Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
References
All Topics
Philosophy
Metaphysics

Varieties of Early Buddha Nature Teaching in India

Profile image of Christopher V JonesChristopher V Jones

2022

Abstract

The present article features in Mathes and Kemp (2022) Buddha Nature Across Asia (Vienna: Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, pp.21–50). In it I attempt a short overview of the state of the field with respect to the early history of teaching about buddha nature in India, focused on how relevant sources used the expressions tathāgatagarbha and buddhadhātu. Among other observations, I suggest that scholarship must keep in mind the difference between the literary history of the slippery and polyvalent term 'tathāgatagarbha', and apart from this the myriad ideas about 'buddha nature' that appear in Indian Mahāyānist literature, often (but not always) taught using the term tathāgatagarbha.

Related papers

Presenting the Buddha: Images, Conventions, and Significance in Early Indian Buddhism_2013
Juhyung Rhi

Art of Merit: Studies in Buddhist Art and Conservation, ed. David Park et al, 2013

View PDFchevron_right
Review of Early Buddhist Society The World of Gautama Buddha by Xinru Liu
Thomas Calobrisi

Religion, 2024

View PDFchevron_right
Buddha in the Storehouse: Mi bskyod rdo rje on the Relationship Between Tathāgatagarbha and Ālayavijñāna
David Higgins

JIABS, 2019

The question of how buddha nature (tathāgatagarbha) relates to Yogācāra psychology, and this tradition's idea of a substratum consciousness (ālayavijñāna) in particular, has long been a focus of intense discussion and debate among Buddhist scholars, both within and beyond the borders of India. Looking back on such exchanges, one is hard-pressed to find a scholar who has delved more deeply into the complexities of this issue than the Eighth Karma pa Mi bskyod rdo rje (1507-1554). In reviewing his many and varied treatments of the matter, it becomes clear that the question was a focal point for several overlapping problems that were integral to his philosophical project. Among these were the problems of whether and how the Yogācāra ālayavijñāna-vāsanā model could be reconciled with [1] buddha nature theory, [2] tantric buddha nature proxies such as the unconditioned ground (gzhi) and causal continuum (rgyu rgyud), [3] Indian and Chinese Buddhist conceptions of an immaculate consciousness (amalavijñāna), 2 and [4] the Karma pa's own tradition's Mahāmudrā-based *Yuganaddha-Apratiṣṭhāna-Madhyamaka 3 (a Middle

View PDFchevron_right
(2017) La formation du Mahāvastu et la mise en place des conceptions relatives à la carrière du bodhisattva [Cover, English Abstract, Table of Contents]
Vincent Tournier

Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient (Monographies, n° 195), 2017

Speculations about buddhas and bodhisattvas flourished with a remarkable dynamism between the 1st and the 6th century CE. This so-called “Middle Period” of Indian Buddhism is, for instance, characterized by the growth of the Bodhisattvayāna, the movement promoting the path to perfect Awakening (samyaksambodhi), understood as a realisation far superior to that the achieved by arhants. The present book aims at tracing these “buddhological” developments within the literature of the Mahāsāṅghika-Lokottaravāda, a lineage that was influential in Magadha and in the Northwest of South Asia during the period considered. This historical enquiry is rooted in a philological praxis, and, in particular, it is achieved by scrutinising the formation and the vicissitudes of an integral part of the school's Vinayapiṭaka, namely the Mahāvastu. The latter work, dealing with the lengthy bodhisattva career and the last birth of the Buddha Śākyamuni, is vast and composite. The reconstruction of distinct phases in its composition necessarily entails a close examination of the witnesses transmitting the work and, in particular, of its earliest copy, being a 12th century CE palm-leaf manuscript preserved in Nepal. The study, which forms the first part of this book, is therefore grounded on the new annotated edition and French translation of carefully selected sections of the Mahāvastu, featuring as part two. The close study of these key sections allows to uncover the editorial and rhetorical practices of Mahāsāṅghika milieux, as well as some of their core doctrines. This book therefore contributes to furthering our understanding of the monastic lineages, the canonical corpora, and the soteriology of Indian Buddhism. This monograph, recipient of the Collette Caillat Prize in Indology at the Institut de France (2018), has been reviewed by G. Ducoeur in the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions (2021/4): https://doi.org/10.4000/rhr.11617 and by N. McGovern in Religions of South Asia (2021/15.1): https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.20913. A detailed review article by O. von Hinüber further appeared in the Indo-Iranian Journal (2023, 66/1): https://brill.com/view/journals/iij/66/1/iij.66.issue-1.xml.

