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125-605: The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch ( Chinese : 六祖壇經 ; pinyin : Liùzǔ Tánjīng or simply: 壇經 Tánjīng ) is a Chan Buddhist scripture that was composed in China during the 8th to 13th century. The "platform" (施法壇) refers to the podium on which a Buddhist teacher speaks. Its key themes are the direct perception of one's original nature, and the unity in essence of śīla (conduct), dhyāna (meditation) and prajñā (wisdom). The text centers on

250-404: A constant practice of cleaning the mirror [...] [H]is basic message was that of the constant and perfect teaching, the endless personal manifestation of the bodhisattva ideal. Huineng's verse does not stand alone, but forms a pair with Shenxiu's verse: Huineng's verse(s) apply the rhetoric of emptiness to undercut the substantiality of the terms of that formulation. However, the basic meaning of

375-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where

500-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and

625-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and

750-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese

875-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of

1000-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of

1125-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only

1250-542: A lecture on prajna, given after a recitation of the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra . From this chapter: When our mind works freely without any hindrance, and is at liberty to "come" or to "go", we attain Samadhi of Prajna, or liberation. Such a state is called the function of "thoughtlessness." But to refrain from thinking of anything, so that all thoughts are suppressed, is to be Dharma-ridden, and this

1375-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as

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1500-446: A monastery is preferable to following the forms of monastic renunciation without inner practice. In Chapter Four, meditation and wisdom are said to be of the same essence: Meditation and wisdom are of one essence, not different. Meditation is the essence of wisdom, and wisdom is the function of meditation. At times of wisdom, meditation exists in that wisdom; at times of meditation, wisdom exists in that meditation. Chapter Five details

1625-497: A product of a long evolution with elements coming together from several different Chan groups with different agendas, as the uneven character of the text and its internal inconsistencies attest. The Dunhuang versions are the oldest texts available, with the full title Southern School's Sudden Doctrine , Supreme Mahayana Great Perfection of Wisdom : The Platform Sutra as Delivered by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng at

1750-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate

1875-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin

2000-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with

2125-473: A stanza that he composed. According to McRae, "the earliest version of the Platform Sutra contains two versions of Huineng's verse. Later version contain one version of Huineng's stanza, different from the two older ones: Bodhi originally has no tree. The mirror has no stand. The Buddha-nature is always clear and pure. Where is there room for dust? The mind is the bodhi tree. The body

2250-598: A statue of the Victorious One in a tattered rag, a ruler of humankind in a destitute woman's womb, and a precious image under clay, this [buddha] element abides within all sentient beings, obscured by the defilement of the adventitious poisons. Another important and early source for buddha-nature is the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra ( often just called the Nirvana Sutra), possibly dating to

2375-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c.  1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct

2500-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than

2625-474: A virtual repository of the entire tradition up to the second half of the eighth century. At the heart of the sermon is the same understanding of the Buddha-nature that we have seen in texts attributed to Bodhidharma and Hongren, including the idea that the fundamental Buddha-nature is only made invisible to ordinary humans by their illusions". Chapter One contains the well-known story of the contest for

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2750-540: A wide range of (sometimes conflicting) meanings in Indian Buddhism and later in East Asian and Tibetan Buddhist literature. Broadly speaking, it refers to the belief that the luminous mind , "the natural and true state of the mind ", which is pure ( visuddhi ) mind undefiled by afflictions , is inherently present in every sentient being , and is eternal and unchanging. It will shine forth when it

2875-481: Is tathata , suchness, the true nature of things), and "the aspect of nonenlightenment" ( samsara , the cycle of birth and death, defilement and ignorance). This text was in line with an essay by Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty (reign 502–549 CE), in which he postulated a pure essence, the enlightened mind, trapped in darkness, which is ignorance. By this ignorance the pure mind is trapped in samsara. This resembles

