Lineage II — All Beings Have Buddha-Nature
Differences in What Is Taught, III — Spiritual Lineage, Part Two所詮差別・種性差別
The Final Teaching erases the Initial Teaching's fifth, lineage-less category at a stroke: buddha-nature, grounded now in suchness itself rather than in any one being's causal history, belongs to every sentient being without exception. But this immediately reopens the very debate Part 10 closed with. If the Nirvāṇa Sūtra also says the icchantika can never attain nirvāṇa, and the Initial Teaching quite deliberately excludes some beings — how can a doctrine of universal buddha-nature be reconciled with either? And if everyone really will become a buddha eventually, does the realm of sentient beings not simply run out?
1. Silver in Every Stone
The Final Teaching moves lineage from causal history into suchness itself — and the consequence is immediate and total. If buddha-nature simply is the nature of all things, no being can lack it any more than water can lack wetness.
二約終教。即就真如性中。立種性故。則遍一切眾生。皆悉有性故。智論云。白石有銀性。黃石有金性。水是濕性火是熱性。一切眾生有涅槃性。以一切妄識無不可歸自真性故。如經說言。眾生亦爾。悉皆有心。凡有心者定當得成阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。以是義故。我常宣說一切眾生皆有佛性。
Second, according to the Final Teaching: because lineage is established within the nature of suchness itself, it pervades all sentient beings without exception, since all of them without exception possess this nature. Hence the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra says: white stone has the nature of silver, yellow stone has the nature of gold; water has the nature of wetness, fire has the nature of heat; all sentient beings have the nature of nirvāṇa — because there is no deluded consciousness whatsoever that cannot be returned to its own true nature. As a sūtra says: "Sentient beings, too, are like this: all of them, without exception, have mind, and whoever has mind will certainly attain unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment. For this reason I constantly proclaim that all sentient beings have buddha-nature."
The four similes — silver latent in white stone, gold in yellow stone, wetness in water, heat in fire — are stock Mahāyāna images for a nature that is not added to a thing from outside but simply is what that thing already is, however hidden. Applied to sentient beings, the claim is stronger than "beings can develop the capacity for buddhahood": it says having a mind at all, of any kind, already constitutes having the nature that guarantees enlightenment. This is the single move that will force everything else in this part to be argued out — because it leaves the Initial Teaching's lineage-less beings, and the Nirvāṇa Sūtra's icchantika, with nowhere left to stand.
2. A Buddha Also Has Mind — So Why Does He Not "Attain"?
The first objection is a clever one: if having mind guarantees future buddhahood, then a buddha, who obviously has mind, ought likewise to be "one who will attain" enlightenment — which is absurd, since he already has it. But if that absurdity can be avoided for a buddha, why can't the same escape route save the lineage-less being too?
問如有難云。若諸有心悉得菩提者。佛亦有心亦應當得。若言佛雖有心更非當得。是即無性眾生雖有是心亦非當得。答經中已自揀濫故。但云眾生有心不云佛矣。以處處受生名為眾生故不同佛也。
Question: as an objection has it — if all who have mind attain bodhi, then the Buddha too has mind, and so ought likewise to "attain" it. But if it is said that, although the Buddha has mind, he is not one who is "to attain" it, then by the very same reasoning, beings without lineage, though they too have this mind, need likewise not be ones who are to attain it either. Answer: the sūtra has already, of itself, screened out this confusion — it speaks only of sentient beings having mind, and does not speak of the Buddha having it. For it is precisely being born again and again, in one place after another, that defines "sentient being" — which is not the same thing as "buddha."
The answer works by refusing the objection's implicit symmetry. "Sentient being" is not a neutral placeholder that happens to be true of unenlightened minds and false of a buddha's; it is defined by the very condition — repeated, involuntary rebirth — that a buddha has already ended. So the sūtra's promise, "whoever has mind will attain bodhi," was never a claim about minds in the abstract; it was already restricted, by the word "sentient being," to minds still caught in that condition. A buddha's mind falls outside the promise not by exception but by definition — which is precisely why the same move cannot be borrowed to exempt the lineage-less being, who remains, by definition, a sentient being still.
3. The Icchantika Reopened: Provisional Teaching, Not Final Word
The deeper question follows at once: if buddha-nature really pervades everyone, how can even the Initial Teaching's lineage-less beings — let alone the Nirvāṇa Sūtra's icchantika — be reconciled with it? Fazang's answer reaches for the Ratnagotravibhāga and the Buddha-Nature Treatise, both of which insist the exclusion was never meant literally.
