Human Nature and Buddha Nature in Wŏnhyo

Abstract

In contrast to the view of humanity as in a quest for truth between reason and animal nature in the Western philosophical tradition, between wholesomeness and unwholesomeness in Confucianism, and between stillness and motion in Daoism, proponents of Buddhism understand humanity as in a search for truth between impurity and purity, or in other terms, of being composed of an unoriginal actuality called "delusion" and an original potentiality called "enlightenment." To more briefly express this Buddhist framework of viewing humanity, we might say, "the mind-nature is originally pure but is contaminated by adventitious defilements." In this way, a mind that is originally pure is the "pure mind of self-nature" (prakṛti-prabhāsvara-citta); the transformation of original nature from this kind of pure mind of the self-nature to the most interior recesses of living beings is precisely "Buddha nature" (pulsŏng 佛性). To Wŏnhyo, that the essence of Buddha nature is the one mind means that the original nature of humanity is "Buddha nature as the one mind." Furthermore, it is harmonization between the dharma nature of "non-duality and emptiness" and the awakened nature of "nature understanding itself mysteriously." This refers to the heart of enlightenment through realization of Buddha nature, which is precisely emptiness. Accordingly, to Wŏnhyo, the original nature of human beings is "Buddha nature as the one mind," and that can be known as being "Buddha nature by means of emptiness."