Bodhi in the Mahayana

The characterizations of awakening sketched above are common to the whole of Buddhism. Among notions of bodhi that are especially emphasized in MAHAYANA one must note its conception as an object of noble aspiration. The ideal Mahayana practitioner, the BODHISATTVA, is essentially defined as one who aspires to bodhi, one who dedicates himself to the enactment of bodhi for himself but also and especially for all beings.

This is the sense of the word operative in the term bodhicittotpada, the arousal of BODHICITTA (THOUGHT OF AWAKENING), a locution rich in conative significance that conveys the affective dimension, the emotive power, of liberating knowledge, as well as its necessary association with the virtue of KARUNA (COMPASSION).

Also characteristic of Mahayana is a recurrent concern with identifying the source of the capacity for awakening.

Is it natural or inculcated? In sixth-century China there appeared a text entitled the AWAKENING OF FAITH (DASHENG QIXIN LUN) that was attributed to ASVAGHOSA but was probably a Chinese contribution to the evolving tradition of TATHAGATAGARBHA (matrix or embryo of buddhahood) thought.

This text coined the term “original awakening” (benjue), contrasting that with “incipient awakening” (shijue).

The former refers to an innate potential awakening, a natural purity of mind (cittaprakrtivisuddhi) or underlying radiance of mind (prabhasvaratvam cittasya),

which enables practice and so engenders the actualization of awakening. The latter refers to the process of actualization itself, by which one advances from the nonawakened state, through seeming and partial awakening, to final awakening.

Drawing upon a usage of linguistics, we might speak of the pair as awakening in the mode of competence and awakening in the mode of performance.

The notion of a natural enlightenment that abides as a potency in the very sentience of SENTIENT BEINGS (later called buddha-nature) and issues in the gradual enactment of actual awakening stood in contrast to alternative views found in certain traditions of the YOGACARA SCHOOL of Buddhism, according to which awakening is the outcome of the radical transformation of a mind (asrayaparavrtti) that is naturally or inveterately defiled.

This notion proved very fruitful throughout East Asian Buddhism but fostered in the Japanese Tendai (Chinese, Tiantai) school an especially powerful and enduring doctrine of ORIGINAL ENLIGHTENMENT (HONGAKU) that left its mark on nearly all of medieval and early modern Japanese Buddhism.

It also had profound ethical implications inso-far as the notion of original or natural awakening was commonly invoked, or was said to be invoked, for antinomian or laxist purposes on the grounds that one’s originally awakened condition rendered effortful practice otiose.

Comparable to the idea of original awakening, but even stronger and bolder, is the startling claim resonant in much of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhism that awakening is not merely potentially present in the mundane sentient condition but actually identical with the worst of that condition.

This seemingly paradoxical assertion is classically conveyed in the aphorism, “the afflictions (klesa) are identical with awakening.”

In conventional theory, bodhi is the eradication of the klesa (affective hindrances like anger, lust, greed, etc.); the assertion that the kle´sa and bodhi are one and the same would therefore seem, at least at first glance, to be not only heterodox but also perverse and self-contradictory.

It appears to stand the conventional view of awakening on its head.

However, justification for so seemingly outrageous a claim is to be found in the doctrine of SUNYATA (EMPTINESS), according to which any sentient event or condition, being necessarily empty (sunya) of self-nature or own being (svabhava), mysteriously incorporates all other sentient events or conditions.

Hell entails buddhahood; evil entails good; and vice versa. Thus, even an impulse of lust or hatred harbors the aspiration for awakening, and awakening is not a condition or process that depends upon or consists in the complete extinction of imperfection.