Icchantika

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In

Mahayana Buddhism the icchantika (一闡提) is an incorrigible unbeliever who lacks faith in Buddhism and has no prospect of attaining enlightenment.[1]

Description

According to some Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, the icchantika is the most base and spiritually deluded of all types of being. The term implies being given over to total hedonism and greed.[2]

In the

Tathagatagarbha present within all beings.[2][note 1]

The two shortest versions of the

Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, in contrast, insists that even the icchantika can eventually find release into nirvana, since no phenomenon is fixed (including this type of allegedly deluded person) and that change for the better and best is always a possibility.[3]

Other scriptures (such as the

Lankavatara Sutra
) indicate that the icchantikas will be saved through the liberational power of the Buddha - who, it is claimed, will never abandon any being.

Buswell notes: "With the prominent exception of the Faxian-School [...], East Asian Buddhists rejected the icchantica-doctrine in favor of the notion that all beings, even the denizens of hell, retained the capacity to attain enlightenment."[4]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Including icchantikas themselves, though it is more hidden from their consciousness than in other individuals due to the massive accretions of sinfulness and delusion which conceal it from their sight.

References

  1. – via Internet Archive.
  2. ^ a b Hodge, Stephen (2006). "On the Eschatology of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra and Related Matters" (PDF). lecture delivered at the University of London, SOAS. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 14, 2013.
  3. ^ a b Liu , Ming-Wood (1984). 'The Problem of the Icchantika in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra', Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 7 (1), 71-72
  4. .

Further reading