Buddhist Doctrine of "Neither Increase Nor Decrease in the Realm of Sentient Beings" in the Anunatvqpurnatva-nirdewa: A Doctrinal Development from the Realm of Sentient Beings, Dharmadhatu, Dharmakaya, to Tathagatagarbha
Author：Yao-Ming Tsai
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The present study examines Buddhist doctrine of "neither increase nor decrease in the realm of sentient beings" in the Anunatvqpurnatva-nirdewa in terms of a doctrinal development focusing attention on keywords from the realm of sentient beings (sattva-dhatu), dharma-dhatu, dharma-kaya, to tathagata-garbha.
The Mahayana has sometimes been associated with the doctrine that there is neither increase nor decrease in the realm of sentient beings, a doctrine which is often linked to the Prajbaparamita-Sutras or the Madhyamika school. In this paper, I look into just such a doctrine, as it is found in a Chinese traslation of the Anunatvqpurnatva-nirdewa, a Buddhist scripture translated by Bodhiruci in 525. Several passages of this scripture were cited in the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga, a treatise still preserved in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan, and give us textual sources for research into the Chinese translation of this scripture.
In the Anunatvqpurnatva-nirdewa, the very way in which the doctrine of neither increase nor decrease in the realm of sentient beings is defined and verified through the employment of the dharma-dhatu thoery, a theory which, in turn, is verified by reference to theories of dharma-kaya and tathagata-garbha. So in order to understand this scripture’s discursive construction of the doctrine of neither increase nor decrease in the realm of sentient beings, we must explore its conception of such keywords as dharma-dhatu, dharma-kaya, and tathagata-garbha.
It is my hope that an examination of such a scripture with the focus on the doctrine of neither increase nor decrease in the realm of sentient beings may contribute to the study of the various ways in which the contours of the Mahayana have been drawn from a doctrinal perspective.