The History of the Development of Chan Buddhism’s Concept of “Innate Wholeness”

Tathāgatagarbha: it took several centuries for Chan Buddhism’s concept of “innate wholeness” to emerge.
Everyone possesses innate wholeness; that is, everyone has equally complete, profound wisdom. This is the philosophical foundation and axiom of Marxism, Zhuangzi, Chan Buddhism, and humanism. See my earlier article, “Humanism vs. Marxism: A Key Point About Marxism and the 1844 Manuscripts.”
Tathāgatagarbha: it took several centuries for Chan Buddhism’s concept of “innate wholeness” to emerge.
I. Several Major Turning Points in Buddhist Thought
A. The early period:
Early Buddhism (the Āgamas) -> the fundamental schism (sectarian Buddhism). Its core teachings were the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, dependent origination, and the Three Dharma Seals: all conditioned things are impermanent, all phenomena are without self, and nirvana is peace.
B. The period of Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna Buddhism:
Nāgārjuna marks a major turning point. Before him came early Mahāyāna, with scriptures such as the Prajñāpāramitā sutras and the Avataṃsaka Sutra. The Prajñāpāramitā sutras focus on dependent origination and the emptiness of intrinsic nature.
Nāgārjuna’s idea was that the Middle Way consists in falling into neither extreme: emptiness nor existence. From Nāgārjuna onward, two major schools took shape, Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, continuing the discussion of emptiness versus existence and intrinsic nature versus phenomenal appearance. Yogācāra also developed ambitions toward metaphysical, philosophical idealism, teaching “consciousness only, with no external objects” and treating the eighth consciousness, “storehouse consciousness,” as the “seed consciousness” from which all phenomena unfold.
Later, two further schools emerged over whether storehouse consciousness was true or deluded. Much later still, the *Awakening of Faith* reconciled the two through its theory of “one mind, two aspects”: one mind encompasses the aspect of suchness and the aspect of arising and ceasing. This became one of the foundations of Chinese Buddhist thought.
C. The emergence of tathāgatagarbha was another major turning point.
Everyone has tathāgatagarbha: Buddha-nature, the essence of Buddhahood, complete wisdom, the Dharma body—pure, neither arising nor ceasing. This later became the core of Chan Buddhism, commonly expressed today as innate wholeness.
This idea was widely welcomed in both India and China. It was simple and clear, bright and “real,” theoretically advanced yet highly practical, filling people with confidence while leaving their minds peaceful and free of seeking. Chan Buddhism grasped precisely this essence. It also contained the relatively advanced humanist idea that everyone is equal and possesses innate wholeness. In India, this suggestion of a “true self” was easily confused with the Hindu unity of Brahman and the self, or even with a soul undergoing reincarnation, making it easier for ordinary people to accept. In China, it resonated with the Daoist ideas that the Way gives rise to all things and that heaven and humanity are one, making it popular among the educated.
The earliest source of tathāgatagarbha was the “pure mind” of the Āgamas of early Buddhism. It later absorbed many Buddhist concepts:
First, “Dharma-nature” and “suchness,” concepts derived from the theory of dependent origination and the emptiness of intrinsic nature. At an abstract level, these resemble the Way, although Daoism is a form of naive materialism and is fundamentally different from the theory of emptiness.
Second, the fruition of Buddhahood and Buddha-nature, or awakening. This concerns an “endpoint”: awakening as the mind’s endpoint, and “nirvana, suchness” as the endpoint of principle. It also concerns a “starting point”: how far ordinary people are from suchness, which is also the question of whether everyone possesses the mind of awakening.
Third, Yogācāra’s core concept of the two transformations of the basis. This, too, concerns the issue of awakening versus nirvana mentioned above, with the eighth consciousness as the basis of defilement and purity, and suchness as the basis of delusion and awakening.
Fourth, the “tathāgatagarbha self”: Buddhist “non-self” is rather abstract and difficult for ordinary people to accept. By contrast, the Hindu ideas of an immortal soul and karmic reincarnation are easier to accept. To make the teachings acceptable to people outside Buddhism, a “subject” was nevertheless added: the “tathāgatagarbha self.”
These concepts all involved extensive debate and evolution, but gradually moved toward integration. (With this “clever” sentence, I have sidestepped more than half the Buddhist scriptures. What can I do? I practice Zhuangzi’s teachings, so I keep things this simple. My abilities are limited; knowledge is boundless, but life is finite.) The gradual integration of Dharma-nature, suchness, awakening, nirvana, seed consciousness, tathāgatagarbha, the tathāgatagarbha self, and other concepts was, in fact, also a return to the original truth of early Buddhism: “All phenomena bear the mark of emptiness; all phenomena are without self.”
