Korean Journal of Buddhist Studies ISSN:1598-0642(Print) 불교학연구

The traditional concept of Buddha-Nature faces insurmountable metaphysical problems. I propose a second-order designator approach to Buddha-Nature to avoid its conceptual difficulties and to still incorporate its concept into Buddhist practices.
Buddha-Nature, which supposedly has an immutable self-nature, is either a substance or not. If Buddha-Nature is a substance, it is either a composite or a simple. If it is a composite, Buddha-Nature is a whole made of two parts, substrate and property. Since a whole is not real, Buddha-Nature is then an unreal fictional entity. If Buddha-Nature is a simple, it is either a substrate or a simple property. The existence of substrates is highly controversial in philosophy. If Buddha-Nature is a simple property, it cannot be specifically located anywhere within the body of a sentient being. Even if its spatiotemporal coordinate could somehow be identified, Buddha-Nature would only form a four-dimensional whole and thus become a fiction. Buddha-Nature should not be said to come into and go out of existence every instant, either, because this possibility contradicts the supposed immutability of Buddha-Nature.
Can these difficulties be avoided if Buddha-Nature is to be identified with emptiness? Is Buddha-Nature in fact identical with emptiness? If they are either identical with or distinct from each other, both must be real and independent existents. They should be substances. The hypostatization of emptiness, however, results in a paradox. One can interpret the concept of emptiness in such a way that it only means that things are empty of self-nature. But if Buddha-Nature is devoid of self-nature, it cannot be Buddha-Nature. If Buddha-Nature is not empty, however, it cannot bring about any change. In that case, it cannot make enlightenment realized and hence cannot qualify as Buddha-Nature. Empty or not empty, the existence of Buddha-Nature is denied. On the other hand, Buddha-Nature is not brought about by conditions. Nor can it arise out of itself. It cannot be said to exist from beginningless time. Buddha-Nature is not a substance.
Although Buddha-Nature is not real, it can be used conveniently as a fiction or a designator. We name things pens regardless of their colors, material bases, shapes, sizes, and weights as long as we can use them to write or draw. The entire variety of machinery and devices are all engines if they convert chemical energy into kinetic energy. Such common nouns as “pen” and “engine” are convenient designators each of which refers to a different object, on a given occasion, that performs its functional role as a pen or an engine. What exists in each of these occasions is a particular pen or engine, not an abstract entity such as Plato’s Forms.
There must exist a particular mental and/or physical state that is optimal for a given sentient being to achieve enlightenment at a specific location and time. We can use the term “Buddha-Nature” as a convenient designator to refer to such a mental and/or physical state that best suits a given Buddhist practitioner’s enlightenment in each case. Buddha-Nature, referred to this way, cannot be a substance that has a self-nature common to all sentient beings. The optimal psychophysical state is different in each sentient being, and the state changes constantly even in one sentient being over time. Buddha-Nature, understood as a fictional entity or a convenient designator, is free of the metaphysical problems that a substantive view of Buddha-Nature faces. Buddha-Nature still exists everywhere in our ordinary lives and Buddhist practices.