View PDFchevron_right
[Thesis] Life of the Buddha, Early Buddhism and Indian Society with special reference to Dīgha Nikāya and Majjhima Nikāya
Mahendradatta Jayadi
View PDFchevron_right
A Review of from Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha
Geoffrey Goble

The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2015

From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha. By Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013, 978-0-226-49320-6 (hardback), $26.00. This rich volume may be seen as a prequel to Lopez's The Scientific Buddha (2012), though it is perhaps more properly a continuation or expansion of his introduction to the recent (2010) republication of Eugene Burnouf's Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism, translated by Lopez and Katia Buffetrille. And for readers acquainted with Lopez's earlier work, Prisoners of Shangri-La (1998), for example, there is much here that will be stylistically and methodologically familiar. With From Stone to Flesh, Lopez trains his gaze on the figure of the Buddha in the Western imagination. Tracking the development of this Buddha from the earliest European accounts up to Burnouf's presentation in the mid-nineteenth century, Lopez presents the evolving and shifting European perceptions of the Buddha while contextua...

View PDFchevron_right
RICHARD F. GOMBRICH, How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings —London and Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Athlone 1996 (xii, 180 p.) ISBN 0-485-17417-0 (hb.) £25.00
Axel Michaels

Numen-international Review for The History of Religions, 1998

View PDFchevron_right
Studies in the History and Culture of Ancient Indian Buddhism
Birendra Nath Prasad

Research India Press, New Delhi, 2022

View PDFchevron_right
Review: The Uttaratantra in the Land of Snows Tibetan Thinkers Debate the Centrality of the Buddha-Nature Treatise
dominic sur

Within Buddhist intellectual culture, philosophers have made good use of the ambiguities connected the concept of buddha-nature to foster one of the most important sites of philosophical discourse within the Buddhist religion. The premium on rational coherence in Buddhist philosophy means interested theorists must consider whether, and to what degree, over-emphasis on the distinction between the unenlightened being and the enlightened buddha evinces a unbridgeable gap; or whether over-emphasis on the immanence of enlightenment within an ordinary being—often spoken of in genealogical or genetic terms––collapses the foundational path/fruition distinction thus rendering the notion of the path meaningless. These issues have been central to Mahāyāna for more than one thousand years; and they form the backdrop to Tsering Wangchuk’s recently published study of the Tibetan reception and interpretation of one seminal Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist treatise on the topic, The Uttaratantra in the Land of Snows: Tibetan Thinkers Debate the Centrality of the Buddha-Nature Treatise.

View PDFchevron_right
Review Article of: Westerhoff, Jan. The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy. The Oxford History of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Rafal K. Stepien

Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Vol. 16. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, May 2019.

This 6,220-word review article of The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy is concerned not only to review the work but to place it within the broader context of the study of Buddhist philosophy. As such, and in addition to evaluating the substantive Buddhist philosophical content of the book, I analyse in some detail the theoretical and methodological apparatuses the book deploys in order to translate classical Indian Buddhist philosophical positions, arguments, debates, assumptions, and concerns into an idiom recognizable to contemporary Western philosophers. Throughout, I argue that the fine balancing of emic and etic exigencies exemplified in the book ably elucidates how philosophically astute exposition of systematic thought built upon presuppositional frameworks alien to those of the exegete’s own intellectual culture may transculturally transmit such thought in a manner that simultaneously retains the distinctive features of the source materials and facilitates argumentatively justified engagement with them on the part of audience members unfamiliar with or even antagonistic toward them.

