Hongaku...

budding_flower

Hongaku or the 'Original Enlightenment' Japanesse Buddhist doctrine... Any thoughts?

genkaku

"Genkaku" means "original realization" or "original understanding" so I feel a certain kinship even if I don't know anything about "hongaku."

andyZ

Here's what Dogen said on the matter. Here the wind is the "original enlightenment".

Zen master Baoche of Mt. Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, "Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. When, then, do you fan yourself?"

"Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent," Baoche replied, "you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere."

"What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?" asked the monk again. The master just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply.

The actualization of the buddha-dharma, the vital path of its correct transmission, is like this. If you say that you do not need to fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind. The nature of wind is permanent; because of that, the wind of the buddha's house brings for the gold of the earth and makes fragrant the cream of the long river.

http://genjokoan.com/

zenff

“(Japanese). A term meaning ‘original’ or ‘innate enlightenment’. The concept originated in The Awakening of Faith (see Mahāyāna-śraddhotpāda śāstra), where it referred to the inherently enlightened and luminous mind that all beings possessed, and was opposed to ‘acquired enlightenment’, or the practices that led to the gradual realization of the endowment that the practitioner had all along. In the Japanese Tendai school and the schools that branched off from it in the Kamakura period (zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren), this basic idea was developed in a number of ways that allowed for many ways of understanding the relationship between the absolute and the contingent.”

http://www.answers.com/topic/hongaku#ixzz1QDYf9CXs

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Isn't it basic Buddhism?
Not craving.
Not adding words concepts and preferences.
Nothing to acquire; no enlightenment

Ordinary mind is Buddha.
Brilliantly simple.

taiyaki

is this another name for buddha nature?