Original enlightenment
The doctrine is articulated in influential East Asian works like the Awakening of Faith and the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, and was also influenced by the teachings of the Huayan school on the interpenetration of all phenomena.
[4][5] Original enlightenment is an influential doctrine of various schools of East Asian Buddhism, including Chan / Zen, Tiantai and Huayan.
[6] The doctrine of innate enlightenment developed in Chinese Buddhism out of various Indian Mahayana ideas, such as the Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha) doctrine, the luminous mind and the teachings found in various Mahayana sources, including the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, Ghanavyuha, Śrīmālādevī, Tathagatagarbha sutra, Nirvana sutra, and the Ratnagotravibhāga.
"[12] The idea is further discussed in the influential commentary to the Awakening of Faith titled On the Interpretation of Mahāyāna (Shi Moheyan lun, 釈摩訶衍論, Japanese: Shakumakaen-ron, Taisho no.
[14]In medieval China, the doctrine of original enlightenment developed in the East Asian Yogacara, Huayan and Chan Buddhist schools.
[5] The Huayan-Chan scholar monk Guifeng Zongmi wrote about the idea from a Chan perspective, while also promoting the doctrine of sudden enlightenment, followed by gradual cultivation.
However, as Stone writes, Tiantai figures like Zhanran appropriated these ideas "in a manner consistent with their own metaphysics, that is, as denoting the interpenetration of the mind and all phenomena without assigning priority to either and without notions of original purity.
The "off mountain" faction supported the original enlightenment view, which was influenced by the thought of Zongmi and Yongming Yanshou, and promoted the existence of the "one pure formless mind" like the Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith.
[17] The Tiantai patriarch Siming Zhili (960–1028) famously defended the home mountain faction and argued against the Awakening of Faith - original enlightenment view.
Therefore by means of these precepts one manifests and attains the original, inherent, eternally abiding Dharma-body with its thirty-two special marks (DDZ 1:304).
[11] Original enlightenment thought became particularly important for the tradition during the time from the late Heian cloistered rule era (1086–1185) through the Edo period (1688–1735).
[12] During the late Heian and Kamakura periods, new texts were produced which focused specifically on original enlightenment and a new branch of Tendai developed, called hongakumon, which emphasized this teaching.
[5][3] The following passage from the Shinnyokan illustrates the basic idea of original enlightenment found in these types of Tendai sources:If you wish to attain buddhahood quickly or be born without fail in [the Pure Land] of Utmost Bliss, you must think, “My own mind is precisely the principle of suchness.” If you think that suchness, which pervades the dharma realm, is your own essence (wagatai 我体), you are at once the dharma realm; do not think that there is anything apart from this.
[12] Tamura Yoshirō saw "original enlightenment thought" (本覺思想, hongaku shisō) as being defined by two major philosophical elements.
[19] One was a radical Mahayana non-dualism, in which everything was seen as pure, empty and interconnected, so that the differences between ordinary person and Buddha, samsara and nirvana, and all other distinctions, were ultimately ontologically negated.
The other feature of medieval hongaku thought was a radical affirmation of the phenomenal world as an expression of the non-dual realm of Buddha nature.
"[15] Tamura argues that such a strong emphasis on the actual world is due to influence of non-buddhist elements of Japanese culture.
[12][3] The influence of hongaku thought can be seen in Dōgen's view of the “oneness of practice and attainment” (shushō ittō 修証一等), in Shinran’s idea of the “immediate achievement of birth in the Pure Land” (sokutoku ōjō 即得往生) and in also in Nichiren's teaching that all the Buddha's practices and merits are inherent in the daimoku (the title of the Lotus Sūtra) and are directly accessible to those who chant it.
[5] During the 1980s a Japanese movement known as Critical Buddhism led by Komazawa University scholars Matsumoto Shirō and Hakamaya Noriaki critiqued original enlightenment as an ideology that supports the status quo, and legitimates social injustice by accepting all things as expressions of Buddha nature.
[5] Their critiques sparked a heated debate, as other Japanese scholars like Takasaki Jikidō and Hirakawa Akira defended the buddha-nature teachings and original enlightenment thought.