View PDFchevron_right

References (53)

  1. See, for example, in the Tibetan An . gulimālīya, Derge no. 213, 153a6-7; Peking no. 879, 160a3- 4, or in Chinese translation Taishō no. 120 (vol. 2), 525c25-28. For more, see Jones 2021: 70-91.
  2. Following the Tibetan version of the An . gulimālīya, this is first explained at Derge no. 213, 151a6-b1; Peking no. 879, 158a8-b3; comparable to Taishō no. 120 (vol. 2), 525a29-b6. See also Jones 2016a: 137-39; also 2021: 74-77.
  3. 43 With respect to the Mahāparinirvān . a, see Habata 2013: §173-78; see also Schmithausen 2020: I: 212-37; III: 7-40; also Jones 2021: 87-91.
  4. 44 For this in the Tibetan translation of the Mahābherī, see Derge no. 222, 107b6-108a1; Peking no. 888, 112b2-3, or in its Chinese translation Taishō no. 270 (vol. 9), 296b8-10. See also Suzuki 2000; Jones 2021: 109-14.
  5. This is particularly evident in the first of the Mahābherī's similes that explain buddha nature, in which the tathāgatagarbha (or otherwise one's self) is compared to an eye that requires the removal of a cataract: see, in Tibetan translation, Derge no. 222, 110b3-5; Peking no. 888, 115b2-4, or in Chinese translation Taishō no. 270 (vol. 9), 297b4-7.
  6. See, in the Tibetan Śrīmālādevī, Derge no. 92, 275a1-a3; Peking no.760 (48), 281b4-6, or in one of its (two) Chinese translations, Taishō no. 353 (vol. 12), 222b19-b21.
  7. Specifically, the Śrīmālādevī associates afflictions (kleśa) with both the tathāgatagarbha and then, later, with the pure nature of the mind. Surviving Sanskrit of the Śrīmālādevī's state- ments about the pure mind is found in the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā; see Johnston [1950] 1991: 22.1-4; Takasaki 1966: 188.
  8. See Derge no. 92, 272a5; Peking no.760 (48), 278b1-2, and otherwise Taishō no. 353 (vol. 12), 221c10-11. For further discussion of the Śrīmālādevī, see Jones 2021: 119-38.
  9. Ibid.: 78.8-12. Notably this is somewhat the inverse of what the Mahāparinirvān . a-group pro- motes: that absence of self was taught to suppress non-Buddhist teachers and their erroneous notions, prior to the Buddha revealing what is the true self, or buddha nature. See also Jones 2016a, and 2021: 183-88.
  10. For citations of these texts in Buddhist commentarial works (for example, by several notable masters in the Madhyamaka tradition: Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti, and Kamalaśīla), see (e.g.) Kano 2016: 7-11; also Jones 2021: 195-99.
  11. A lengthy quotation of the Tathāgatotpattisam . bhavanirdeśa, detailing the pervasiveness of the Buddha's knowledge in all sentient beings, features in the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā; see Johnston [1950] 1991: 22.10-24.8; Takasaki 1966: 189-92.
  12. See Takasaki 1958; 1974: 574-602. Zimmermann 2002: 53-66.
  13. 74 Relevant materials from these sūtras concerning the innate luminosity of the mind are quoted by the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā at, for example, Johnston [1950] 1991: 48.19-50.8 (Takasa- ki 1966: 248-50) and 44.8-45.3 (Takasaki 1966: 239-40). Both are discussed in Takasaki 1974: 681-91. Regarding earlier, non-Mahāyāna accounts of the mind's innate luminosity, see Anālayo 2017; more proximate to its role in buddha nature teaching, see Ruegg 1969: 409-37; Takasaki 1974: 704-21; Radich 2016: 256-62, 268-79.
  14. A recent and excellent guide to all these themes in the Saddharmapun . d . arīka is Lopez and Stone 2019. Bibliography Anālayo, Bhikkhu 2017 "The Luminous Mind in Theravāda and Dharmaguptaka Discourses." Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 13: 10-51.
  15. Griffiths, Paul J. 1990 "Painting Space with Colors: Tathāgatagarbha in the Mahāyāna sū trā lan . kāra-Corpus ix.22-37." In Buddha Nature: A Festschrift in Honor of Minoru Kiyota, edited by Paul Griffiths and John Keenan, 41-63. Reno, NV: Buddhist Books International.
  16. Habata, Hiromi 幅田裕美 1990 "Daijō Nehangyō ni okeru ātoman ron" 大乗＜涅槃経＞におけるアートマン論. Hokkaidō indo tetsugaku bukkyō gakkai 北海道印度哲学仏教学会 5: 173-90.
  17. 2007 Die Zentralasiatischen SanskritFragmente des Mahāparinirvān . aMahāsūtra. Marburg, Germany: Indica et Tibetica Verlag. 2013 A Critical Edition of the Tibetan Translation of the Mahāparinirvān . a mahāsūtra. Wiesbaden, Germany: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag. 2019 Aufbau und Umstrukturierung des Mahāparinirvān . asūtra: Untersuchungen zum Mahāparinirvān . amahāsūtra unter Berücksichtigung der SanskritFrag mente. Bremen, Germany: Hempen Verlag. Hardy, Edmund 1896 The An . guttaraNikāya, Part iii: Pañcakanipāta, and Chakkanipāta. Pali Text Society. London: Henry Frowde.
