Fall 2023

Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

MANY BUDDHISTS, ONE BUDDHADHARMA

Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly1 min read
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly
MELVIN MCLEOD | Editor-in-Chief ROD MEADE SPERRY | Editor SETH LEVINSON | Art Director MARIANA RESTREPO | Deputy Editor JOIE SZU-CHIAO CHEN | Reviews Editor LIZANE TANG | Design Assistance NOEL ALUMIT, MIHIRI TILLAKARATNE, PAMELA AYO YETUNDE | Associ
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly3 min read
Nothing Is More Important Than Your Buddhanature
BUDDHISTS OFTEN talk about suffering, emptiness, interdependence, and other philosophies and practices, but behind all of it is one simple teaching: buddhanature. Buddhism is notoriously complex, and sometimes it seems difficult for people to know wh
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly6 min read
Ask The Teachers
ROSHI JOAN HALIFAX is the abbot and head teacher of Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her most recent book is Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, which explores how we can face the challenges of ou
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly13 min read
Why Buddhanature Matters
SOMETIME IN THE 1990s, I attended a Zen retreat with Harada Sekkei Roshi at the Mahabodhi Society in Bangalore. It was a rare, perhaps even unique, event at that time where Buddhists from all three main traditions of East Asian, Tibetan, and Theravad
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly3 min read
A Short Guide to Key Buddhanature Texts
Buddhanature, or tathagatagarbha: some say it is not Buddhist, some say it is quintessentially so. I do not want to push either judgment upon you; there is more than one way to be a Buddhist! Instead, I want to provide a roundup of some formative bud
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly8 min read
The World Between Breaths
IT’S NOT NIGHT, yet it’s so dark down where she is that if she were to hold up her hand in front of her face, only the light of her lamp would help her recognize her palm, the line she has followed down, and not much else. It’s dark, and freezing, an
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly4 min read
How Insentient Beings Expound Dharma
The concept of buddhanature (bussho), as interchangeable with tathagatagarbha (womb or embryo of tathagata; “one who has thus come,” an epithet of the Buddha), arose in Mahayana Buddhism after Nagarujuna (second to third century CE) and before Vasuba
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly9 min read
To Be or Not To Be? Be a Buddha!
AT FIRST GLANCE, one cannot find any more statements more at odds with each other than the two following emblematic stanzas. Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika XIII.7 says: If there were anything nonempty, there’d also be something “empty.” There is no
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly13 min read
Meditations on Buddhanature
MARGARITA LOINAZ IT WAS EARLY MORNING at the turn of the millennium, and I was in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with a sangha friend for a week of rest from our demanding work. On a little shelf on the wall of my bedroom, I had placed a picture of m
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly7 min read
Hope For The Hopeless
THE REALIZATION of one’s buddhanature is made possible only through an awakening to our limitations and inherent human imperfections. This paradoxical relationship is central to understanding the experience of awakening taught by Shinran Shonin (1173
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly3 min read
Buddhanature Beyond Mere Concept
Buddhist traditions express our potential for awakening in diverse ways: natural luminous mind; suchness; nondual awareness; basic goodness; dharmakaya; the unity of emptiness, self-existing wakefulness; unconfined capacity; and so forth, all under t
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly17 min read
Glimpses of Buddhanature
ONE TIME, a monk asked Chan master Shishuang Qingzhu (807–888), “I heard that buddha-nature is like space; is that correct?” Shishuang replied, “It’s present when you sleep; absent when you sit.” Similarly, when asked by a monk whether a dog has budd
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly8 min read
Joseph Goldstein: It’s Not Either-Or
Buddhadharma: Thanks for talking with us, Joseph. We’re hoping you might talk about buddhanature from your unique perspective as a Buddhist primarily trained in Theravada, but then in other modes, too. Joseph Goldstein: It’s not a term that I’ve come
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly5 min read
Buddhadharma
IN 1959, SHUNRYU SUZUKI arrived in San Francisco and the religious landscape of America was forever changed. Among Suzuki’s earliest students was the late Mel Weitsman, who became a beloved and esteemed Zen teacher in his own right. Seeing One Thing
Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly1 min read
Epithets For Buddhanature
Big Mind. Original Mind. The Unconditioned. True Nature. Dharmakaya. Dharmadhatu. The Unborn. Pure Heart. Basic Goodness. Suchness. Mind Essence. Nature of Mind. Ultimate Bodhichitta. Ultimate Reality. Tatagathagarba. Luminous Mind. Nirvana. ■

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