The *Laṅkāvatāra Sutra* integrates suchness, tathāgatagarbha, and the eighth consciousness. This sutra was a central teaching in the time of the patriarch Bodhidharma and is one of Chan Buddhism’s sources. The concept of tathāgatagarbha has always been central to Chan Buddhism. The *Platform Sutra* states this very clearly: when the Fifth Patriarch was explaining the *Diamond Sutra* to Huineng and reached the passage “Let the mind arise without abiding anywhere,” Huineng attained great awakening at these words and said, “Who would have thought that our own nature is inherently pure? Who would have thought that our own nature neither arises nor ceases? Who would have thought that our own nature possesses innate wholeness? Who would have thought that our own nature is fundamentally unwavering? Who would have thought that our own nature can give rise to all phenomena?” He proposed the method of sudden cultivation through “no-thought, no-form, and non-abiding.”
II. The Spread of Chan Buddhism Was a Process of Continual Reform
At first, Bodhidharma practiced rigorous asceticism, wandering and begging for food, with no fixed abode, living alone in mountain forests under harsh conditions. The authorities also rejected him, making it difficult for his teachings to spread widely. Yet this very asceticism in the mountains and forests made his practice appear all the more sincere, and comparison with his fellow practitioners made his attainment stand out.
Chan Buddhism began to flourish under the Fourth and Fifth Patriarchs of the East Mountain teaching. First, they reformed this ascetic practice by establishing monasteries and places of practice, something also made possible by the end of the age of turmoil and the founding of the Tang dynasty. Second, they revised the approach of “not relying on written words; a special transmission outside the teachings,” making greater use of Buddhist scriptures. Combined with the integration of meditation and precepts, this provided a model of practice that was easier to spread and accept. (This also reflected the end of turmoil, the reunification of the country, and the beginning of an exchange between northern and southern Buddhist traditions, through which Chan absorbed more nourishment from scriptural teachings.) The later popularity of shorter, clearer scriptures such as the *Diamond Sutra* and the *Heart Sutra* also expressed this trend. Huineng brought the achievements of this period together. In this respect, later disputes over “sudden awakening versus gradual awakening,” “sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation,” and so on were disputes over method, rather than over Chan’s foundations.
I used to mistakenly think that Huineng had “invented” “not relying on written words; a special transmission outside the teachings,” “sudden awakening,” and “directly reaching the original mind,” and that Shenxiu was the villain. Only after reading some Chan history did I realize that this was an outsider’s misunderstanding, as well as a result of later alterations to the *Platform Sutra*. But that does not diminish its status as a classic, just as some strained interpretations in the Miscellaneous Chapters of the *Zhuangzi* do not diminish the *Zhuangzi*. Everyone has tathāgatagarbha and can judge for themselves. Regarding tathāgatagarbha, Huineng leaned more toward the emptiness taught in the wisdom tradition, reducing some of Yogācāra’s elements of perfuming, seeds, transformation of the basis, the three intrinsic natures, and idealism, while strengthening the idea of sudden cultivation. Still, he continued to emphasize both meditation and precepts. He had not yet moved entirely toward natural spontaneity and retained the “old habit” of gradual cultivation.
The Chan Buddhism we are now “familiar” with—directly pointing to the original mind, requiring no cultivation or correction, and teaching that the ordinary mind is the Way—is a further revision of Huineng’s teachings by Mazu Daoyi of the Southern School. Add to this the idea that everyone has tathāgatagarbha and possesses innate wholeness, and Buddhism was simplified to the utmost, actually bringing it closer to its true meaning. The Southern School, approaching through Buddhism, and the Oxhead School, which developed Zhuangzi’s thought through the philosophy of the profound, arrived by different routes at the same method: “taking non-cultivation as cultivation.”
The mind is inherently pure and needs no cultivation or correction. There is no cultivation and no attainment. The mind relaxes, ordinary and free of concerns, just like the everyday conduct of ordinary people: eat when hungry, sleep when tired. Chan is present everywhere. “When the mind is at peace, why toil at keeping precepts? When conduct is upright, what use is practicing meditation?” “Originally unbound, there is no need to seek release. Act directly and proceed directly: this is the unequaled.” As Bai Juyi wrote after consulting a disciple of Mazu, “Striving is not the ultimate meaning; nonattachment is the true teaching. I fear, too, that diligently cultivating the Way may still leave one within delusion.” Emptiness without attachment to emptiness: this was the original intent of the Middle Way taught by the Buddha and Nāgārjuna. This natural ease and leisure resonate even more closely with Zhuangzi.