  18. Hodge, Stephen 2006 "On the Eschatology of the Mahāparinirvān . a Sūtra and Related Matters." Lecture notes from the University of London, SOAS. http://www.shab- kar.org/download/pdf/On_the_Eschatology_of_the_Mahaparinirvana_ Sutra_and_Related_Matters.pdf. Accessed October 2021. 2010/2012 "The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvān . a Sūtra: The Text and Its Transmission." Revised version of a paper presented at the Second International Workshop of the Mahāparinirvān . a Sūtra, Munich. https://www.buddhismuskunde. uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/hodge/the-textual-transmisssion-of-the- mpns.pdf. Accessed October 2021.
  19. Hopkins, Jeffrey, trans. 2006 Mountain Doctrine: Tibet's Fundamental Treatise on OtherEmptiness and the BuddhaMatrix. Edited by Kevin Vose. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion.
  20. Hubbard, Jamie, and Paul Swanson, eds. 1997 Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm over Critical Buddhism. Honolulu: Univer- sity of Hawai'i Press.
  21. Johnston, Edward H. [1950] 1991
  22. The Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Reprinted in The Utta ra tantra of Maitreya: Containing Introduction, E. H. Johnston's Sanskrit Text, and E. Obermiller's English Translation, edited by H. S. Prasad. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications.
  23. Jones, Christopher V. 2016a "A Self-Aggrandizing Vehicle: Tathāgatagarbha, Tīrthikas, and the True Self." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 39: 115-70. 2016b "Beings, Non-Beings and Buddhas: Contrasting Notions of Tathāgatagarb ha in the Anūnatvāpūrn . atvanirdeśaparivarta and *Mahābherī Sūtra." Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 10: 90-122. 2020 "Reconsidering the 'Essence' of Indian Buddha-Nature Literature." Acta Asiatica 118: 57-78.
  24. 2021 The Buddhist Self: On Tathāgatagarbha and Ātman. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
  25. Kano, Kazuo 加納和雄 2000 "Ōkutsumarakyō no kenkyū: Zentai no kōsei to naiyō gaikan『央掘魔羅経』 の研究: 全体の構成と内容概観." Kōyasandaigaku daigakuin kiyō 高野山大学 大学院紀要 4: 57-82.
  26. 2016 BuddhaNature and Emptiness: rNgog Bloldanshesrab and a Transmission of the Ratnagotravibhāga from India to Tibet. WSTB 91. Vienna: Arbeits- kreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien. 2017 "Tathāgatagarbhah . sarvasattvānām . : Nehangyō ni okeru nyoraizō no fuku- gōgo kaishaku ni kansuru shiron/Tathāgatagarbhah . sarvasattvānām . : 涅槃経における如来蔵の複合語解釈にかんする試論." Critical Review for Buddhist Studies 불교학리뷰 22: 9-61. 2020 "A Syntactic Analysis of the Term Tathāgatagarbha in Sanskrit Fragments and Multiple Meanings of Garbha in the Mahāparinirvān . amahāsūtra." Acta Asiatica 118: 17-40.
  27. King, Sallie B. 1991
  28. Buddha Nature. New York: SUNY Press. 1997 "The Doctrine of Buddha-Nature Is Impeccably Buddhist." In Hubbard and Swanson 1997: 174-92.
  29. Lopez, Donald S. Jr. and Jacqueline I. Stone 2019 Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side: A Guide to the Lotus Sūtra. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  30. Mathes, Klaus-Dieter 2015 "The Original Ratnagotravibhāga and Its Yogācāra Interpretation as Possible Indian Precedents of Gzhan stong ('Empti[ness] of Other')." Hōrin 18: 119-40.
  31. Matsuda, Kazunobu 松田和信 2000 "Śrīmālādevīsim . hanādanirdeśa." In Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, vol. 1, edited by Jens Braarvig et al., 65-76. Oslo: Hermes Publications. Matsumoto, Shirō 松本史朗 1997 "The Doctrine of Tathāgatagarbha Is Not Buddhist." In Hubbard and Swanson 1997: 165-73.
  32. Nanjio, Bunyiu 南条文雄 1923 The Lan . kāvatāra Sūtra. Kyoto: Otani University Press. Obermiller, Eugène [1931] 1991
  33. The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation, Being a Manual of Bud dhist Monism: The Work of Ārya Maitreya with a Commentary by Āryāsan . ga. Acta Orientalia 9: 81-306. Reprinted in The Uttaratantra of Maitreya: Con taining Introduction, E. H. Johnston's Sanskrit Text and E. Obermiller's English Translation, edited by H. S. Prasad. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications.
  34. Radich, Michael 2011 (2012) "Immortal Buddhas and Their Indestructible Embodiments: The Advent of the Concept of Vajrakāya." Journal of the International Association of Bud dhist Studies 34: 227-90.
  35. 2015 The Mahāparinirvān . amahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doc trine. Hamburg Buddhist Studies 5. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. 2016 "Pure Mind in India: Indian Background to Paramārtha's *Amalavijñāna." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 39: 249-308. 2020 "Reading the Writing on the Wall: 'Sengchou's' Cave at Xiaonanhai, Ear- ly Chinese Buddhist Meditation, and Unique Portions of *Dharmaks . ema's Mahāparinirvān . amahāsūtra." Journal of the International Association of Bud dhist Studies 42: 515-632.
  36. Rhys Davids, T. W. and Carpenter, J. Estlin 1903 The Dīgha Nikāya, Volume II. Pali Text Society. London: Routledge and Ke- gan Paul.
