InMahayana Buddhism theicchantika (一闡提) is an incorrigible unbeliever who lacks faith in Buddhism and has no prospect of attaining enlightenment.[1]
According to someMahayana Buddhist scriptures, theicchantika is the most base and spiritually deluded of all types of being. The term implies being given over to totalhedonism and greed.[2]
In theTathagatagarbha sutras, some of which pay particular attention to theicchantikas, the term is frequently used of those persons who do not believe in the Buddha, his eternal Selfhood and hisDharma (Truth) or inkarma; who seriously transgress against the Buddhist moral codes andvinaya; and who speak disparagingly and dismissively of the reality of the immortalBuddha-nature (Buddha-dhatu) orTathagatagarbha present within all beings.[2][note 1]
The two shortest versions of theMahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (Faxian's translation and the middle-length Tibetan version) indicate that theicchantika has so totally severed all his/her roots of goodness that he/she can never attain liberation andnirvana or enlightenment (Buddhahood).[3] The full-lengthDharmakshema version of theMahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, in contrast, insists that even theicchantika can eventually find release into nirvana, since no phenomenon is fixed (including this type of allegedly deluded person) and that change for the better and best is always a possibility.[3]
Other scriptures (such as theLankavatara Sutra) indicate that the icchantikas will be saved through the liberational power of the Buddha - who, it is claimed, will never abandon any being.
Buswell notes: "With the prominent exception of theFaxian-School [...], East Asian Buddhists rejected the icchantica-doctrine in favor of the notion that all beings, even the denizens of hell, retained the capacity to attain enlightenment."[4]
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