問若並有性。如何建立五種性中無性者耶。答論自有釋故寶性論云。一向說闡提無涅槃性不入涅槃者。此義云何。為欲示顯謗大乘因故。此明何義。為欲迴轉誹謗大乘心。依無量時故作是說。以彼實有清淨佛性故。又佛性論云。問曰。若爾云何佛說眾生不住於性永無般涅槃耶。答曰。若曾背大乘者。此法是一闡提因。為令眾生捨此法故。若墮闡提因。於長夜時輪轉不息。以是義故經作是說。若依道理。一切眾生皆悉本有清淨佛性。若不得般涅槃者。無有是處。是故佛性決定本有。離有離無故。解云。
Question: if all beings alike possess the nature, how then can "those without lineage" be established among the five lineages at all? Answer: the treatises themselves already supply the explanation. The Ratnagotravibhāga says: "As for the unqualified statement that the icchantika has no nirvāṇa-nature and does not enter nirvāṇa — what is the meaning of this? It is meant to reveal the cause of slandering the Mahāyāna." What does this clarify? It is meant to turn the mind away from slandering the Mahāyāna; the statement is made with reference to an immeasurable span of time, since the icchantika does, in truth, possess the pure buddha-nature. And the Buddha-Nature Treatise says: "Question: if that is so, then why did the Buddha say that sentient beings who do not abide in the nature will never attain final nirvāṇa? Answer: this refers to one who has once turned his back on the Mahāyāna. This very attitude is the cause of icchantika-hood, and the Buddha spoke so in order to make beings abandon this attitude — for should one fall into the cause of icchantika-hood, one revolves through the long night of saṃsāra without cease. It is for this reason that the sūtra speaks as it does. According to the true principle, all sentient beings without exception inherently possess the pure buddha-nature from the start; there is no possibility whatsoever of one who could never attain final nirvāṇa. Buddha-nature is therefore decisively, inherently existent from the outset, apart from both the extreme of existence and the extreme of non-existence." Explanation:
This is not a paraphrase of the Buddha-Nature Treatise — it is very nearly the same passage this site's own Foxing Lun translation renders in its Part 2, where the identical question-and-answer appears almost word for word: an icchantika is not a being permanently without buddha-nature, but one who, for now, has turned his back on the Mahāyāna — a condition the treatise insists is reversible, since the exclusion was only ever meant to frighten people away from slander, not to describe a metaphysical fact. Fazang is not introducing a new resolution here; he is importing the Foxing Lun's own resolution wholesale into his account of the Final Teaching's lineage doctrine, which is a useful reminder of how thoroughly Huayan doxography draws on Yogācāra-tathāgatagarbha treatises already circulating as authoritative texts in their own right.
4. Reconciling the Initial Teaching's Exclusion With the Final Teaching's Universality
Having shown that the Buddha-Nature Treatise itself treats the icchantika's exclusion as provisional, Fazang turns to the harder question: how can the Initial Teaching's decisive claim that some beings have no nature be squared with the Final Teaching's decisive claim that all of them do?
又此論前文廣破無性。乃至末文云。三者失同外道有本定有。無本定無。有不可滅。無不可生。此等過失。由汝邪執無性義生。乃至廣說。問前始教中。決定說有無性眾生。此終教中並皆有性。云何會通。答亦論自有釋。故佛性論第二卷云。何故復有。經說闡提眾生決定無有般涅槃性。若爾二經便自相違。如何會二說一了一不了。故不相違。解云。若小乘中但佛一人有佛性。餘一切人皆不說有。若三乘始教中。以漸異小乘故。說多人有。猶未全異彼故。許一分無性。是故論中判為權施不了說也。
This treatise's earlier text also refutes at length the notion of "no-nature," and its closing passage says: "The third is the fault of resembling the non-Buddhist view that what fundamentally exists is fixedly existent and what fundamentally does not exist is fixedly non-existent — that what exists cannot be extinguished, and what does not exist cannot arise. These faults all arise from your own mistaken clinging to the notion of no-nature" — and so on at length. Question: earlier, in the Initial Teaching, it was decisively stated that there are beings without nature; here, in the Final Teaching, it is said that all beings alike possess it. How are the two to be reconciled? Answer: this too the treatise itself explains. The Buddha-Nature Treatise, second fascicle, says: "Why, then, does a sūtra also say that icchantika beings decisively have no nirvāṇa-nature? If that is so, would the two sūtras not simply contradict each other? How can the two statements be reconciled, one of definitive meaning and one of provisional meaning? They do not, in fact, contradict each other." Explanation: in the Hīnayāna, only the Buddha alone is said to have buddha-nature, and no other being at all is said to have it. In the three-vehicle Initial Teaching, since it differs from the Hīnayāna only by degrees, it says that many beings have it — yet, not yet being entirely different from the Hīnayāna, it still allows that one portion is without nature. This is why the treatise judges this teaching to be a provisional expedient of incomplete meaning.
