Buddha-Nature and Human Nature 佛性與人性論

🔊Mencius is the closest. He and the Buddha-nature texts share four claims: the endowment is universal, it is covered and not destroyed, the person is usually ignorant of it, and practice reveals what was present. Rousseau shares the judgment that corruption is external and little else. Xunzi and Hobbes resemble the Buddha’s remark about the infant and miss the other half. Augustine is the clearest contrast.

孟子最接近。他與佛性的經典共有四個主張：這份稟賦是普遍的；它被遮蓋而沒有被毀掉；本人通常不知道它；修行所顯露的，是本來就在的東西。盧梭只共有「腐化是外來的」這個判斷，此外不多。荀子與霍布斯像的是佛陀談嬰兒的那段話，卻漏掉了另一半。奧古斯丁是最清楚的對照。

🔊The likeness to Mencius ends at four places. First, what the endowment is. His sprouts are feelings, compassion, shame, deference, and approval, and they grow into social virtues. Buddha-nature is the capacity to awaken, and in many texts it is identified with the empty and knowing character of the mind itself. It is prior to moral feeling. Second, who has it. Mencius is distinguishing human beings from animals. Buddha-nature belongs to every sentient being, and some East Asian schools extended it to grasses and trees. Third, the self. Mencius assumes a self that cultivates itself. Buddha-nature texts that speak of a “true self” were at once reinterpreted by other Buddhists, who warned that the phrase is a teaching device for those frightened by emptiness. Fourth, the account of the obstruction. Mencius blames bad conditions and neglect. Buddhism blames ignorance without beginning, and it adds the infant’s latent tendencies, on which Mencius is silent and Xunzi eloquent.

跟孟子的相似，在四個地方到了盡頭。第一，那份稟賦是什麼。他的「端」是情感：惻隱、羞惡、辭讓、是非；它們長成社會性的德行。佛性是覺悟的能力；在許多經論裡，它被等同於心本身空而能知的特性。它先於道德情感。第二，誰擁有它。孟子是在把人與禽獸區分開來。佛性屬於每一個有情眾生；東亞的某些宗派還把它延伸到草木。第三，自我。孟子預設了一個修養自己的「我」。談到「真我」的那些佛性經典，當下就被其他佛教徒重新詮釋了；他們警告：這個說法，是給那些被「空」嚇到的人的方便教法。第四，對「障蔽」的說明。孟子歸咎於惡劣的條件與疏於照料。佛教歸咎於無始的無明，並且補上了嬰兒的隨眠；對於後者，孟子保持沉默，荀子則說得很多。

🔊The Chinese debate asked whether human nature is good or bad, and the European one asked whether we are innocent or fallen. The Buddha’s analysis steps to one side of both. He describes a mind with no fixed nature at all. Greed, hatred, and delusion arise in it when their conditions are present and cease when the conditions are removed, and the same is true of generosity, kindness, and understanding. What is constant is that it can be trained. On this reading the statement that the mind is radiant is practical encouragement. It tells the practitioner that the work can succeed, as a goldsmith is told that the ore contains gold.

中國的那場辯論問的是：人性是善還是惡？歐洲的那場問的是：我們是純真的，還是墮落的？佛陀的分析從兩者的旁邊走了過去。他描述的是一顆根本沒有固定本性的心。貪、瞋、癡在它們的條件具足時在其中生起，條件去除時就止息；布施、慈愛與了解也是一樣。恆常不變的只有一點：它是可以訓練的。照這個讀法，「心是光淨的」這句話是實際的鼓勵。它告訴修行者這項工作能夠成功，就像有人告訴金匠：這礦石裡有金子。

🔊This is also why the tradition could affirm Buddha-nature and deny the self. If Buddha-nature were a thing inside us, a pure soul wrapped in dirt, it would be the ātman the Buddha rejected. The Buddhist philosophers who defended the teaching said that it names the mind’s emptiness of any fixed nature together with its capacity to know, and that the images of gold and honey are skillful means. A modern Japanese movement called Critical Buddhism has argued that even so the doctrine is a mistake, and that it encouraged East Asian Buddhists to affirm things as they are, injustices included. The argument continues. It shows that the question raised by Mencius and Xunzi, whether to trust what we find in ourselves or to work against it, is alive within Buddhism too.

這也就是為什麼這個傳統可以肯定佛性、同時否定自我。如果佛性是我們裡面的一樣「東西」，一個被污垢包著的純淨靈魂，它就會是佛陀所拒絕的 ātman。為這個教導辯護的佛教哲學家說：它所指稱的，是心「空無任何固定的自性」加上它「能知」的能力；而真金與蜂蜜的意象是方便善巧。現代日本一個名為「批判佛教」的運動論證：即使這樣，這個教義仍然是個錯誤；它鼓勵了東亞的佛教徒去肯定事物的現狀，連不公不義也包括在內。這場爭論還在繼續。它顯示：孟子與荀子提出的那個問題（是該信任我們在自己身上發現的東西，還是該逆著它下工夫），在佛教內部同樣是活的。