  37. Ruegg, David Seyfort 1973 Le traité du tathāgatagarbha de Bu ston Rin chen grub: Traduction du De bžin gsegs pa 'i sñin . po gsal žin 'mdzes par byed pa 'i rgyan. Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient.
  38. 1969 La théorie du tathāgatagarbha et du gotra: Études sur la sotériologie et la gnoséologie du bouddhisme. Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient.
  39. 1989a BuddhaNature, Mind and the Problem of Gradualism in a Comparative Per spective: On the Transmission and Reception of Buddhism in India and Tibet. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. 1989b "Allusiveness and Obliqueness in Buddhist Texts: Sam . dhā, Sam . dhi, Sam . dhyā and Abhisam . dhi." In Dialectes dans les literatures IndoAryennes, edited by Colette Caillat, 295-328. Paris: Collège de France, Institute de Civilisation Indienne.
  40. Saitō, Akira 斉藤明 2020 "Buddha-Nature or Buddha Within? Revisiting the Meaning of Tathāga tagarbha." Acta Asiatica 118: 1-15.
  41. Schmithausen, Lambert 2020 Fleischverzehr und Vegetarismus im indischen Buddhismus, bis ca. zur Mitte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr. 3 vols. Hamburg Buddhist Studies 12. Bochum/Freiberg: Projektverlag. 1971 "Philologische Bemerkungen zum Ratnagotravibhāgah . ." Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 15: 123-77.
  42. 1987 Ālayavijñāna: On the Origin and the Early Development of a Central Con cept of Yogācāra Philosophy. Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies. Shimoda, Masahiro 下田正弘 1997 Nehan gyō no kenkyū: Daijōkyōten no kenkyū hōhō shiron 涅槃経の研究- 大乗経典の研究方法試論. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. 2020 "The Structure of the Soteriology of Tathāgatagarbha Thought as Seen from the Perspective of Different Modes of Discourse: A Response to Critical Buddhism." Acta Asiatica 118: 79-97.
  43. Silk, Jonathan 2015 Buddhist Cosmic Unity: An Edition, Translation and Study of the Anūnat- vāpūrn . atvanirdeśaparivarta. Hamburg Buddhist Studies 4. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press.
  44. Suzuki, Takayasu 鈴木隆泰 2000 "Nehangyōkei kyōtengun ni okeru kū to jitsuzai 涅槃経系経典群における空と 実在." Tōyōbunka kenkyūsho kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要 139: 109-46. 2002 "The Buddhology of the Mahābherīsūtra inherited from the Saddharma pun . d . arīka." Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度学仏教学研究 50, no. 2: 20-24. 2015 "Two Parables on 'the Wealthy Father and the Poor Son' in the Saddharma pun . d . arīka and Mahābherīsūtra." Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度学仏教学 研究 63, no. 6: 169-76.
  45. Takasaki, Jikidō 高崎直道 1958 "The 'Tathāgôtpattisam . bhavanirdeśa' of the Avatam . saka and the Ratna gotravibhāga: With Special Reference to the Term 'Tathāgatagotra sam . bhava' (如来性起)." Indogaku bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度学仏教学研究 7, no. 1: 48-53.
  46. A Study of the Ratnagotravibhāga (Uttaratantra): Being a Treatise on the Tathā gatagarbha Theory of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Rome Oriental Series 33. Rome: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. 1971 "The Tathāgatagarbha Theory in the Mahāparinirvān . asūtra." Indogaku buk kyōgaku kenkyū 印度学仏教学研究 19, no. 2: 1-10.
  47. 1974 Nyoraizō shisō no keisei: Indo daijō bukkyō shisō kenkyū 如来蔵思想の形成: インド大乗仏教思想研究. Tokyo: Shunjūsha.
  48. Toganō, Shōun 栂尾祥雲 [1930] 1982 Rushukyō no kenkyū 理趣経の研究. Wakayama, Japan: Kōyasan Daigaku. Reprint, Kyoto: Rinsen.
  49. Waldschmidt, Ernst 1950-1951 Der Mahāparinirvān . asūtra: Text in Sanskrit und Tibetisch, verglichen mit dem Pāli nebst einer Übersetzung der chinesischen Entsprechung im Vinaya der Mūlasarvāstivādins auf Grund con TurfanHandschriften. 3 vols. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
  50. Wangchuk, Tsering 2017 The Uttaratantra in the Land of Snows: Tibetan Thinkers Debate the Centrality of the BuddhaNature Treatise. New York: SUNY Press.
  51. Zimmermann, Michael 1999 "The Tathāgatagarbhasūtra: Its Basic Structure and Relation to the Lotus Sūtra." Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University 2: 143-68.
  52. A Buddha Within: The Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, The earliest exposition of the BuddhaNature Teaching in India. Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophi- ca Buddhica 6. Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology. 2014 "The Process of Awakening in Early Texts on Buddha-Nature in India." In A Distant Mirror: Articulating Indic Ideas in Sixth and Seven Century Chinese Buddhism, edited by Chen-kuo Lin and Michael Radich, 513-28. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press.
  53. "A Multi-associative Term: Why Tathāgatagarbha Is Not One and the Same." Acta Asiatica 118: 41-5.