Notice the shape of the resolution: rather than declaring the Initial Teaching simply mistaken, Fazang has it graded on a scale between the Hīnayāna's near-total exclusion (buddha-nature for the Buddha alone) and the Final Teaching's total inclusion. The Initial Teaching's "one portion without nature" is read as an intermediate, half-finished correction of the Hīnayāna's stricter exclusion — closer to the truth than the Hīnayāna, but "not yet entirely different from it," and therefore still classed as 不了, of incomplete or provisional meaning, against the Final Teaching's 了義, definitive meaning. This is the same five-teachings-as-graded-approximations logic that ran through Part 9's account of the storehouse consciousness, now applied to lineage.
5. If Everyone Becomes a Buddha, Does the Realm of Beings Run Out?
Fazang now raises, in the sharpest form he can, the objection that motivated the Initial Teaching's exclusion in the first place: universal buddhahood seems to entail that the number of unenlightened beings must eventually reach zero — which threatens both logical coherence and the buddhas' own vow to keep benefiting others forever.
問若依終教。一切眾生皆當作佛。即眾生雖多亦有終盡。若如是者。最後成佛即無所化。所化無故利他行闕。利他行闕成佛不應道理。又令諸佛利他功德有斷盡故。如其一切盡當作佛。而言眾生終無盡者。即有自語相違過失。以無終盡者永不成佛故。又如一佛度無量人。於眾生界有損已不。若有漸損必有終盡。有損無盡不應理故。若無損者即無滅度。有滅無損不應理故。依如是等道理。佛地論等。由此建立無性有情。離上諸過失。此義云何。
Question: if, according to the Final Teaching, all sentient beings without exception are to become buddhas, then however many beings there are, there must eventually be an end to them. If this is so, then the very last being to become a buddha would have no one left to transform; and having no one to transform, the practice of benefiting others would be lacking — and a practice of benefiting others being lacking, becoming a buddha at all would be unreasonable. This would also mean that the buddhas' meritorious work of benefiting others eventually comes to a stop. On the other hand, if all beings without exception are indeed to become buddhas, and yet it is also said that sentient beings are never exhausted, this is itself a self-contradictory statement — for if there is truly no end to them, then, by the same logic, none of them could ever become a buddha at all. Again: when a single buddha saves immeasurable numbers of people, does this diminish the realm of sentient beings, or does it not? If there is a gradual diminishment, there must eventually be an end to it — but a diminishment with no end at all is unreasonable. And if there is no diminishment whatsoever, then no genuine extinction has taken place — but an extinction with no diminishment is likewise unreasonable. It is on the basis of reasoning of this kind that the Buddha-Ground Treatise and similar texts establish beings without lineage — precisely in order to escape all the faults just stated. What, then, is the meaning of this?
This is the strongest version of the case for keeping some beings permanently unenlightened, and Fazang states it fully and fairly before dismantling it in the next section: without a reservoir of beings who will never become buddhas, both the coherence of "the realm of beings is inexhaustible" and the buddhas' capacity to keep performing the compassionate work of teaching seem to be threatened. The dilemma is posed as a strict either/or — either the realm of beings shrinks (in which case it eventually hits zero) or it does not shrink (in which case no one has actually attained nirvāṇa, since nothing changed). Fazang's answer, next, is to reject the dilemma's own premise rather than pick a side of it.
6. Neither Increase Nor Decrease
Fazang's answer does not defend one horn of the dilemma. It diagnoses both horns — and the "no-lineage" solution meant to escape them — as symptoms of the same underlying error: mistaking sentient beings for a fixed, countable stock that could increase or decrease at all.
答若謂眾生由有性故並令成佛。說有盡者。是即便於眾生界中起於減見。眾生界既減佛界必增。故於佛界便起增見。如是增減非是正見。是故不增減。經云舍利弗大邪見者。所謂見眾生界增。見眾生界減。乃至廣說。設避此見故。立此一分無性有情。為不增減者。彼終不能離增減見。何以故。以彼見於諸有性者並成佛故。即便起於斷見減見。諸無性者不成佛故。即便起於常見增見。以彼不了眾生界故。是故經云。一切愚癡凡夫。不如實知一法界故。不能實見一法界故。起邪見心謂眾生界增眾生界減。又文殊般若經云。假使一佛住世。若一劫若過一劫。如一佛世界。復有無量無邊恒河沙諸佛。如是一一佛。若一劫若過一劫。
Answer: to hold that, because sentient beings possess the nature, all of them are thereby made to become buddhas, and are therefore exhausted in the end — this is precisely to give rise to the view that the realm of sentient beings decreases. And once the realm of sentient beings has decreased, the realm of buddhas must correspondingly increase — and so the view that the realm of buddhas increases likewise arises. Views of increase and decrease of this kind are not right view; rightly, there is neither increase nor decrease. As a sūtra says of Śāriputra's great wrong view: it consisted precisely in seeing the realm of sentient beings increase, and seeing the realm of sentient beings decrease — and so on at length. Even supposing one tried to avoid this very wrong view by establishing this one portion of beings without lineage, in order to secure "no increase, no decrease" — one could still never actually escape the view of increase and decrease. Why is this? Because, on that view, since all beings who possess the nature do become buddhas, one thereby gives rise to the view of annihilation, the view of decrease; and since all beings without the nature never become buddhas, one thereby gives rise to the view of eternalism, the view of increase. This is simply because such a view fails to understand the realm of sentient beings truly. Hence a sūtra says: all foolish, ordinary people, because they do not truly know the single dharma-realm, because they cannot truly see the single dharma-realm, give rise to the mistaken thought that the realm of sentient beings increases, and that the realm of sentient beings decreases. And the Mañjuśrī Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says: suppose a single buddha abides in the world for a kalpa, or more than a kalpa; and suppose that, within that single buddha's world, there are further immeasurable, boundless buddhas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges — and each and every one of these buddhas, for a kalpa, or more than a kalpa,
The diagnosis is elegant: positing a permanently unenlightened reservoir of no-lineage beings was supposed to secure "no increase, no decrease" in the realm of sentient beings, but Fazang shows it actually guarantees the opposite. Believing that beings-with-nature steadily convert into buddhas already commits one to the view that the realm of sentient beings is decreasing (a kind of annihilationism about that realm); believing that beings-without-nature will never convert already commits one to the view that a fixed portion of the realm is permanently, unchangingly present (a kind of eternalism about it). Both no-lineage and universal-lineage views, taken as claims about a countable stock of beings, fall into one wrong view or the other. Fazang's actual solution — that "the realm of sentient beings is like empty space," with no fixed characteristic that could be counted, increased, or decreased in the first place — only appears in the sentence the source text cuts off mid-citation from the Mañjuśrī Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra; Part 12 completes the quotation and draws the conclusion.
Part Eleven Complete
This closes Part Eleven: the Final Teaching's declaration that buddha-nature, grounded in suchness, pervades every sentient being without exception; the objection about a buddha's own mind, answered by defining "sentient being" itself as the condition of repeated rebirth a buddha has already ended; the icchantika's exclusion reopened and read, via the Ratnagotravibhāga and the very passage this site's Foxing Lun translation already carries, as provisional rather than final; the Initial Teaching's exclusion graded as an intermediate, incomplete correction of the Hīnayāna's stricter one; the sharpest form of the "does the realm of beings run out" objection; and the diagnosis that both increase and decrease are wrong views built on the same mistake, cut off mid-citation from the Mañjuśrī Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra.
Part Twelve completes that citation, draws out its full consequence — the realm of sentient beings is like empty space, without any fixed mark to be counted at all — and brings the whole icchantika debate to formal resolution before turning to the Sudden Teaching's view that lineage is beyond words altogether, and the One Vehicle's own doctrine that lineage is as vast as the dharma-realm itself.