT WAS EARLY MORNING at the turn of the millennium, and I was in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with a sangha friend for a week of rest from our demanding work. On a little shelf on the wall of my bedroom, I had placed a picture of my root teacher, Kalu Rimpoche, which I always traveled with. While I was still in bed, the thoughts began to form: I will brush my teeth, light some incense, and sit. Suddenly, wayward thoughts came through: Why do you have to brush your teeth? Why do you need to light incense? Why not just sit? From some deeper knowing, I’d realized that all the content in my mind was made up, all based on conventions and…

A FISH JUST SWIMS GUO GU ONE TIME, a monk asked Chan master Shishuang Qingzhu (807–888), “I heard that buddha-nature is like space; is that correct?” Shishuang replied, “It’s present when you sleep; absent when you sit.” Similarly, when asked by a monk whether a dog has buddhanature or not, Chan master Zhaozhou Congshen (778–897) said, “No!” These two examples are like a fish asking another fish, “I heard that fish swim in water. Is that correct? There are such things as fish and water, right?” Ridiculous questions deserve ridiculous answers. Buddhanature is our true nature, already free from self (Skt. atman), vexations (Skt. klesas), and delusions (Skt. avidya). The personal experience of this freedom is called awakening (Skt. bodhi). Mahayana scriptures have already clarified that buddhanature is present everywhere,…

SOMETIME IN THE 1990s, I attended a Zen retreat with Harada Sekkei Roshi at the Mahabodhi Society in Bangalore. It was a rare, perhaps even unique, event at that time where Buddhists from all three main traditions of East Asian, Tibetan, and Theravada Buddhism came together for a Zen retreat. As we sat around the Roshi to begin the first session, he stated in a loud and solemn voice: “You are all buddhas.” The statement, telling from the manner it was delivered, was meant to be rousing in a Zen sort of way, and it did stir some thoughts in the audience. Most participants in the retreat were Theravada members of the Mahabodhi Society, and they clearly appeared bemused. During the break, one member privately protested, saying that such a…

The concept of buddhanature (bussho), as interchangeable with tathagatagarbha (womb or embryo of tathagata; “one who has thus come,” an epithet of the Buddha), arose in Mahayana Buddhism after Nagarujuna (second to third century CE) and before Vasubandhu (fourth to fifth century CE). Sutras from this period are considered middle Mahayana sutras. Before the development of the Mahayana, people generally did not believe they could become buddhas, but some Mahayana Buddhists began to teach that any one of us can become a bodhisattva—a buddha-to-be—if we arouse bodhicitta (awakening mind), take bodhisattva vows, receive bodhisattva precepts, and practice the six paramitas (generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and wisdom). However, probably because they observed themselves and the conditions of the samsaric world—in which so many are self-centered, competitive, in conflict, and have…

Buddhadharma: Thanks for talking with us, Joseph. We’re hoping you might talk about buddhanature from your unique perspective as a Buddhist primarily trained in Theravada, but then in other modes, too. Joseph Goldstein: It’s not a term that I’ve come across a lot in early Buddhist teachings; it seems to come about more in Mahayana and in Vajrayana. And so it would be helpful to find a common definition that would make sense in terms of early Buddhism. Basically, the Pali texts talk about the enlightened mind, free of defilements. That would, I think, be a good cross-tradition term. In One Dharma, you list some of the names for the ultimate freedom that buddhanature represents: the unconditioned, dharmakaya, the unborn, pure heart, mind essence, nature of mind, ultimate bodhicitta, nirvana.…