3000-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which

3125-658: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of

3250-552: Is a nonimplicative negation , (2) the luminous nature of the mind , (3) alaya-vijñana (store-consciousness), (4) all bodhisattvas and sentient beings. The term tathagatagarbha first appears in the Tathāgatagarbha sūtras , which date to the 2nd and third centuries CE. It is translated and interpreted in various ways by western translators and scholars: The term "buddha-nature" ( traditional Chinese : 佛性 ; ; pinyin : fóxìng , Japanese : busshō )

3375-541: Is an erroneous view. In Chapter Three Huineng answers questions from a lay audience. Huineng discusses the famous story of Bodhidharma telling Emperor Wu of Liang that his good deeds would bring him no merit. Next, he discusses the Pure Land of the West , asserting the greater importance of one's inner state compared to one's physical location. This leads to a conclusion in which Huineng asserts that lay practice outside of

3500-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,

3625-521: Is cleansed of the defilements, that is, when the nature of mind is recognized for what it is. The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (2nd century CE), which was very influential in the Chinese reception of these teachings , linked the concept of tathāgatagārbha with the buddhadhātu . The term buddhadhātu originally referred to the relics of Gautama Buddha . In the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra , it came to be used in place of

3750-516: Is closely related in meaning to the term tathāgatagarbha , but is not an exact translation of this term. It refers to what is essential in the human being. The corresponding Sanskrit term is buddhadhātu . It has two meanings, namely the nature of the Buddha, equivalent to the term dharmakāya , and the cause of the Buddha. The link between the cause and the result is the nature ( dhātu , see also Svabhava , Mahābhūta , and Eighteen dhātus ) which

3875-471: Is common to both, namely the dharmadhātu. Matsumoto Shirō also points out that "buddha-nature" translates the Sanskrit-term buddhadhātu, a "place to put something," a "foundation," a "locus." According to Shirō, it does not mean "original nature" or "essence," nor does it mean the "possibility of the attainment of Buddhahood," "the original nature of the Buddha," or "the essence of the Buddha." In

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4000-413: Is covered over by afflictions. The Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra uses nine similes to illustrate the concept: This [tathāgatagarbha] abides within the shroud of the afflictions, as should be understood through [the following nine] examples: Just like a buddha in a decaying lotus, honey amidst bees, a grain in its husk, gold in filth, a treasure underground, a shoot and so on sprouting from a little fruit,

4125-442: Is itself enfolded, hidden or contained by another." The Tibetan translation is de bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po , which cannot be translated as "womb" ( mngal or lhums ), but as "embryonic essence", "kernel" or "heart". The term "heart" was also used by Mongolian translators. The Tibetan scholar Go Lotsawa outlined four meanings of the term Tathāgatagarbha as used by Indian Buddhist scholars generally: (1) As an emptiness that

4250-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of

4375-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate

4500-472: Is regarded to be the seed from which Buddhahood grows. Wayman thus argues that the pure luminous mind doctrine formed the basis for the classic buddha-nature doctrine. Karl Brunnholzl writes that the first probable mention of the term tathāgatagarbha is in the Ekottarika Agama (though here it is used in a different way than in later texts). The passage states: If someone devotes himself to

4625-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles

4750-462: Is the bright mirror's stand. The bright mirror is originally clear and pure. Where could there be any dust? Bodhi originally has no tree. The bright mirror also has no stand. Fundamentally there is not a single thing. Where could dust arise? The followers who were present were astonished by the work of a southern barbarian. Being cautious of Huineng's status, the Patriarch wiped away

4875-528: Is the capacity to appear (pratibhāsa). The Yogācāra concept of the alaya-vijñana (store consciousness) also came to be associated by some scholars with the tathāgatagarbha. This can be seen in sutras like the Lankavatara , the Srimaladevi and in the translations of Paramartha . The concept of the ālaya-vijñāna originally meant defiled consciousness: defiled by the workings of the five senses and

