Hongaku

Hongaku (Jp: 本覚; Chinese: Ben Jue, 本覺; Korean: pon’gak) is an East Asian Buddhist doctrine often translated as "inherent", "innate", "intrinsic" or "original" enlightenment and is the view that all sentient beings already are enlightened or awakened in some way. It is closely tied with the concept of Buddha-nature and Tathagatagarbha.

The doctrine of innate enlightenment was developed in China out of the Buddha-nature doctrine. It is first mentioned in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana scripture. According to Jacqueline Stone, The awakening of faith in the Mahayana sees original enlightenment as "true suchness considered under the aspect of conventional deluded consciousness and thus denotes the potential for enlightenment in unenlightened beings." In medieval China, the doctrine developed from the Huayen school of Buddhism and also influenced Chan Buddhism.

The doctrine is also a common theme of the Platform Sutra of Huineng and was taught by Chinese Chan masters as "seeing original nature". Inherent enlightenment was often associated with the teachings of sudden awakening and contrasted with the "gradual" approach and the idea of “acquired enlightenment” or shikaku. The first Japanese to write of this doctrine was Kukai (774–835), founder of the Japanese Shingon school.

The doctrine of innate enlightenment was very influential in Japanese Tendai Buddhism from the Insei period (1086–1185) through the Edo period (1688–1735). The Tendai view of hongaku saw it as encompassing not only all sentient beings, but all living things and all nature, even inanimate objects - all were considered to be Buddha. This also includes all our actions and thoughts, even our deluded thoughts, as expressions of our innately enlightened nature.

Tamura Yoshirõ (1921–1989) saw original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) as being defined by two major philosophical elements. One was a radical non-dualism, in which everything was seen as empty and interconnected, so that the differences between ordinary person and Buddha and all other distinctions, were ontologically negated. The other feature of hongaku was the affirmation of the phenomenal world as an expression of the nondual realm of Buddha nature. This was expressed in phrases such as “the worldly passions are precisely enlightenment” and “birth and death are precisely nirvana.”

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