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Inverse View
It is not the case that All beings, including non-sentient things like grasses, trees, and the land itself, hold the potential for awakening.
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Reasons For
2 perspectives
Reason for 1 of 2
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1.
Awakening requires intentional mental states such as aspiration, recognition, and volitional turning—capacities absent in non-sentient matter.
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2.
Kuiji and the Yogācāra tradition explicitly denied buddha-nature to icchantikas and insentient things, grounding awakening in ālayavijñāna.
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3.
Extending soteriological potential to grasses and land conflates ontological participation in suchness with the distinct capacity for liberation.
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Reason for 2 of 2
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1.
The inference from 'x participates in ultimate reality' to 'x can awaken' commits a category error, as pervasion does not entail cognitive transformation.
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2.
Fa-tsang's Huayan framework distinguishes li (principle) pervading all phenomena from the actualization of awakening, which requires a sentient practitioner.
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3.
Even within Tendai exegesis, Annen's defense of grass-and-tree buddhahood remained polemically contested and was not accepted as orthodox Mahāyāna doctrine.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
The real, as nondiscriminative and nondualistic wisdom or suchness, pervades all things.
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2.
Through that which is real permeating their existence, all beings are connected to this ultimate reality.
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