5000-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,

5125-477: Is their simple absence of inherent existence, their emptiness. Thus the tathagatagarbha becomes emptiness itself, but specifically emptiness when applied to the mental continuum. Uniquely among Madhyamaka texts, some texts attributed to Nagarjuna , mainly poetic works like the Dharmadhatustava , Cittavajrastava , and Bodhicittavivarana, associate the term tathāgatagarbha with the luminous nature of

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5250-399: Is through false thoughts that suchness is covered up. Just be without false thoughts and the nature is pure of itself. If you activate your mind to become attached to purity, you will only generate the falseness of purity. The false is without location; it is the concentration that is false. Purity is without shape and characteristics; you only create the characteristics of purity and say this

5375-517: Is traditionally attributed to the Indian Aśvaghoṣa , no Sanskrit version of the text is extant. The earliest known versions are written in Chinese, and contemporary scholars believe that the text is a Chinese composition. The Awakening of Faith offers an ontological synthesis of buddha-nature and Yogacara thought from the perspective of "essence-function" philosophy. It describes the "One Mind" which "includes in itself all states of being of

5500-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because

5625-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for

5750-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it

5875-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while

6000-566: Is ‘effort’ [in meditation]. To have such a view is to obscure one’s own fundamental nature, and only to be fettered by purity. Chapter Six describes a repentance-ritual. Chapter Seven gives various stories of encounters and dialogues. Chapter Eight also gives various stories of encounters and dialogues. Chapter Nine describes the request of the Imperial Court for Huineng to visit the Emperor, and Huineng's decline of this command. In

6125-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system

6250-474: The East Mountain School and Shenhui's Southern School. The text attempts to reconcile the so-called Northern School with its alleged gradual enlightenment teachings, and the so-called Southern School with its alleged sudden enlightenment teachings. In effect, the text incorporates the "rhetorical purity" which originated with Shenhui's attack on Shenxiu , while effectively "writing him out of

6375-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in

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6500-471: The Lankavatara sutra , that "the statement of the emptiness of sentient beings being a buddha adorned with all major and minor marks is of expedient meaning". Kamalasila 's (c. 740–795) Madhyamakaloka associates tathāgatagarbha with luminosity and luminosity with emptiness . According to Kamalasila the idea that all sentient beings have tathāgatagarbha means that all beings can attain full awakening and also refers to how "the term tathāgata expresses that

6625-552: The Lotus Sutra details that the potential to become enlightened is universal among all people, even the historical Devadatta has the potential to become a buddha. East Asian commentaries saw these teachings as indicating that the Lotus sutra was also drawing on the concept of the universality of buddha-nature. The sutra shares other themes and ideas with the later tathāgatagarbha sūtras and thus several scholars theorize that it

6750-537: The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra some Chinese Buddhists supposed that the teaching of the buddha-nature was, as stated by that sutra, the final Buddhist teaching, and that there is an essential truth above emptiness and the two truths . This idea was often interpreted as being similar to the ideas of the Dao , non-being ( wu ), and Principle (Li) in Chinese philosophy and developed into what

6875-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with

7000-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and

7125-517: The Ratnagotravibhāga , all sentient beings have "the embryo of the Tathagata" in three senses: The Ratnagotravibhāga equates enlightenment with the nirvāṇa-realm and the dharmakāya . It gives a variety of synonyms for garbha , the most frequently used being gotra and dhatu . This text also explains the tathāgatagarbha in terms of luminous mind , stating that "the luminous nature of

7250-561: The Vajrayana , the term for buddha-nature is sugatagarbha . According to Alex Wayman , the idea of the tathāgatagarbha is grounded on sayings by the Buddha that there is something called the luminous mind ( prabhasvaracitta ), "which is only adventitiously covered over by defilements ( agantuka klesha )." The luminous mind is mentioned in a passage from the Anguttara Nikaya (which has various parallels) which states that

