3. The Buddha-Nature and Brahman

History of Indian philosophy is a history of struggle of internal polemical contradictions. However, these contradictions were the driving force for growth and survival which based on that, Indian philosophy continuously reformed and developed. Buddhist and non-Buddhist contradictions in India all are also looking forward for the goal of ultimate truth and liberation.

In previous chapter, Non-Buddhist Philosophies as mentioned in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra have been discussed through the Āryadeva‘s commentaries. However, Laṅkāvatārasūtra is not the unique text of the Tathāgatagarbha literature presents and criticizes the heretical views.

The earliest text among these scriptures referring to Non-Buddhist thought is the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, for examples:

“The Buddha-nature is actually not the self. For the sake of sentient beings, I preached it as the self”^[1] .

In another place, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra explains while the Buddha sometimes says of the Buddha-nature as the Self, it is misunderstood by the heretics that Self like the personal self (ego) imagined by ordinary people:

“The ātman which is counted by the ordinary man and the foolish man in heretic theories is as large as a thumb, or like a mustard seed, or like an atom. The Tathāgata teaches the ātman that is completely different from any of these.”^[2]

Such the concept of self (ātman) by non-Buddhist theories at the time of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra was different from that of the Advaita Vedāntins, who see the ātman within each living entity as being fully identical with the universal principle Brahman.

In the Advaita Vedānta, there are two definitions (lakṣaṇas) of the Absolute Spirit (Brahman). These are the Taṭastha (accidental or modal) and the Svarūpa (essential or substantial) definitions.^[3] In the Svarūpalakṣaṇa, it is to be noted, there are at least three co-ordinate definitions: Sat (Being), Cit (Intelligence), and Ananda (Bliss).^[4] In the Taṭasthalakṣaṇa, Brahman is the cause of the rise, maintenance, and cessation of the world. In the Advaita Vedānta, the world is not a modification of Brahman but an unreal appearance that is mistaken for it. Brahman is not one real and the world another beside it. Brahman is the reality of the world, its very essence.^[5]

Such the Advaita Vedānta meaning of Brahman is not different the doctrine of the Buddha-nature expounded in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra. In the Laṅkāvatārasūtra itself, the Buddha-nature or Tathāgatagarbha is regarded as identical with the Ālayavijñāna, which is the store of both good and bad seeds as the cause of action, speaking and thinking, and so it creates all things.

The Blessed One said this to him: Mahāmati, the Tathāgatagarbha holds within it the cause for both good and evil, and by it all the forms of existence are produced. Like an actor it takes on a variety of forms, and [in itself] is devoid of an ego-soul and what belongs to it. As this is not understood, there is the functioning together of the triple combination from which effects take place. But the philosophers not knowing this are tenaciously attached to the idea of a cause [or a creating agency]. Because of the influence of habitenergy that has been accumulating variously by false reasoning since beginningless time, what here goes under the name of Ālayavijñāna is accompanied by the seven Vijñānas which give birth to a state known as the abode of ignorance. It is like a great ocean in which the waves roll on permanently but the [deeps remain unmoved; that is, the [Ālaya-] body itself subsists uninterruptedly, quite free from fault of impermanence, unconcerned with the doctrine of ego-substance, and thoroughly pure in its essential nature.^[6]

Such the identification of Tathāgatagarbha and Ālayavijñāna is considered as the primal source giving rise to all phenomenal things like the concept of Brahman as presented in the Vedānta literature.

For example, the Brahmasūtra (I.1.2) of the Vedānta defines the concept of Brahman as follows:

(Brahman is that omniscient, omnipotent cause) from which proceed the origin etc., (i.e. sustenance and dissolution) of this (world).^[7]

This philosophical system of Vedānta teaches the Brahman as the primal origin of the world, it had been presented in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra with the concept of Tathāgatagarbha and Ālayavijñāna. It is necessary to remind that during the era of the Tathāgatagarbha literature (the 3^rd–5^th century CE), the Vedānta school and its doctrine of Brahman had not come into being yet. Therefore, it can be said that “ Brahman” was epistemologically influenced by the “Buddha-nature”.

