buddhadhātu

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Glossarybuddhadhātu

Sanskrit Noun

buddhadhātu

buddha-element
बुद्धधातु
སངས་རྒྱས་ཀྱི་ཁམས་
佛性

Basic Meaning

A synonym for tathāgatagarbha widely used throughout the East Asian Buddhist traditions, as found in its translations as the Chinese term fó xìng and Japanese term busshō.

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Term Variations
Key Term buddhadhātu
Topic Variation buddhadhātu
Tibetan སངས་རྒྱས་ཀྱི་ཁམས་  ( sangye kyi kham)
Wylie Tibetan Transliteration sangs rgyas kyi khams  ( sangye kyi kham)
Devanagari Sanskrit बुद्धधातु
Romanized Sanskrit buddhadhātu
Chinese 佛性
Chinese Pinyin fó xìng
Japanese Transliteration busshō
Buddha-nature Site Standard English buddha-element
Term Information
Source Language Sanskrit
Basic Meaning A synonym for tathāgatagarbha widely used throughout the East Asian Buddhist traditions, as found in its translations as the Chinese term fó xìng and Japanese term busshō.
Related Terms tathāgatagarbha, dhātu
Term Type Noun
Definitions
Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism In Sanskrit, “buddha-element,” or “buddha-nature”; the inherent potential of all sentient beings to achieve buddhahood. See page 151.
Synonyms tathāgatagarbha
Earliest Mention The term first appears in the Mahāyāna recension of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, now available only in Chinese translation, which states that all sentient beings have the “buddha-element” (foxing). (The Chinese translation foxing literally means “buddha-nature” and the Chinese has often been mistakenly back-translated as the Sanskrit buddhatā; buddhadhātu is the accepted Sanskrit form.) The origin of the term may, however, be traced back as far as the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, one of the earliest Mahāyāna Sūtras, where the fundamental substance of the mind is said to be luminous (prakṛtiś cittasya prabhāsvarā), drawing on a strand of Buddhism that has its antecedents in such statements as the Pāli Aṅguttaranikāya: “The mind, O monks, is luminous but defiled by adventitious defilements” (pabhassaraṃ idaṃ bhikkhave cittaṃ, tañ ca kho āgantukehi upakkilesehi upakkiliṭṭhaṃ). Because the bodhisattva realizes that the buddha-element is inherent in him at the moment that he arouses the aspiration for enlightenment (bodhicittotpāda) and enters the bodhisattvayāna, he achieves the profound endurance (kṣānti) that enables him to undertake the arduous training, over not one, but three, incalculable eons of time (asaṃkhyeyakalpa), that will lead to buddhahood. The buddhadhātu is a seminal concept of the Mahāyāna and leads to the development of such related doctrines as the “matrix of the tathāgatas” (tathāgatagarbha) and the “immaculate consciousness” (amalavijñāna). - Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (2014), pages 151-152.
Further Reading Material See also: King, Sallie B. Buddha Nature. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991, pp. 173–74, note 5.