7375-670: The interpenetration of all dharmas (in East Asian traditions like Huayan ). The belief in Buddha-nature is central to East Asian Buddhism , which relies on key Buddha-nature sources like the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra . In Tibetan Buddhism , the concept of Buddha-nature is equally important and often studied through the key Indian treatise on Buddha-nature, the Ratnagotravibhāga (3rd–5th century CE). The term tathāgatagarbha may mean "embryonic tathāgata", "womb of

7500-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c.  1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded

7625-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at

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7750-524: The tathāgatagarba and the idea of the defilement of the luminous mind. In a similar fashion to the Awakening of Faith , the Korean Vajrasamādhi Sūtra (685 CE) uses the doctrine of Essence-Function to explain the tathāgatagarbha (also called "the dharma of the one mind" and original enlightenment ) as having two elements: one essential, immutable, changeless and still (the "essence");

7875-472: The "pureness of our fundamental nature": In this teaching of seated meditation, one fundamentally does not concentrate on mind, nor does one concentrate on purity, nor is it motionlessness. If one is to concentrate on the mind, then the mind [involved] is fundamentally false. You should understand that the mind is like a phantasm, so nothing can concentrate on it. If one is to concentrate on purity, then [realize that because] our natures are fundamentally pure, it

8000-641: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Buddha-nature Buddha-nature has

8125-506: The 2nd century CE. Some scholars like Michael Radich argue that this is the earliest buddha-nature sutra. This sutra was very influential in the development of East Asian Buddhism . The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra linked the concept of tathāgatagarbha with the "buddhadhātu" ("buddha-nature" or "buddha-element") and it also equates these with the eternal and pure Buddha-body, the Dharmakaya, also called vajrakaya . The sutra also presents

8250-409: The Buddha ( buddhajñāna )," is seen by some scholars as complementary to the tathāgatagarbha concept. The Lotus Sutra , written between 100 BCE and 200 CE, also does not use the term tathāgatagarbha , but Japanese scholars suggest that a similar idea is nevertheless expressed or implied in the text. The tenth chapter emphasizes that all living beings can become a Buddha. The twelfth chapter of

8375-814: The Dafan Temple in Shao Prefecture Chinese : 南宗頓教最上大乘摩訶般若波羅蜜經：六祖惠能大師於韶州大梵寺施法壇經 , subtitled, “one roll, recorded by the spreader of the Dharma, the disciple Fahai, who at the same time received the Precepts of Formlessness” (一卷，兼受無相戒弘法弟子法海集記). Two copies dated to between 830 and 860 have been found in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang. Both are thought to be based on an edition from about 780. The finds at Dunhuang have been very important for

8500-474: The Dharmakāya (ultimate reality). This doctrine was also later to be synthesized with buddha-nature teachings by various sources (with buddha-nature generally referring to the Dharmakaya as it does in some sutras). The Yogācāra school also had a doctrine of "gotra" (lineage, family) which held that there were five categories of living beings each with their own inner nature. To make this teaching compatible with

8625-1086: The Dharma’). In 1291 (during the Yuan dynasty ), Zongbao (宗寶, Wade-Giles: Tsung-pao ) produced the edition that became part of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) Chinese Buddhist canon. This canonical version, apparently based on the Qisong edition, is about a third longer than the Mogao Caves version, and structured differently. The way The "goal" Background Chinese texts Classical Post-classical Contemporary Zen in Japan Seon in Korea Thiền in Vietnam Western Zen The Platform Sutra is: ...a wonderful melange of early Chan teachings,

8750-414: The Ekottarikagama, Then he has the tathagatagarbha . Even if his body cannot exhaust defilements in this life, In his next life he will attain supreme wisdom. This tathāgatagarbha idea was the result of an interplay between various strands of Buddhist thought, on the nature of human consciousness and the means of awakening. Gregory sees this doctrine as implying that enlightenment is the natural state of

8875-479: The Fifth Patriarch, composed a stanza, but did not have the courage to present it to the master. Instead, he wrote his stanza on the south corridor wall to remain anonymous one day at midnight about one o'clock in the morning. The other monks saw the stanza and commended it. Shenxiu's stanza is as follows: The body is the bodhi tree . The mind is like a bright mirror's stand. At all times we must strive to polish it and must not let dust collect. The Patriarch