In another place, we can also find the Laṅkāvatārasūtra reflects vividly the state of belief of the Indian at that time when the Sūtra inducts the threefold supreme God (Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Īśvara) and other Gods of Hinduism into the concept of Tathāgata and the Buddha-nature:

There is another name for the Tathāgata when his Dharmakāya assumes a will-body… Of these, Mahāmati, some recognise me as the Tathāgata, some as the Self-existent One, some as Leader, as Vinayaka (Remover), as Pariṇāyaka (Guide), as Buddha, as Rishi (Ascetic), as Bull-king, as Brahma, as Vishṇu, as Īśvara, as Original Source (pradhāna), as Kapila, as Bhūtānta (End of Reality), as Arishṭa, as Soma (moon), as the Sun, as Rāma, as Vyāsa, as Śuka, as Indra, as Balin, as Varuṇa, as is known to some; while others recognise me as One who is never born and never passes away, as Emptiness, as Suchness, as Truth, as Reality, as Limit of Reality, as the Dharmadhātu, as Nirvāṇa, as the Eternal, as Sameness, as Non-duality, as the Undying, as the Formless, as Causation, as the Doctrine of Buddha-cause, as Emancipation, as the Truth of the Path, as the All-Knower, as the Victor, as the Willmade Mind.^[8]

The above concept of will-body or Manomayakāya from which the Dharmakāya appears in innumerable incarnations (avatāra), can be attained in three cases: (1) Attained in the enjoyment of the Samādhi, (2) Obtained by recognizing the self-nature of the Dharma, and (3) the willbody which is born in accordance with the class of beings to be saved and which perfects and achieves without a thought of its own achievement.^[9]

This will-body is also appeared in the Brahmasūtra.

That which consists of the mind ‘Manomaya’ is Brahman because there is taught (in this text) that Brahman which is well-known as the cause of the world in the Upanishads. [I.2.1]

Because of the declaration of the attainer and the object attained, He who consists of the mind (Manomaya) refers to Brahman and not to the individual soul. [I.2.4]^[10]

In the Brahmasūtra, “Brahman” has been shown not only to be the cause of the origin, sustenance and dissolution of the whole universe, but also to be prāṇa, a very subtle body or mind-body which can only attain through threefold meditation (Brahmasūtra I.1.31)^[11] . Certain terms such as Anandamaya (supreme bliss), Jyoti (light), Prāṇa (universal lifeenergy), Ākāśa (essence of all things in the material world), etc., used in a different sense have been shown through reasoning to refer to Brahman. Therefore, Brahman is not only the essence of living beings, but also the cause of the material world (Brahmasūtra I.4.23).

There are still many similarities between the Buddha-nature and Brahman, but the above presentation is enough to say that it is probably the Vedānta scholars borrowed the thought of the Buddha-nature to create their Upaniṣadic Brahman as its main doctrine. Of course, in the process of borrowing the Buddhist Buddha-nature idea, they have mixed the Buddha-nature with previous Hindu theories of the creation of the universe to complete the Vedānta literature and philosophy. By this way, the Buddha-nature was finally affixed with a new label Brahman.

Summarily, the Tathāgatagarbha literature had been created during the 3^rd–5^th century CE. This is also the time when six orthodox schools of Hinduism took shape and developed in India. These schools accepted the Vedas as supreme revealed scriptures and considered Buddhism as one of the heterodox. Among them, the Vedānta was not known by the Buddhists up to the 5^th century CE, so it was probably not available at that time. During that period, the Buddhist thought of the Buddha-nature has been perfected and presented in the Tathāgatagarbha literature, while the Upaniṣadic doctrine of Brahman did not appear yet. However, because the Buddha-nature, sometimes called Self or True Self in the Tathāgatagarbha literature, was akin the Upaniṣadic thought of Ātman or Brahman in the sense of the universal spirit pervading all things, so the Buddha-nature was criticized by scholars that it was not Buddhist. However, based on the above chronological and epistemological comparison between the Buddha-nature and Brahman; and also relied on the available traces of the Buddha-nature in early Buddhism, in the Mādhyamaka and Yogācāra schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the writer is able to come to the conclusion that both the Laṅkāvatārasūtra and the doctrine of the Buddha-nature are the Buddhist orthodoxy.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

善男子. 是佛性者實非我也. 為眾生故說名為我. (Taisho Tripiṭaka (CBETA 2011) [T12n374], p. 525b01)

[2]:

非如凡夫所計吾我凡夫愚人所計我者.或有說言.大如拇指.或如芥子.或如微塵.如來說我悉不 如是 (Taisho Tripiṭaka (CBETA 2011) [T12n375], p. 618c05) (translated by the writer. No complete English translation is available.)

[3]:

Harold G. Coward, Studies in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra in Indian Thought: Collected Papers of Prof. Taisho Tripiṭaka (CBETA 2011).R.V. Murti, p. 72

[4]:

Ibid.

[5]:

Ibid.

[6]:

Lanka 190; cf. Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra 220 (The identification of Tathāgatagarbha and Ālayavijñāna can also be found in Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra 221, 222, 223 and 235)

[7]:

Swami Vireswarananda (tr.), Brahma-Sutras, p. 25.

[8]:

Lanka 165-66 (Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra 192-93).

[9]:

Lanka 118 (Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra 136).

[10]:

Brahma-Sutras, tr. Swami Vireswarananda, pp. 66-7.

[11]:

Ibid., 64.