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In discussions on the place of the Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine in Buddhism there is often considerable division. Some scholars defend it as a central Buddhist idea, while others deny that it is Buddhist at all. In the Western Buddhist Order there has been, despite frank and outspoken scepticism from Sangharakshita, a growing interest in Tathāgatagarbha amongst serious meditators, and especially so amongst people who favour formless meditation practices. (see eg Kamalasila below). I sometimes like to tease them about Tathāgatagarbha not being Buddhist and this has lead to some interesting discussions. Recently on a WBO forum I suggested that Tathāgatagarbha was "crypto-Vedantic eternalism" and the response I got was a quote from the Aṅguttara Nikāya (AN), supposedly showing that the idea pre-existed in the Pāli Canon. Leaving aside issues of the authority of texts (see The Cult of the Book and Western Ideas of Canonicity) I decided it might be interesting to look at what it actually says, and at the context of it, to see if it supported the contention.
The passage as quoted to me goes:
‘This mind [citta], monks, is luminous [pabhassara], but is defiled by taints that come from without.’ (Pabhassara Sutta AN 1.49-52 Translated by Bhikkhu Nanananda). A ‘worldling’ is one who doesn’t see this, an ‘Ariyan disciple’ is one who does.
This "luminous mind" is said by proponents of this theory to represent the idea of Tathāgatagarbha in nascent form. As my interlocutor said: "this is not in any way different from what Dzogchen and Mahamudra are getting at, often using exactly the same term."
The citation is to a group of four verses that span two sections of the first chapter of the AN. I decided to do my own translation of 1.51-2 to see what I could make of them. The Pāli goes:
51. ‘‘Pabhassaramidaṃ , bhikkhave, cittaṃ. Tañca kho āgantukehi upakkilesehi upakkiliṭṭhaṃ. Taṃ assutavā puthujjano yathābhūtaṃ nappajānāti. Tasmā ‘assutavato puthujjanassa cittabhāvanā natthī’ti vadāmī’’ti. Paṭhamaṃ.The grammar here is not too tricky and the vocab is also straightforward. My admittedly rough translation goes:
52. ‘‘Pabhassaramidaṃ , bhikkhave, cittaṃ. Tañca kho āgantukehi upakkilesehi vippamuttaṃ. Taṃ sutavā ariyasāvako yathābhūtaṃ pajānāti. Tasmā ‘sutavato ariyasāvakassa cittabhāvanā atthī’ti vadāmī’’ti. Dutiyaṃ.
(Pāli text from the www.tipitaka.org)
This mind is bright, O bhikkhus. And it indeed is soiled by incidental defilements. That one who has not heard, the worldling, does not know it as become. Thus I say “for the one who has not heard, the worldling, there is no production of this mind”.This mind is bright, O bhikkhus. And it indeed is released from incidental defilements. That one who has heard, the hearer of the noble ones, he knows it as become. Thus I say “for the one who has heard, the hearer of the noble ones, there is production of this mind”.
[On the translation of yathābhūta please see Knowledge and Vision, 3 Oct 2008]
Verses 1.49 and 50 leave off the second part beginning with "That one who has heard..." So taken as stand-alone verses one can see that something like the intrinsicly pure mind associated with Tathāgatagarbha might be implied here.
My first observation is that the verses are referring to "this mind" - idaṃ cittaṃ - and that since the 30 or so preceding verses have for some time been referring to citta we can take this as a continuation of that discussion. And what do these preceding verses have to say about this mind? They say that the effect of citta depends on what we do with it. For instance untamed (adanta) it leads to great loss. In fact the Buddha says that no other thing, untamed, unguarded (agutta), unprotected (arakkhita), unrestrained (asaṃvuta) brings so much disadvantage (anattho)! So this mind seems not to be something intrinsically pure, as we would expect of an equivalent of the Tathāgatagarbha. The context reveals that this mind is potentially disastrous if not properly disciplined.