9000-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though

9125-577: The appearances of lucidity ( prakāśa -rupa). Likewise, the Vikramashila scholar Ratnākaraśānti describes buddha-nature as the natural luminous mind, which is a non-dual self-awareness. Brunnholzl also notes that for Ratnākaraśānti, this luminosity is equivalent to the Yogacara concept of the perfected nature, which he sees as an implicative negation. Ratnākaraśānti also describes this ultimate self-nature as radiance ( prakāśa , ‘shining forth’), which

9250-510: The buddha-nature or tathagatagarbha as a "Self" or a true self ( ātman ), though it also attempts to argue that this claim is not incompatible with the teaching of not-self (anatman). The Nirvana sutra further claims that buddha-nature (and the Buddha's body, his Dharmakaya) is characterized by four perfections (pāramitās) or qualities: permanence ( nitya ), bliss ( sukha ), self ( ātman ), and purity ( śuddha). Other important tathāgatagarbha sutras include: The tathāgatagarbha doctrine

9375-614: The chapter on his final instructions, Huineng instructs his accomplished disciples, giving specific instructions how to "preach the Dharma", which show the influence of the Buddhist teachings on the five skandhas , the concept of Namarupa , and the Yogacara-teachings : Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')

9500-481: The concept of tathāgatagārbha , reshaping the worship of physical relics of the historical Buddha into worship of the inner Buddha as a principle of salvation . The primordial or undefiled mind, the tathāgatagārbha , is also often equated with the Buddhist philosophical concept of emptiness ( śūnyatā , a Mādhyamaka concept); with the storehouse-consciousness ( ālāyavijñāna , a Yogācāra concept); and with

9625-561: The development of East Asian Buddhism . The buddha-nature idea was introduced into China with the translation of the Nirvana Sutra in the early fifth century and this text became the central source of buddha-nature doctrine in Chinese Buddhism . When Buddhism was introduced to China , it was initially understood through comparing it with native Chinese philosophies such as neo-daoism. Based on their understanding of

9750-513: The dharmadhātu, which is characterized by personal and phenomenal identitylessness, is natural luminosity." Paul Williams puts forward the Madhyamaka interpretation of the buddha-nature as emptiness in the following terms: … if one is a Madhyamika then that which enables sentient beings to become buddhas must be the very factor that enables the minds of sentient beings to change into the minds of Buddhas. That which enables things to change

9875-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which

10000-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of

10125-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by

10250-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable

10375-474: The first proposition still remains". McRae notes a similarity in reasoning with the Oxhead School, which used a threefold structure of "absolute, relative and middle", or "thesis-antithesis-synthesis". According to McRae, the Platform Sutra itself is the synthesis in this threefold structure, giving a balance between the need of constant practice and the insight into the absolute. Chapter Two contains

10500-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has

10625-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although

10750-447: The historical understanding of Zen: Scholarship on early Chan was transformed after the discovery in the beginning of the twentieth century of a number of texts relating to the early Chan movement in the cave library at Dunhuang, which also contained an early version of the Platform Sutra . In 1056, the Chinese scholar-monk Qisong (契嵩, Wade-Giles : Ch'i-sung ) produced a larger edition, entitled Liuzu fabao ji (法寶記 ‘Precious Record of

10875-458: The illiterate Huineng heard Shenxiu's stanza being chanted by a young attendant at the monastery and inquired about the context of the poem. The attendant explained to him the poem contest and the transmission of the robe and Dharma. Huineng asked to be led to the corridor, where he could also pay homage to the stanza. He asked a low-ranking official named Zhang Riyong from Jiangzhou to read the verse to him, and then immediately asked him to write down

