Primary Sources
Sources for Buddha-Nature Teachings
This page provides a listing of some of the key sources for buddha nature teachings found in the sutras, as well as the key texts found in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan traditions, as well as influential commentaries from centuries of traditional scholarship on the subject.
The Titles of the Text[edit]
For more detail on the meanings of the terms in the title, see the excerpt from When the Clouds Part by Karl Brunnhölzl here.
The title Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra[1] is attested in the surviving Sanskrit manuscripts. It roughly translates as “The Ultimate Teaching (uttaratantra)[2] of the Mahāyāna, A Treatise (śāstra) Analyzing (vibhāga) the Jewel (ratna) Disposition (gotra).” One surviving Sanskrit reference, Abhayākaragupta’s Munimatālaṃkāra, gives the name as Mahāyānottara: [Treatise] on the Ultimate Mahāyāna [Doctrine].[3] Western scholars only became aware of Sanskrit versions in the 1930s (see below); prior to this, they knew the text only in Chinese or Tibetan translation, and this was complicated by the fact that both the Chinese and the Tibetan traditions divide the text into two. Where in India the Ratnagotravibhāga was a single work comprised of root verses, explanatory verses, and prose commentary, the Chinese and Tibetan translators and commentators considered the root and explanatory verses to be one text and the complete text, including the prose commentary, to be a second. Thus not only do we have multiple names in multiple languages for the treatise, but multiple names in Chinese and Tibetan for its different parts....
Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra
The Texts[edit]
Sutras[edit]
Commentaries[edit]
- The Difficulty of Gaining the Freedoms and Advantages
- Death and Impermanence
- Karma: Cause and Effect
- The Sufferings of Samsara
- The Four Wheels, which are the initial entry point for supreme beings
- Taking Refuge, the entrance to the Buddhist Path
- The Entrance to the Actual Mahayana (cultivating the four immeasurables)
- Arousing Bodhichitta
- The Bodhisattva Trainings
- The Pitaka of the Vidyadharas
- The Nature of the Ground
- The Extraordinary Path of the Natural Great Perfection
- The Kayas and Wisdoms of the Ultimate Fruition
The first, made up entirely of the so-called root verses, corresponds to the Sanskrit title Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra, though it is usually referenced in this tradition by the Tibetan equivalent of the latter subtitle, Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma'i bstan bcos, which is commonly rendered into English as the Treatise on the Ultimate Continuum of the Great Vehicle and is abbreviated as RGV. However, the full title, Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma'i bstan bcos dkon mchog gi rigs rnam par dbye ba, does appear at the end of each chapter of the canonical Tibetan recensions. Nevertheless, this version is likely a Tibetan redaction, in that thus far there is no evidence of a Sanskrit version written entirely in verse that excludes the commentarial sections that explain them.
The second, which combines the verses with their accompanying prose commentary, corresponds to the *Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā as it has become known in academic circles where it is referenced with the abbreviation RGVV. However, in Tibetan the subtitle is merely appended with the equivalent of vyākhyā, i.e. Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma'i bstan bcos rnam par bshad pa, and thus a translation of the Tibetan title of the complete text would be something akin to the Explanatory Commentary on the Treatise on the Ultimate Continuum of the Great Vehicle. However, the extant Sanskrit recension of the Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra directly corresponds to the Tibetan version known as the *Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā, in that it contains both the root verses and the prose commentary. Though, again, lacking a Sanskrit work entitled the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā, we can surmise that its corresponding Tibetan title was likely manufactured in order to delineate it from the streamlined verse redaction, while the Sanskrit title *Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā was in turn a product of modern scholars. On the surface it would seem that this title is a combination of the Chinese title back translated into Sanskrit as the Ratnagotraśāstra and the one found in the Tibetan editions, which state the Sanskrit title as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstravyākhya. Nevertheless, in terms of content, the Sanskrit RGV corresponds to the Tibetan RGVV, in that the Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra is the same text as Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma'i bstan bcos rnam par bshad pa.
Also, see the Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra and for a recent essay on the text: On the Ratnagotravibhāga by Alexander Gardner.Further Reading[edit]
- According to the Sanskrit grammatical rules associated with sandhi, the word boundaries of the “a” of Mahāyāna and the “u” of Uttaratantra combine as “o.” The title could just as easily be rendered “Mahāyāna Uttaratantra Śāstra.”
- See the more detailed discussion of the translation of this term here: Continuum vs. Teachings: Discrepancies in the Translation of the Term Tantra (rgyud) in the Subtitle of the Ratnagotravibhāga.
- Kano, K. Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, 27, note #41.