Some claim that the concept of “Buddha-nature” (the innate, pure and potent capacity for every being to become awakened) in Mahayana Buddhism is a supernatural, arbitrary posit and an aberration of the teachings of Early Buddhism. Even some Buddhists who accept the doctrine will relegate it to an “inferior” level of truth or doxographic strata, under-emphasizing its creative aspect in favor of its open/empty aspect — this includes even my own intellectual predecessor of Process Buddhism, the late Peter Paul Kakol.
One of the ways I think my own creatively advanced articulation of Process Buddhism can help Mahayana Buddhism is by clarifying how Buddha-nature — similar to Aristotle and Whitehead’s concepts of divinity — need not be understood as an arbitrary posit or scriptural dogma but as a logical necessity required for the systematic coherence of the whole Buddhist analysis of reality. In very short and condensed terms: the presence or absence of the erroneous superimposition of inherent existence and the dependently originated consequences that follow need to be grounded in a self-organizing gnoseological basis or principle which makes both the arising and cessation of this superimposition possible (resulting in either Samsaric or Nirvanic modes of becoming, respectively), without which the superimposition would either be permanent or non-existent, either case of which would make Buddhist teachings senseless.
In addition to showing its logical necessity, Process Buddhism can also show how the creatively advancing aspect of Buddha-nature and its open/empty aspect are themselves open/empty (i.e. cannot stand alone) and part and parcel of a creative process of inclusive-transcendence (i.e. they are discrete abstractions derived from an indivisible concrete continuum); therefore it is impossible to favor one aspect over the other. For it is that which is the result of an inclusively-transcendent process which gets subject to analysis and realized as open/empty, and it is only on the basis of open/emptiness that inclusively-transcendent process is made possible — when one is so is the other; when one is not neither is the other; the arising and ceasing of one is due to the arising and ceasing of the other. Buddha-nature is none other than the basis, path and result of the concrescence of the ultimate principles of primordially abiding open/emptiness and creatively advancing inclusive-transcendence, who miraculously displays as the process of becoming from monadic, self-absorbed nescience to holonic, all-prehending omniscience.
Through this framework, Process Buddhism can aid in the dialectical self-articulation of the ideal concept of Buddha-nature in abstract thought — which is but a reflection of Buddha-nature’s real dialogical unfolding in historical being — and save her from eradication by those who would want to deny her power and liberate her from the patronizing captors who accept her on conditional terms — all the while recognizing that nobody is saving or liberating her but herself. Not from itself, not from another, not from both, nor without cause does anything whatsoever in the entire space-time continuum ever arise that is not an open/empty and inclusively-transcending progeny of her own perfect being. All phenomena and persons are children of this Great M/Other.
Holopoiesis 