11000-521: The inherent, dynamic process towards its complete manifestation". Mundane and enlightened reality are seen as complementary: Thusness [ tathata ] defiled is the Tathagatagarbha, and Thusness undefiled is Enlightenment. In the Ratnagotravibhāga , the tathāgatagarbha is seen as having three specific characteristics: (1) dharmakaya , (2) suchness , and (3) disposition, as well as the general characteristic (4) non- conceptuality . According to

11125-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into

11250-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses

11375-426: The mind . According to Brunnholzl, "all early Indian Yogācāra masters (such as Asanga , Vasubandhu , Sthiramati , and Asvabhava), if they refer to the term tathāgatagarbha at all, always explain it as nothing but suchness in the sense of twofold identitylessness". Some later Yogacara scholars spoke of the tathāgatagarbha in more positive terms, such as Jñanasrimitra who in his Sakarasiddhi equates it with

11500-580: The mind . It was also seen as the mūla-vijñāna, the base-consciousness or "stream of consciousness" ( Mindstream ) from which awareness and perception spring. Around 300 CE, the Yogācāra school systematized the prevalent ideas on the nature of the Buddha in the Trikaya (triple body) doctrine, in which the Buddha is held to have three bodies: Nirmanakaya (transformation body which people see on earth), Sambhogakāya (a subtle body which appears to bodhisattvas) and

11625-460: The mind Is unchanging, just like space." Takasaki Jikido notes various buddha nature treatises which exist only in Chinese and which are similar in some ways to the Ratnagotra . These works are unknown in other textual traditions and scholars disagree on whether they are translations, original compositions or a mixture of the two. These works are: Indian Madhyamaka philosophers interpreted

11750-417: The mind is luminous but "is defiled by incoming defilements." The Mahāsāṃghika school coupled this idea with the idea of the "root consciousness" ( mulavijñana ) which serves as the basic layer of the mind and which is held to have a self-nature ( cittasvabhāva ) which is pure ( visuddhi ) and undefiled. In some of the tathagatagarbha-sutras a consciousness which is naturally pure ( prakṛti-pariśuddha )

11875-466: The mind. According to Wayman, the teachings of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (1st–3rd century CE), which say that the Buddha's knowledge is all pervasive and is present in all sentient beings were also an important step in the development of buddha-nature thought. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra does not mention the term tathāgatagarbha , but the idea of "a universal penetration of sentient beings by the wisdom of

12000-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including

12125-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with

12250-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in

12375-449: The nature of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness. What is emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness is the Tathagata." According to Candrakirti 's Madhyamakāvatārabhāsya the storehouse consciousness "is nothing but emptiness that is taught through the term 'alaya-consciousness.'" Go Lotsawa states that this statement is referencing the tathāgatagarbha doctrine. Candrakirti's Madhyamakāvatārabhāsya also argues, basing itself on

12500-497: The notion of buddha-nature in all beings, Yogācāra scholars in China such as Tz'u-en (慈恩, 632–682) the first patriarch in China, advocated two types of nature: the latent nature found in all beings (理佛性) and the buddha-nature in practice (行佛性). The latter nature was determined by the innate seeds in the alaya. The doctrines associated with buddha-nature (Chinese: fóxìng ) and tathāgatagarbha ( rúláizàng ) were extremely influential in

12625-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of

12750-454: The phenomenal and transcendental world. The Awakening of Faith tries to harmonize the ideas of the tathāgatagarbha and the storehouse consciousness (ālāyavijñāna) into a single theory which sees self, world, mind and ultimate realty as an integrated "one mind", which is the ultimate substratum of all things (including samsara and nirvana). In the Awakening of Faith the "one mind" has two aspects, namely "the aspect of enlightenment," (which

12875-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,

13000-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for

13125-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without

13250-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by

13375-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language

13500-446: The stanza and claimed that the author of the stanza had not reached enlightenment. According to the traditional interpretation, which is based on Guifeng Zongmi , the fifth-generation successor of Shenhui, the two verses represent respectively the gradual and the sudden approach. According to McRae, this is an incorrect understanding: [T]he verse attributed to Shenxiu does not in fact refer to gradual or progressive endeavor, but to

