Hoko's key messages about bussho

Dogen’s original question in the Fukanzazengi really asks what Buddha-nature is.  If all beings have Buddha-nature, why is there delusion and suffering?  In the West we call this the problem of good and evil.  If God exists, why does He allow evil in the world?

Historically, the problem goes back to a question of whether or not there were beings who were inherently incapable of awakening.  If so, they would be condemned forever to go around and around on the cycle of samsara and rebirth.  The Mahayana response was that because the self is empty of any fixed and permanent nature (no-self), there was nothing that could be inherently capable or incapable of awakening.  Another response was the tathagata-garbha doctrine: that what beings had was the potential to become Buddha.  In China, people started thinking of this as “Buddha-nature.”

This is where Dogen’s great doubt begins.  If we all have Buddha-nature, then why is practice necessary?  Everything we do already expresses Buddha-nature.  The Tendai school, in which Dogen originally practiced,  taught original enlightenment (hongaku), rather than acquired enlightenment.  However, that led to two related positions.  On the one hand, whatever happens is my karma and I’m resigned to it -- there’s nothing I can do.  On the other hand, whatever I do is already a manifestation of Buddha-nature so I can do whatever I want regardless of rules or ethics. 

Dogen clearly lays out his great doubt in the opening passage of the Fukanzazengi, in which he says that the Way is already perfect and doesn’t need anything from us.  Yet there is clearly suffering and delusion in the world and the need to make effort in our practice.  To resolve this paradox, Dogen takes apart the various understandings of Buddha-nature that surround him and then comes to his own understanding of what Buddha-nature really is.  This is a big job; it’s probably not a coincidence that the Bussho fascicle is the longest one in the Shobogenzo.  In the end, Dogen’s conclusion is that Buddha-nature isn’t a thing -- a state, a potentiality, essence, power or substance.  Buddha-nature is being, but not in the sense of existing or not existing.  Buddha-nature is functioning: anything that is, is changing and functioning.  Being is not a static condition.  Buddha-nature is all beings or all dharmas simply doing what they do as part of universal functioning, so the ultimate truth is not some timeless principle, but what is actually going on around us.

All beings are Buddha-nature because they are the reality of impermanence, always changing, functioning, arising and perishing.  There’s nothing about forms that we can grasp; they’re not solid, permanent entities.  By their nature, they are empty and impermanent.  That means that Buddha-nature is not limited to “sentient” beings.  Rocks, trees, soda cans and sneakers are all Buddha-nature.  This is why non-sentient beings preach the dharma, simply by being and doing what they are and do.

Buddha-nature is not about what we create out of our perceptions and processing minds.  Dogen is careful to say that Buddha-nature is also not the self or your consciousness or some psychological element.  It’s not enlightenment or awakening, or anything like a permanent essence or soul.  It’s not anything we can have an idea about and then grab onto; it’s non-substantial, not limited to the mind or the body, or to an object of meditation (there is no I’m going to meditate in order to achieve Buddha-nature).

We don’t “have” or “acquire” Buddha-nature for two reasons.  One is that it’s already here and there’s nothing to get.  The other is that from the point of view of the absolute, there is no Buddha-nature and no one to acquire it.  There’s already no separation between an individual being and Buddha-nature, so any conception of Buddha-nature as “something,” particularly “something out there,” misses the mark.  It’s not necessary to even talk about Buddha-nature; when we say "beings," Buddha-nature is already included.

Buddha-nature is not something that’s going to manifest at some future time.  If we want to see it, we just need to see the reality of impermanence and interconnection.  When we do, we also see nonseparation or non-duality.  All beings are Buddha-nature and, on that basis, not separate.  However, that kind of seeing requires aspiration and effort.  It requires practice!

It may be that one of the reasons that the nature of Buddha-nature shows up repeatedly in Dogen’s writings is that the monks who came to him from Darumashu had a different understanding of it.  Darumashu taught what came to be known derisively as the “Senika heresy,” the view that there was a permanent spirit or essence in the body that did the work of making distinctions between phenomena as soon as it encountered or perceived them.  When the body died, then this spirit ecaped and was reborn somewhere else, and in that way it was permanent and never perished.  Under this teaching, then, mind was permanent and material form was impermanent.  The body was the source of delusive desire, but the mind was the same as buddha nature.  Clearly, this is not Dogen’s view, and he works hard to dispel this idea.

His interpretation of the saying "Mind itself is Buddha" does not mean that the human mind is the same as Buddha-nature, as opposed to the physical body.  His understanding is that Mind as the total functioning of the universe is the same as Buddha-nature.

From Sotoshu 

佛性 - Bussho
(Buddha-nature)

​“Buddha-nature” means the original nature as a buddha that is intrinsic to sentient beings. At the same time it also means the potential to become a buddha – a sense of being an embryo of a buddha (tathagatagarbha).