Whalen Lai
Sinitic speculations on buddha-nature:
The Nirvana school (420-589)
Philosophy East and West
32:2 April, 1982, p.135-149
(c) by University of Hawaii Press
The universality of Buddha-nature is a doctrine accepted by all Chinese schools of Buddhism. The Wei-shih(a) (Fa-hsiang(b), Vijnaptimatrata) school of Hsuantsang(c), for reviving the notion that the icchantika is agotra, devoid of this seed of enlightenment, had been summarily dismissed as "Hinayanist" for that reason. The idea of "the enlightenability of the icchantika" is associated with the laternamed "Nirvana School," a group of scholars in the Southern Dynasties (420-589) that chose to specialize on the Nirvana Sutra, the Mahayana scripture narrating the last day and teaching of Sakyamuni on earth. The person credited with discovering this doctrine, before even the full sutra was available to vindicate his stand, is Chu Tao-sheng(d) (375?-434), perhaps better known for his stand on "sudden enlightenment." The school as such flourished best in the Liang dynasty (502-557); but because it was then aligned with scholarship focusing on the Ch'eng-shih-lun(e) (Satyasiddhi? ) by Harivarman, it came under criticism when the latter was denounced as Hinayanist in the Sui dynasty. It is usually said that the T`ien-t'ai(f) school, based on the Lotus Sutra, superseded the Nirvana school by incorporating many of its ideas, while the Ch'eng-shih school suffered irredeemably under the attack of Chi-tsang(g) of the San-lun(h) (Three Treatise or Madhyamika) school at the same time. Henceforth, the Nirvana school faded away while its old association with the Ch'eng-shih tradition was judged an unnecessary mistake.(1) This article will introduce three moments from the history of this Nirvana school, showing the main trends of development and, somewhat contrary to traditional opinion, justifying the necessity for the detour into Harivarmans scholarship. Emphasis will also be put on the interaction between Buddhist reflections and the native traditions.
THE FOUNDING OF THE SCHOOL: TAO-SHENG AND HSIEH LING-YUN(i)
The Nirvana Sutra, from which the school drew its inspiration, was first translated by Fa-hsien(j), the pilgrim who brought it back from India, and Buddhabhadra in 416. This shorter and earlier recension already introduced the idea of "universal Buddha-nature", but as surely it also stated that the icchantika was destitute of this seed of enlightenment. A later and longer version readmitting the icchantika into the lot of the enlightenable was rendered, in Liang-chou(k), by Dharmaksema with the help of Tao-lang(1) in 421, but unfortunately this full text would not arrive at the southern capital until a decade later, in 430. With only the Fa-hsien version at hand, it was only natural that the southerners regarded the exclusion of the icchantika to be the canonical position. For someone to openly go against the words of the Buddha should, indeed in that context, be punishable, according to the preceptual code, by banishment from the community(2) . That was the fate at first for Tao-sheng who somehow intuited that one day even the icchantika should be de jure (that is, tang-lai(m): in the ----------------------
Whalen Lai is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis.
p. 136
natural course of time) given this seed of enlightenment(3). Hui-kuan(n) petitioned the king for Tao-shengs removal in 428-429, and Tao-sheng left the capital for Lu-shan(o), only to be vindicated the next year when the full text arrived from the north.
It is not clear when Tao-sheng first intuited this "enlightenability of the icchantika, " but Hui-kuans reaction was both sharp and apparently quick, such that it is advisable to date it close to 428 itself. This is supported by a letter written by Fan T'ai(p) to the pair, Hui-kuan and Tao-sheng, circa 426-428, at which time the two were on speaking terms though already divided over gradual versus sudden enlightenment(4) . (This other controversy warranted no expulsion of a heretic, because the scriptures themselves show no decisive stand, unlike the explicit exclusion of the icchantika in the then-available Nirvana Sutra.) Because later in Ch'an (Zen(q)), the doctrine of sudden enlightenment was predicated upon the idea of an innate Buddha-nature, it has been assumed that Tao-sheng also arrived at the subitist position by way of the universality of Buddha-nature.(5) However, nowhere in Tao-shengs surviving writings do we find the formula, chien-hsing ch'eng-fo(r), "upon seeing ones (Buddha) nature, be [suddenly] enlightened." That formula first appeared in Pao-liang(s) who is however judged a gradualist because of his Ch'eng-shih leanings (see infra). Thus "sudden enlightenment" and "universal Buddha-nature" were originally two separate issues, discovered by Tao-sheng independent of one another.
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