13625-418: The story". The Platform Sutra underwent various redactions. Though its recollection has been attributed to Fa-hai , a student of Huineng, its origins are not clear: The early development of the Platform Sutra is shrouded in the mists of time, and we will probably never know much for certain about it. The Dunhuang Manuscripts version of the text, the earliest complete edition we have, is almost certainly

13750-477: The succession of Hongren. It is an essential part of the Traditional Zen Narrative . The Fifth Patriarch summoned all his followers and proposed a poem contest for his followers to demonstrate the stage of their understanding of the essence of mind. He decided to pass down his robe and teachings to the winner of the contest, who would become the Sixth Patriarch. Shenxiu, the leading disciple of

13875-471: The tathāgata", or "containing a tathagata". Various meanings may all be brought into mind when the term tathagatagarbha is being used. The Sanskrit term tathāgatagarbha is a compound of two terms, tathāgata and garbha : The Chinese translated the term tathāgatagarbha as rúláizàng (如来藏), or "Tathāgata's ( rúlái ) storehouse" ( zàng ). According to Brown, "storehouse" may indicate both "that which enfolds or contains something", or "that which

14000-678: The tathāgatagārbha theory. It gives an overview of key themes found in many tathāgatagarbha sutras, and it cites the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra , the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra , Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra , the Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra , the Anunatva-Apurnatva-Nirdesa and the Mahābherīharaka-sūtra . The Ratnagotravibhāga presents the tathāgatagarbha as "an ultimate, unconditional reality that is simultaneously

14125-399: The teachings and stories ascribed to the sixth Chan patriarch Huineng . It contains the well-known story of the contest for the succession of Hongren (enlightenment by the non-abiding ), and discourses and dialogues attributed to Huineng. The text attributes its recollection to Fa-hai , but was probably written, or redacted, within the so-called Oxhead school , which existed along with

14250-429: The theory as a description of emptiness and as a non implicative negation. Bhaviveka 's Tarkajvala states: [The expression] "possessing the tathagata heart" is [used] because emptiness, signlessness, wishlessness, and so on, exist in the mind streams of all sentient beings. However, it is not something like a permanent and all-pervasive person that is the inner agent. For we find [passages] such as "All phenomena have

14375-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to

14500-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in

14625-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese

14750-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until

14875-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with

15000-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,

15125-551: Was also widely discussed by Indian Mahayana scholars in treatises or commentaries, called śāstra , the most influential of which was the Ratnagotravibhāga (5th century CE). The Ratnagotravibhāga ( Investigating the Jewel Disposition ) , also called Uttaratantraśāstra ( Treatise on the Ultimate Continuum ), is a 5th century CE Indian treatise ( śāstra ) which synthesised major elements and themes of

15250-491: Was an influence on these texts. According to Zimmerman, the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra (200–250 CE) is the earliest buddha-nature text. Zimmerman argues that "the term tathāgatagarbha itself seems to have been coined in this very sutra." The Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra states that all beings already have perfect Buddha body ( *tathāgatatva, *buddhatva, *tathāgatakāya ) within themselves, but do not recognize it because it

15375-460: Was called " essence-function " thought (體用, pinyin: tǐ yòng ) which held there were two main ontological levels to reality, the most foundational being the buddha-nature, the "essence" of all phenomena (which in turn were the "functions" of buddha-nature). The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana ( Dàshéng Qǐxìn Lùn ) was very influential in the development of Chinese Buddhism While the text

15500-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half

15625-417: Was not satisfied with Shenxiu's stanza, and pointed out that the poem did not show understanding of "[his] own fundamental nature and essence of mind." He gave Shenxiu a chance to submit another poem to demonstrate that he had entered the "gate of enlightenment," so that he could transmit his robe and the Dharma to Shenxiu, but the student's mind was agitated and could not write one more stanza. Two days later,

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