Related papers

2014 The Process of Awakening in Early Texts on Buddha-Nature in India
Michael Zimmermann
View PDFchevron_right
Buddha‐Nature ( Tathāgatagarbha )
Klaus-Dieter Mathes

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion

The Sanskrit term tathāgatagarbha has been analyzed as a possessive compound (bahuvrīhi) referring to sentient beings, all of whom contain as their nature (garbha) a tathāgata ("thus gone/come"), namely a buddha. Thus, all have already a fully developed buddha within, but not everybody is aware of this, due to the adventitious stains in the form of ignorance, hatred, and attachment that conceal it (Zimmermann 2002, 43-45). Another common interpretation requires taking tathāgatagarbha as determinative compound (tatpurus. a) meaning "buddha-embryo," referring only to the buddha-nature and not its possessor, and hence suggesting that this is only the potential to become a buddha, i.e. that one possesses undeveloped buddha-qualities that may blossom into full buddhahood as adventitious stains are gradually removed on the path of Buddhist practice (Mathes 2008). The former understanding of tathāgatagarbha lends itself well to a group of discourses of the Great Vehicle (Mahāyānasūtras) such as the Discourse on Neither Decrement Nor Increment (Anūnatvāpūrn. atvanirdeśasūtra) or the Discourse for the QueenŚrīmālā (Wayman and Wayman 1974) which fully equate buddha-nature with a buddha's enlightenment, namely the buddha's "Body of Reality," or dharmakāya. The Discourse for the QueenŚrīmālā thus explains that the dharmakāya is neither fabricated nor arisen, and called buddha-nature when the sheath of defilements has not yet been separated from it (Takasaki 1966, 167-168). Such an equation of buddha-nature with the dharmakāya, in combination with the notion in the Discourse for the QueenŚrīmālā that the dharmakāya displays the four perfections of purity, self (ātman), bliss, and permanence, posed a problem for mainstream buddhism, bringing the buddha-nature doctrine dangerously close to the Hindu tenets teaching a soul/self (ātman; see self and not-self in indian philosophy). A possible solution to this problem is provided by the Discourse on Buddha-Nature (Tathāgatagarbhasūtra), in which the presence of a buddha-nature in sentient beings is illustrated by nine similes: (i) a Tathāgata in a lotus; (ii) honey shielded by bees; (iii) kernels enclosed by husks; (iv) a gold nugget in excrement; (v) a hidden treasure beneath the house of some poor person; (vi) a sprout latent in a seed; (vii) a Buddha-image wrapped in rotting rags; (viii) a future universal emperor in the womb of a poor woman; and (ix) golden figures within burnt clay molds (Takasaki 1966, 268-269). Two of them, the sprout and the future emperor, indicate a growth of the buddha-qualities, and thus point to a substantial difference between buddha-nature and buddhahood. Seizing upon this, the final version (fourth century ce) of the standard Indian treatise on buddha-nature, the Analysis of the The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion.