My second observation is that this mind is to be produced or developed or cultivated, i.e. bhāvanā - derived from the verbal root bhū meaning "to become", or "to be". Now in WBO circles a bhāvanā approach to meditation where one pursues concentration (e.g. The mindfulness of breathing) is frequently contrasted with the Tathāgatagarbha based approach in which one simply sits and allows the mind to reveal itself (or something like that). So it is important here that the citta in question is combined in a tappurisa compound with bhāvanā - "the production of mind", or as the context makes clear "the development of this mind". I'm assuming that the citta being spoken of here is the same as in the first sentence - i.e. still this mind. Clearly the Pāli text has something different in mind to the contemporary WBO exegetes of Tathāgatagarbha. This mind is something we must develop or produce or cultivate, which does not suggests something intrinsic but extrinsic.
I will mention in passing that both Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Thanissaro note that the commentary to this passage take citta to mean bhavaṅga-citta or the kind of consciousness that links one life to the next. Clearly this would be very difficult to reconcile with the text and seems very unlikely indeed - Thanissaro concurs. Indeed Thanissaro suggests that a more reasonable interpretation would be that "the luminous mind is the mind that the meditator is trying to develop", (AN 1.49, note 1, emphasis added) and draws parallels with descriptions of the fourth jhana.
So if the link here is not as clear as all that, then why is it quoted? I'm in no position to comment on the usage of such terms in Dzogchen and Mahamudra, but I think there may be a link through the idiosyncratic but highly influential LaṅkāvatāraSūtra. In this text the Tathāgatagarbha is equated with the alaya-vijñāna from the Yogacāra model of the human psyche. This Tathāgatagarbha is described by the text as prakṛti-prabhāsvara-viṣuddha [Suzuki p.77] which we can translate as "original, clear, and pure" (taking this to be a dvanda compound - i.e. a list linked by "and"). Prabhāsvara is a similar word to the Pāli pabhassara, but seems not to be the exact counterpart - the underlying metaphor in the former is of a sound (svara) or voice which is clear, while the latter is using a light metaphor. Still there is a possible link here with later ideas of the Tathāgatagarbha as a pure and luminous mind. It is interesting to note that the Laṅkā itself is aware of how much like an ātmavāda (or theory of immanent godhood) this sounds, and is quick to defend itself.
The Laṅkā claims that the Tathāgatagarbha doctrine is taught in order to "eliminate anxiety on the part of the ignorant toward a theory of non-substantiality (nairātmya)" [Suzuki p. 78] - more precisely a theory of "non-immanent godhood". In fact the idea of the Tathāgatagarbha seems to me to be a way of addressing a vital question which we might phrase - "how do we unredeemed sinners get enlightened?" By the time the Tathāgatagarbha theory was invented the idea that one got enlightened on the basis of dependent arising seems to have been lost along with many other early Buddhist ideas. This left the Mahāyāna Buddhists with a very distinct problem and one of the ways they solved it was by adapting the ātman theory of the Vedanta - one can be enlightened because one already has a seed of the Buddha inside one (as it were), or, to put it another way, one is already enlightened but obscured by defilements. This sounds so similar to the Pāli verse above that you can see why the wrong correlation was made. In effect as in the Upaniṣads: you are that - tat tvam asi - except that "that" is not God or Brahman, but a Tathāgata - "one [already] in that state".
So what have we learned? Firstly we must be cautious of translated sentences taken out of context. Secondly there may not be a link between early Buddhist doctrine and later doctrines even when they use similar wording. Thirdly that the Mahāyāna threw the baby out with the bath water as far as early Buddhist doctrines are concerned, and left itself in a philosophical tangle - advocating what amounts to an ātmavāda, and finding itself immediately on the back foot defending the obvious flaws in such an approach. Fourthly and perhaps most importantly we have learned that despite the fact that the Tathāgatagarbha doctrine is flawed, it was and is enormously popular and influential, and the people who advocate are in many ways admirable people some of whom deeply embody the values of Buddhism despite being doctrinally challenged - which is to say that practice and realisation is far more important than winning arguments and saying the right thing in Buddhism!
References
- Access to Insight:AN 1.31-40; 1.45-46; 1.47; 1.48; 1.49-52.
- Kamalasila Tathatā & Garbha : Wesak Talk UK National Order Weekend and West London Buddhist Centre, May 2004. (I think Kamalasila errs in this talk when he suggests that the Pāli canon usage of the word suñña equates to anything like the Mahāyāna usage of śūnya)
- Suzuki, D.T. (trans) 1966. The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. London : Routledge.
See Also
In Action and Intention III (2011) I noticed something else about this passage:
Pāli citta is further confused with Sanskrit citra 'to shine'. So when the Buddha says Pabhassaramidaṃ, bhikkhave, cittaṃ (AN 1.51) what most people miss is the pun. Citta means both 'thought' and 'shine' and the phrase could equally be read - 'this thought is radiant', or 'this shiny-thing is radiant'. The context does incline towards reading 'mind', but the ambiguity and pun are obvious to a Pāli speaker.
29 Oct 2014.
Sujato has done a much better job of essaying this passage on his blog: On the radiant mind.
"[The mind] is not that it is “naturally” radiant or defiled: it is naturally conditioned. When the conditions for darkness are there, it is dark, when the conditions for light are there, it is light.and
"This is one of the most common tendencies we find in Buddhist history: that well-known, frequently repeated passages with clear meaning are ignored, while obscure, marginal passages, probably suffering severe editorial loss, are taken up precisely because their obscurity allows one to read anything into them."
14 comments:
Good post!
Thanks Al, I thought so too ;-)
This is interesting J. I'm sure you're right about sunna and sunya, though I'd like to read why... also Can you fill in a bit about 'By the time the Tathāgatagarbha theory was invented the idea that one got enlightened on the basis of dependent arising seems to have been lost along with many other early Buddhist ideas?'... Is that true and how do we know. It was 'invented' pretty early on, wasn't it? The Srimala and Tathagatagarbha are not long after the Prajnaparimita, I think. Best wishes, just come across your blog. Just started mine with something on Reggie R. love KS
Hi Kamalasila
I'd have to search out some examples, but I don't recall any sutta where dhammas are described as suñña. However the PED is suggestive that there might be a connection, so I will put it on my list of things to research.
The Srimala - aka the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanāda Sūtra - is according to Paul Williams somewhat controversially dated to the 3rd century. Williams doesn't say what the controversy is, but late dates are seldom disputed. According to Wikipedia it was translated into Chinese in 436, making it quite late really. The 3rd century date is probably the lazy standard of Chinese translation minus a century or two. (this date seems to be taken from Wayman's published translation - and I wouldn't trust anything Wayman wrote as I find him incomprehensible on too many occasions. Please tell me you guys don't study your core text in a Wayman translation!!!)
Dates for Prajñāpāramitā texts are several centuries earlier. Conze places the earliest phase in the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE, with the Large Sutra appearing as early as the first century CE. Asanga and Vasubandhu are thought to have lived in the 4th century.
The main question here is "how can we become a Buddha?" By which I mean not the method, but the mechanism. Methods include faith, meditation, grace of the Buddha etc. There are a number of answers to this question. The early text answer is the Upanisa Sutta (and similar texts) which we know as the spiral path - dependent arising! This seems to have been lost sight of very early on indeed. In fact the methods converge in the Upanisa Sutta in which faith inevitably gives rise to concentration. Anyway I think something was lost, perhaps in the rejection in the so-called "hīnayāna" (see Don't mention the H word).
My reading of a range of Mahāyāna Sūtras is that mechanism of dependent arising is not applied to the arising of Buddhas. Buddhas have become awfully mystical beings who seem to have lost all connection with their former humanity. Whereas the Upanisa Sutta clearly shows that liberation arises in dependence on conditions, there is no parallel in the Mahāyāna. For instance the method of the Pureland texts is faith, but the mechanism is the vow of the Buddha. And Tathāgatagarbha seems to address this question quite directly i.e. we can become Buddhas because we have Buddha nature. The very fact that this theory emerged confirms that the situation I am suggesting applies. Why would you need a theory like this if you already knew how liberation was possible? You wouldn't. In 9th century Japanese Buddhism (examples must always be in a time and place) Mahāyāna Buddhists taught that Enlightenment required 3 incalculable aeons of practising the perfections, and that the Dharmakāya was absolutely abstract: the upshot was the Enlightenment was infinitely far off, and completely disconnected. It was one of Kūkai's important contributions that he corrected this with his statement that one could become enlightened in this life, because the Dharmakāya was not cut off from us, but interpenetrated everything - the mechanism in this case is the interpenetration influenced by the Avataṃsaka/Huayen tradition.
Perhaps you could write something on your blog on why formless meditation is yoked to Tathāgatagarbha - the former makes perfect sense to me without the latter. So why insist on a permanent unchanging essence?
Best wishes
Jayarava
Hi Jayarava
Thanks for such a detailed reply which I shall continue to read. I think I must get my dates for the early TG Sutras from Sallie King's book 'Buddha Nature' which I don't have with me in UK. Shenpen Hookham references John Keenan 'Original Purity and the focus of early Yogacara', JIABS 1983 No.17 p.7 who says the earliest TG Sutras began appearing shortly after Nagarjuna ca 150-250. Shenpen's book 'the Buddha Within' shows the connection between formless meditation and Tathagatagarbha in Mahamudra and Dzogchen, for both of which it is important. Little is written about this yet. Most practitioners within the Kagyu and Nyingma schools differ radically from the Gelugpas on the importance of Tathagatagarbha for establishing right view.
I thoroughly distrust Wayman's translations, too!
The trouble with deriving everything from sutras and texts, as scholars must on the whole, is that though they are presumably some kind of reflection of the living traditions of practice and thought that were going on in the background, and which in fact continue to this day, one can rarely know what kind of reflection they were. I know texts are all we have to go on, but there really is a very big difference that may in some cases make a very big difference for the actual practice of these traditions.
Though it helps link with the long term tradition to study Buddhism as practised in the past, as well of course as clarifying its nature, I am beginning to wonder if it is not a better use of time to discover how some of these ideas are practised right now, and from there to use them in what is possibly a new way, certainly in ways that may or may not square with their use in the past. It seems too hard to verify very satisfactorily the real way TG, for example, was practised in INdia and Tibet. And from a practice point of view, in a way, who cares? Aside from the need to paint a coherent historical picture, what matters is how they can be used now - and how they ARE being used now (in for example present day Mahamudra). The ideas can still be inspiring and entirely in line with right view even though it may be discovered that nowadays they are being used in ways that differ from their use in CE4 India.
love Kamalashila
PS note spelling - I'm Sanskrit not Pali.
The only place in that talk where I mention sunnata in the Pali is: 'There are lots of Pali Suttas about emptiness, so there’s a definite basis to the idea of a second Dharmachakra' - I didn't go into what sunnata meant in the Pali context, and I think you're implying that since in that era it referred to something somewhat different, it cannot be a basis for the later developments? But accepting that ways of expressing things move on, why not? It seems to me that there was an important revision of the significance of sunnata in the move to Mahayana. You may argue that to have been a degeneration of some kind but the vision may still have evolved on the basis of the old ideas.
love Kamalashila
Hi कमलशिल / Kamalaśila
Sanskrit you are then ;-)
I'm going to have to cry pax on this - you've now given me too much to respond to individual points.
One thing though is that scholars who are also Tibetan Buddhist practitioners seem to want to push back the dates of everything. Tantra traditionally taught at the time of the Buddha no longer seems credible, but I think Bob Thurman for instance places the Guhyasamāja Tantra in, like, the 2nd century instead of the 8th or 9th. So I'd want independent confirmation - I'll check out that JIABS paper.
Secondly scholars do not rely solely on texts any longer: there is archaeological and epigraphical evidence for instance, nor do they (on the whole) view them in the kind of naive way you are suggesting. I have written about this a few weeks back on my blog. I tend to think that one gets out of the texts what one was looking for when one started reading unless one is careful. Ironically this post arose out of someone on Sanghajala citing this Pali text as a kind of "proof" that TG theory had pukka antecedents - but having translated it for myself, and established the context I realised that the text, even on the naive level doesn't support that contention. I rather think that non-scholars are more likely to read a text in a naive way - without regard for context, subtext, textual criticism generally, or recent scholarship. The scholar's role is to check "facts".
My conclusion is that some of us need to get on and practice and understand things synchronically (here and now). We need the depth that comes from serious engagement - This is your role, yeah? And some of us need to put effort into understanding things diachronically (over time). And there should be a creative dialogue and perhaps even tension between the two camps, and some people who maybe do both. Kind of forest renunciate vs settled monastic though that is over simplified. Personally I'm interested, just for the hell of it really, in creating or contributing to a kind of etymology of our current practices; or perhaps I am a Foucauldian doing 'archaeology'? In any case I find myself fascinated by how ideas about Buddhism are presented over time, and how that informs what we do now. The discipline involved helps keep me sane! I also think we (the WBO) could definitely sharpen up our presentation in doctrinal matters, and some of that informs how and what I write here.
I think Tathāgatagarbhavādins need to come up with a better general presentation of their practice because it's not of a high enough calibre yet. I am sometimes dismayed by what comes out of the mouths of local mitras who have taken up these ideas - they appear to be quite confused. Or at least what they say confuses me, which may not be the same thing.
My next few posts will continue this theme so keep reading.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Thanks for commenting so enthusiastically - better save some energy for your own blog though, eh!
There's the strong suggestion on your page that I am a Tathagatagarbavadin, or a representative of some kind of body of thought... particularly given some of the naive presentations we see around in F/WBO.. is that fair?
x
ks
Hi Kamalaśila
Is this an English way of saying that you think it is not fair? I'm not English remember. If you don't think it's fair just say so! Otherwise I and my largely American readership (according to Google stats) are left confused...
If you read what I say it is that in the Order there is "a growing interest in Tathāgatagarbha amongst serious meditators, and especially so amongst people who favour formless meditation practices"... and then quote your talk on the order weekend on the subject of Tathāgatagarbha as evidence of the growing interest in Tathāgatagarbha amongst serious meditators interested in formless meditation practice.
In other words I characterise you as a serious meditator with an interest in formless meditation, to whom tathāgatagarbha has some appeal; and who has given a talk on a WBO order weekend on the subject and put that talk on the internet. There are a number of other talks I could have linked to but yours leapt out at me
I don't see the "strong suggestion" that you are suggesting. However as of now you are the only member of the WBO (apart from me) who has made more than one comment on this blog, all of them on the subject of Tathāgatagarbha about which you are apparently quite well informed.
I am also concerned by some of the naive presentations of Tathāgatagarbha theory, and this post was prompted by one of them! The fact that there are naive presentations must be to some extent due to the people who teach such things - either in a naive way, or perhaps to naive people. I wish not to be associated with such naive presentations either, which is why I choose to express myself polemically. If I were to give a talk to the order on Tathāgatgarbha I would most likely call it "Tathāgatgarbha is crypto-vedantic-eternalism" or "Tathāgatagarbha - solution to a problem we don't have" :-)
I suggest that if this is really problematic you email me and we talk about it in private.
Best wishes
Jayarava
no, there's no problem. I think your expressions are fine and some polemicism will help move our ideas on. Still, to get a truer picture of these issues I think it's important to look at living traditions which employ them now as well as how the ideas have evolved in the past.
I look forward to further material from you. best wishes KS
I just revisited this post, and I'm very grateful to you, Jayarava, for putting these verses on "this mind" in context. Very useful.
By way of contrast, I was just reading a piece by Alan Wallace (http://buddhist-christian.org/articles/0801aw.html) in which I think he shows almost a desperation to find some kind of "ground of being." I was most disappointed; I think he's really barking up the wrong tree.
Hi Bodhipakṣa,
Thanks. I'm always delighted when someone gets something out of what I write. Re-reading it after 4 years was interesting. Most of it seems sound still. I remember skimming over the preceding suttas and realising that the passage in question had to be read in light of them, and that the context changed everything. It could not mean what the Buddhanature crowd said it did.
Allan Wallace has recently prompted a number of responses from secular Buddhists (esp. Ted Meissner)
I agree. There's nothing in Pāli texts to indicate a ground state of consciousness. It's a process that arises and ceases in dependence on conditions.
Cheers
Jayarava
Really appreciate this post! The definition of Tathāgata is helpful to me.
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