This per examines the arguments developed by the Ming-Dynasty Buddhist scholar-monk, Chuandeng 傳燈 (1554-1628), in defense of the doctrine that “thusness” (Sanskrit, hereafter Skt.: tathatā; Chinese, hereafter Chi.: zhenru 真如), “base reality as it really is” (Chi.: zhenshi 真實), contains “inherent badness” (Chi.: xing’e 性惡). In his seminal tract of Tiantai Buddhist apologetics, the Treatise on the Goodness and Badness Inherent in Nature (Chi.: Xing shan e lun 性善惡論), Chuandeng develops the doctrine that the “dharmas” (Chi.: fa 法), the basic constituents that comprise the entirety of base reality, have coexisting “dispositions” (Chi.: xingde性德) of “inherent goodness” (Chi.: xing shan性 善 ) and inherent badness. Chuandeng argues that the “unsatisfactoriness” (Skt.: duḥkha: Chi.: ku 苦) of life as it is ordinarily lived is due to the activation of the inherent badness within the dharmas. In so doing, Chuandeng upholds the Tiantai teaching that the “liberation” (Chi.: jietuo 解脫) from the unsatisfactoriness of quotidian life is contingent upon an engagement with the inherent badness of base reality.