View PDFchevron_right
The Mahāmeghasūtra as a Source for Buddha-Nature Teaching
Christopher V Jones

Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 2024

This article addresses the content and doctrinal status of the Mahāmeghasūtra: a Mahāyāna text likely produced in the first quarter of the first millennium CE, which has sometimes been classified as a source for teaching about tathāgatagarbha, or the notion of an enduring “buddha-nature” in all sentient beings. Previous scholarship has focused on ties that the Mahāmeghasūtra appears to have with the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, as well as with two other works that all together comprise what has been called the “Mahāparinirvāṇa-group” of sūtras. However, close attention to differences between the fifth-century Chinese translation of the text, by Dharmakṣema (385-433), alongside an extant Tibetan translation and surviving Sanskrit strongly suggests that the Indian Mahāmeghasūtra was not at all concerned with teaching about tathāgatagarbha, and had an unclear relationship to ideas about buddha-nature. It appears instead that much of the text’s associations with these teachings is due to creative interpolations made by Dharmakṣema himself, who likely played a significant role in transforming the Mahāmeghasūtra into a source for buddha-nature teaching in China.

View PDFchevron_right
Michael Radich. The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine. Hamburg Buddhist Studies 5. Edited by Michael Zimmermann. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2015. 978-3-943423-20-4.
Michael Radich

Famously, tathāgatagarbha doctrine holds that every sentient being has within the body a womb for Buddhas, or an embryonic Buddha – the potential for full buddhahood. Previous scholars have seen this doctrine as originating in the Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra. In this book, Michael Radich argues that rather, the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra is most likely our earliest extant tathāgatagarbha text. Radich then argues that tathāgatagarbha ideas originated as part of a wider pattern of docetic Buddhology – ideas holding that Buddhas are not really as they appear. Buddhist docetic texts are clearly troubled by the notion that Buddhas could have flesh-and-blood human mothers. The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra is one such text, and tathāgatagarbha functions as a better substitute for imperfect human maternity: rather than a putrid, painful human womb, buddhahood springs from a “womb” inherent in every sentient being, which promises final liberation from flesh altogether. This book should interest readers concerned with the history of Buddhist ideas, gender in Buddhism, the early Mahāyāna, the cult of the Buddha’s relics, and relations between Buddhist ideas and practice.

View PDFchevron_right
Buddha nature Reconsidered: Mi bskyod rdo rje and the Post-classical Tibetan Tathāgatagarbha Debates. Proposal for current FWF-Projekt P28003-G24 (Oct. 2016-Sept 2018).
David Higgins

Proposal for forthcoming monograph entitled Buddha nature Reconsidered: Mi bskyod rdo rje and the post-classical Tibetan tathāgatagarbha debates. Project Leader: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Mathes. The objective of the proposed project “Buddha nature reconsidered: Mi bskyod rdo rje and the post-classical Tibetan tathāgatagarbha debates” is to examine the mahāmudrā-based buddha nature views of the Eighth Karmapa Mi bskyod rdo rje (1507-1554) in the context of post-classical tathāgatagarbha debates in order to assess his vast and varied contributions to Indo-Tibetan buddha nature theory in light of antecedent Indian Buddhist traditions and parallel or rival developments by other influential Tibetan Buddhist scholars.

View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Buddhism
  • Buddha-nature
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved