[Buddha-l] Re: G-d, the D-vil and other imaginary friends

[Stephen Hodge]

Dharma Grandmother wrote (quoting D Lusthaus):

> ".....Second, in 418 Faxian (the first Chinese monk successfully to
> return to China with scriptures from pilgrimage to India) and
> Buddhabhadra produced a partial translation of the Mahāyāna
> Nirvā�a Sutra.
Partial from whose point of view.  The Faxian version and the parallel 
Tibetan one are complete in their own terms.  Their source text was the one 
compiled and used in India.  There is no evidence that the extended version 
translated by Dharmaksema was even know in India -- to my mind, the extra 
material in Dharmaksema represents a bowdlerizing attempt to back-track on 
the doctrines of the Indic MPNS.   A detailed examination of the two 
versions strongly suggests, as one might expect, that the people responsible 
for the new material in Dharmaksema had not ideological or doctrinal 
connection with the originators of the Indic version.

> Daosheng (c.360â?"434), a disciple of Huiyuan,
> convinced that all beings, including icchantikas, must possess
> Buddha-nature and hence are capable of enlightenment.

This is not strictly true.  The Indic (Faxian + Tibetan) versions do NOT say 
that the icchantikas lack Buddha-nature -- all beings have Buddha-nature --  
but icchantikas are incapable of actualizing the potential.

> However, it should be noted that there is no clear precedent or term in
> Indian Buddhism for "Buddha-nature"; the notion probably
> either arose in China through a certain degree of license taken by
> translators when rendering terms like buddhatva ("Buddhahood").

Unless this is a quibble about the English term "Buddha-nature", this 
statement suggests a lack of familiarity with the relevent Indic texts --  
Chinese "fo-xing", normally translated as "Buddha-nature" is the Chinese 
equivalent of "Buddha-dhaatu".  This is very well attested in many texts 
such as the MPNS.  Only occasionally does "fo-xing" translate "buddhatva" as 
in some versions of the LAS.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge