A Concise History of Buddhism by Andrew Skilton

Author:Andrew Skilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Windhorse Publications

THE THREE NATURES

In the light of their teachings concerning the real existence of mind, the Yogācārin School also elaborated the concept of svabhāva, formulating the doctrine of the trisvabhāva, the ‘three own beings’ or ‘natures’. Everything knowable about the way things really are, everything that can be the object of cognition, can be classified under these three natures. According to this teaching the primary aspect of the ‘way things really are’ is the paratantra-svabhāva. This is the ‘dependent’ (paratantra) nature, and it is that which really exists. It therefore possesses svabhāva in the sense criticized by the Madhyamaka. We could also say that it is an ontological absolute, except in so far as it is, essentially, a mental process, i.e. it is the continual flow of mutually conditioned and conditioning mental events which make up consciousness. In other words, it is the process that is pratītya-samutpāda viewed from a mind-only perspective. It is called the ‘dependent’ nature by virtue of this process of mutual conditioning, because the elements of which it is constituted are dependent on each other for their existence. It is beyond the grasp of the unenlightened mind, which creates the duality of the false, ‘imagined’ nature.

The parikalpita-svabhāva, or ‘imagined’ nature, is the kind of existence which the unenlightened person ascribes to the everyday world. It is unreal, and only has a conventional existence, which is projected by the activity of the unenlightened mind. It is the perception of subject and object, characterized by our experience of ourselves as separate, discrete beings in opposition to an objective external world. It is the product of the falsifying activity of language which imputes duality to the mutually dependent flow of mental dharmas. These dualistic phenomena are really only ‘imagined’, parikalpita.

The third nature is called the parinispanna-svabhāva, ‘perfected’ or ‘absolute’ nature. Unlike the last it is the highest truth, the Yogācārin School’s epistemological ultimate, because it is ‘the way things really are’ as understood by the Enlightened mind. It is the truth that ultimately all things are completely lacking in duality, even though they appear to the unenlightened mind under the guise of dualism. In his Trisvabhāva-nirdeśa, Vasubandhu offers an analogy in an attempt to make the difference between the three natures clear.142 It is, he suggests, like a magician who takes a piece of wood, and through his magical spells makes it appear to his audience to be an elephant. The ‘dependent’ nature is like the piece of wood – it is what is really there. The ‘imagined’ nature is like the elephant – a misperception of reality. The perfected nature is the fact, or the true perception, that there is no ‘elephant’ in the piece of wood.

In East Asia the trisvabhāva doctrine received a radically different interpretation.143 There the relationship between the three natures came to be seen as a progressive sequence, through which practitioners move as they gain a deeper understanding of the ‘way things really are’. The ‘imagined’ nature is the world of everyday experience, in which we, as ‘real’ beings, grasp on to ‘real’ objects.

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