From the late Tang onward, China was repeatedly engulfed in warfare, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms drove beasts to devour people. Chan Buddhism and the Vinaya School were able to survive and be passed down because of their extreme simplicity.
III. My Personal Understanding
In my own experience, innate wholeness is a highly practical and clearly defined milestone in spiritual practice. It is also a basic threshold I now use when deciding whom to associate with. Its philosophical definition, however, is somewhat vague.
For my part, considering my commitments to Marxism and Zhuangzi alongside the frameworks of the histories of Western philosophy and Buddhist thought, the theory of tathāgatagarbha, with its incorporation of Yogācāra idealism, somewhat contradicts the “nothingness” of the emptiness of all phenomena. In other words, the claim that the mind of awakening equals emptiness is problematic. The mind of awakening is the “endpoint” plus the “starting point” of human “cognition”—in Daoist terms, the true person. It is simply a cognitive state, a level of understanding: “recognizing that all phenomena are empty and without self.” This should also be Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka idea. Thus, when Mazu’s Chan proposed “neither mind nor Buddha,” it was returning to the emptiness of all phenomena, and Chan increasingly emphasized the contemplation of emptiness through wisdom.
At the level of physics and “truth,” the universe is unified and beyond human comprehension: “absolute truth,” or the “Way.” In Daoist terms, heaven and humanity are one, but people can only reach “the recognition that heaven and humanity are one”; they cannot attain that unity itself—in Buddhist terms, suchness, in which all phenomena are equal.
A human being is ultimately a human being, however much we try to empathize with an atom, a beam of light, a tree, or a butterfly. The mind of awakening, or the Daoist true person, is not mysterious but simple. We imitate trees, butterflies, and swimming fish in how we live, free of deluded thoughts, pure and natural—that is all. To put it more bluntly, the world is material, not ideal.
As Chinese Chan developed, its core became the emptiness taught in the wisdom tradition plus the innate wholeness of tathāgatagarbha. This was, in fact, already very similar to the Daoist unity of heaven and humanity, with its extreme simplicity, purity, and naturalness. Chinese Chan and the philosophy of the profound associated with Zhuangzi did indeed have very close connections [for example, the history of the Oxhead School, or the resemblance between “insentient things have Buddha-nature” and “heaven and humanity are one” and “the Way is in excrement and urine” (though the core remains the emptiness of all phenomena)]. But tracing their respective paths, they converge by different routes and ultimately must arrive at this same result.
By this stage, Chan and Zhuangzi had become thoroughly integrated into Chinese life, especially the lives of Chinese intellectuals. Bai Juyi’s lines, “Bodhidharma transmitted the mind, bidding thoughts cease; the Dark Originator left his teaching, bidding us mingle with the dust,” and Liu Zongyuan’s lines, “The myriad sounds all arise through conditions; profound stillness lies within the clamor. Mind and surroundings are originally one in suchness; birds fly without leaving a trace,” bring together Zhuangzi’s stillness amid the myriad sounds and Chan’s dependent origination and emptiness of intrinsic nature. Many eminent figures of the Song dynasty, including Su Shi, Wang Anshi, and Xin Qiji, also practiced both Chan and Zhuangzi’s teachings.
Ordinary people do not need to get too tangled up in these questions. Consider early Buddhism’s avoidance of metaphysics and ontology. The gist of the original passage is that when someone is struck by a poisoned arrow, it is enough to treat the wound and the poison. Insisting on knowing who shot the arrow, with what bow and in what manner, what the poison’s formula was, and the principles behind recovery—and otherwise refusing treatment—is making things needlessly difficult. It is enough for brightness to arise in the empty chamber. Whether that brightness is tathāgatagarbha, awakening, or suchness, just practice; do not get tangled up in it. Even before brightness arises in the empty chamber, you are already happy and joyful along the way, enjoying the highest happiness, with nothing else to seek.
The Southern School ultimately arrived at no cultivation and no attainment, at the everyday life of ordinary people. Zhuangzi, meanwhile, often wrote about ordinary people, people with disabilities, and artisans; about useless trees, swimming fish, and butterflies; and about Liezi returning home to feed the pigs. This is the Daoist idea of seeing simplicity and embracing the uncarved block. There is also, in fact, a question of class here: the middle and upper classes suffer more alienation through greed, anger, ignorance, and delusion, while the lower classes suffer more alienation through labor, yet retain their simple, original character of mind. This, too, is part of the proletariat’s advanced character. The *Platform Sutra* also says, “Those of the lowest standing possess the highest wisdom.” Huineng himself is portrayed as an illiterate peasant who sold firewood and pounded rice, likewise highlighting this point.