Original enlightenment

Original enlightenment or innate awakening (Chinese: 本もと覺さとし; pinyin: běnjué; Japanese pronunciation: hongaku; Korean pronunciation: bongak) is an East Asian Buddhist doctrine often translated as "inherent", "innate", "intrinsic" or "original" enlightenment / awakening (Sanskrit: bodhi).

This doctrine holds all sentient beings are already enlightened or awakened in some way. In this view, since all beings have some kind of awakening as their true nature, the attainment of awakening is a process of discovering and recognizing what is already present, not of attaining something distant and external, or of constructing something new. Original enlightenment is often contrasted with “acquired enlightenment” or "initial enlightenment" (始はじめ覚さとし, pinyin: shijué, Japanese: shikaku), which is a relative experience that is attained through Buddhist practices and teachings.

Original enlightenment thought is related to Indian Buddhist concepts like Buddha-nature and the luminous mind. The doctrine is articulated in influential East Asian works like the Awakening of Faith and the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment.

Original enlightenment is an influential doctrine of various schools of East Asian Buddhism, including Chinese Chan, and Huayan. Inherent enlightenment was also often associated with the teachings of sudden enlightenment which was influential for Zen Buddhism. The original enlightenment idea was also important for Korean Buddhism, especially Korean Seon. It was a central teaching in medieval Japanese Buddhist traditions like Shingon, Tendai, and also for some of the new Kamakura schools like Japanese Zen.

History

Origins in China

The doctrine of innate enlightenment developed in Chinese Buddhism out various Indian Mahayana ideas, such as the Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha) doctrine, the luminous mind and the teachings found in various Mahayana sources, including the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, Ghanavyuha, Śrīmālādevī, Tathagatagarbha sutra, Nirvana sutra, and the Ratnagotravibhāga.

The Chinese term itself is first mentioned in the Mahayana Awakening of Faith treatise (Dàshéng Qǐxìn Lùn; c. 6th century). According to this treatise:

The essence of Mind is free from thoughts. The characteristic of that which is free from thoughts is analogous to that of the sphere of empty space that pervades everywhere. The one aspect of the world of reality (dharmadhātu) is none other than the undifferentiated Dharma body [dharmakāya], the “essence body” of the Tathāgata. [Since the essence of Mind is] grounded on the dharmakāya, it is to be called the original enlightenment. Why? Because “original enlightenment” indicates [the essence of Mind] in contradistinction to [the essence of Mind in] the process of the actualization of enlightenment; the process of actualization of enlightenment is none other than [the process of integrating] the identity with the original enlightenment.

According to Jacqueline Stone, The Awakening of Faith sees original enlightenment as "true suchness considered under the aspect of conventional deluded consciousness and thus denotes the potential for enlightenment in unenlightened beings." Original enlightenment is also found in other influential East Asian works, like the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment and the Vajrasamadhi Sutra. The doctrine is also a common theme of the Platform Sutra of Huineng and was taught by Chinese Chan masters as "seeing original nature".

In medieval China, the doctrine developed in the East Asian Yogacara, Huayan and Chan Buddhist schools. The influential Huayan-Chan scholar, Guifeng Zongmi, cites various Indian Mahayana sources for this idea. He cites a passage from the Avatamsaka Sutra which states "'When one first raises the thought [of awakening], one attains unexcelled, perfect awakening.'" He also cites the Nirvana Sutra, which states: "The two, raising the thought [of awakening] and the ultimate, are not separate."

Korean figures like Wŏnhyo introduced the concept to Korean Buddhism, where it also had a considerable impact.

In Japanese Buddhism

The first Japanese to write of this doctrine was Kūkai (774–835), founder of Shingon Buddhism.

The doctrine of innate enlightenment was very influential in Tendai from the cloistered rule era (1086–1185) through the Edo period (1688–1735). The Tendai view of hongaku saw it as encompassing not only all sentient beings, but all living things and all nature, even inanimate objects - all were considered to be Buddha. This also includes all our actions and thoughts, even our deluded thoughts, as expressions of our innately enlightened nature.

Tamura Yoshirõ (1921–1989) saw original enlightenment thought (本もと覺さとし思想しそう, hongaku shisō) as being defined by two major philosophical elements. One was a radical non-dualism, in which everything was seen as empty and interconnected, so that the differences between ordinary person and Buddha and all other distinctions, were ontologically negated. The other feature of hongaku was the affirmation of the phenomenal world as an expression of the nondual realm of Buddha nature. This was expressed in phrases such as “the worldly passions are precisely enlightenment” and “birth and death are precisely nirvana.”

The Tendai doctrine of hongaku had deep impact on the development of New Kamakura Buddhism, for many of those who founded new Kamakura Buddhist schools (Eisai, Honen, Shinran, Dogen and Nichiren) studied Tendai at Mount Hiei.

During the 1980s a Japanese movement known as Critical Buddhism has attacked original enlightenment as an ideology that supports the status quo and legitimates social injustice by accepting all things as they are as expressions of original Buddha nature.

See also

• Luminous mind
• Buddha nature
• Atman (Buddhism)
• Nirvana
• Nondualism
• Mencius
• Fitra

Further reading

• Gregory, Peter N.; trans. (2005). The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment. In: Apocryphal Scriptures, Berkeley, Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, ISBN 1-886439-29-X, pp. 43-133
• Stone, Jacqueline (2015). Original Enlightenment Thought in the Nichiren Tradition. In Lopez, Donald S. (ed.), Buddhism in Practice (Abridged ed.). Princeton University Press. pp. 166–178. ISBN 978-1-4008-8007-2.
• Stone, Jacqueline (1995), "Medieval Tendai Hongaku Thought and the New Kamakura Buddhism" (PDF), Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 22 (1–2), doi:10.18874/jjrs.22.1-2.1995.17-48
• Stone, Jacqueline Ilyse (2003), "Original enlightenment and the transformation of medieval Japanese Buddhism" (PDF), Studies in East Asian Buddhism (12), University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-2771-7, archived from the original (PDF) on November 5, 2013
• Stone, Jacqueline Ilyse (2004). "Original Enlightenment (Hongaku)", in Buswell, Robert E., ed. Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Macmillan Reference USA; pp. 618-620. ISBN 0-02-865718-7.
• Swanson, Paul (1997). Why they say Zen is not buddhism: Recent Japanese critiques of buddha nature. In: Jamie Hubbard (ed.), Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm Over Critical Buddhism, Univ of Hawaii Press 1997, pp. 3-29. ISBN 0824819497
• Tamura Yoshirō (1984). Critique of Original Awakening thought in Shōshin and Dōgen, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 11 (2-3), 243-266

See also

• Exclusivity (senju) and Innate Enlightenment (hongaku shiso) in Kamakura Buddhism