History
The seeds of buddha-nature teachings were planted in some of the earliest Buddhist scriptures. Passages such as this one, from the Aṅguttaranikāya Sutta—"Luminous, monks, is this mind, but sometimes it is defiled by adventitious defilements"—suggest a natural state that is only temporarily obscured by the stains of saṁsāra. Buddhism before the rise of the Mahāyāna, however, had little use for such a notion, focused as it was on the long and arduous transformation of deluded sods into enlightened beings.
Only in the early centuries of the Common Era did scriptures teaching tathāgatagarbha—what we here refer to as buddha-nature—begin to circulate and gain attention. These were the so-called buddha-nature scriptures, such as the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, and the Śrīmaladevisūtra. Drawing on Mahāyāna doctrine of the unity of saṁsāra and nirvāṇa, and the recasting of the Buddha has a universal principle of enlightened mind, they taught that enlightenment is an essential factor of the human existence. Rather than be transformed into a buddha, these scriptures taught that one must only reveal one's true nature to become free. These scriptures belonged to neither to Madhyamaka nor the Yogācāra Schools, although the buddha-nature teachings were eventually adopted, in some form, by both.
The buddha-nature teachings spread to China starting in the fifth century where it inspired the composition of the Awakening of Faith and the Chinese doctrines such as original enlightenment and sudden enlightenment and became part of the standard doctrine of all East Asian Buddhist traditions. Tibetans knew of buddha-nature theory as early as the seventh century, but the teachings spread widely following the translation of the Ratnagotravibhāga in the eleventh century, a fifth-century treatise that was the first to systematize the teachings.
A History of Buddha-Nature Theory[edit]
Preface[edit]
The theory of tathāgatagarbha—most commonly, if not perfectly, translated into English as “buddha-nature”[1]—is generally thought by scholars to have first appeared around the third or fourth century CE and possibly as early as the second. Many Tibetan and Chinese scholiasts found justification for the ideas in various passages in the Pāli Canon, such as this from the Aṅguttaranikāya Sutta: “Luminous, monks, is this mind, but sometimes it is defiled by adventitious defilements. . . . sometimes it is free from adventitious defilements.”[2] The Vinaya contains a famous story in which the Buddha sends his gaze over all existence and perceives sentient beings as lotuses rooted in deep mud; the metaphor is taken as pertaining to the buddha-nature of all beings, destined as we are to attain perfectly pure enlightenment.[3]
Traditional and modern scholars debate how much of a link can be found between early Pāli references to “luminosity” and buddha-nature.[4] Mainstream Pāli Buddhism considered consciousness to be one of the five skandhas, the building blocks of conditioned existence. Early exegesis of luminosity passages in the scripture seems to suggest that they were not, in fact, teaching that the mind is naturally pure or that it preexists the skandhas, but only that it has the potential to be made pure.[5] A related concept is bhavaṅga mind, meaning the substratum of consciousness that represents mind in its inactive state. This does not appear originally to have been intended as a permanent subconscious; at the moment the mind becomes active, bhavaṅga is cut off and the active mind (vīthicitta) takes over. Still, some scholars have pointed to the concept as a forerunner to the notion of luminosity.[6]
Although over the centuries Chinese and Tibetan scholiasts have categorized the concept of buddha-nature as either Yogācāra or Madhyamaka, there is sufficient reason to believe that the tathāgatagarbha theory developed independently: it is a cataphatic doctrine (that is, it uses positive language to describe the nature of reality), which distinguishes it from the apophatic approach of Madhyamaka; and it asserts that all sentient beings have an equal capacity to awaken, which contradicts the basic Yogācāra doctrine of different potentials for enlightenment. Instead, the rise of the doctrine was likely a result of Buddhist theorists grappling with long-standing core Buddhist conundrums such as the nature of mind; how to use language to describe what is by definition beyond the reach of language; how nirvāṇa, which is unconditioned and perfect, can arise out of saṁsāra; and how to make sense of various yogic experiences.
Early Appearances of the Term Tathāgatagarbha[edit]
Scholars currently debate the earliest (surviving) appearance of the term tathāgatagarbha. The term itself appears in a handful of early scriptures but without elaboration, suggesting that the term had been coined but its meaning had not yet been fleshed out. These are documented by Karl Brunnhölzl in When the Clouds Part:
- Possibly the first appearance of the term tathāgatagarbha (though not in the sense in which it is used in the tathāgatagarbha sūtras) has been traced to the Mahāsaṃghika Ekottarikāgama (the Chinese recension of the Aṅguttara Nikāya): “If someone devotes himself to the Ekottarikāgama / Then he has the tathāgatagarbha. / Even if his body cannot exhaust defilements in this life / In his next life he will attain supreme wisdom.” The term is also used once in the Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra (which is dated prior to the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra) as an epithet of Sudhana, without further explanation. Furthermore, the Prajñāpāramitāsūtra in One Hundred Fifty Lines (Adhyardhaśatikāprajñāpāramitāsūtra) contains the sentence “all sentient beings possess the tathāgatagarbha[7] because their entire being is that of the great bodhisattva Samantabhadra.”[8]
In When the Clouds Part Brunnhölzl also surveys the literature to which the earliest Indian treatise on tathāgatagarbha, the Ratnagotravibhāga, makes reference. These include the Dhāraṇīśvararājasūtra and the Ratnadārikāsūtra, among others.[9] Although these scriptures do not use the term tathāgatagarbha, they provided the treatise’s author with much of the doctrinal basis for the explication of the theory.
One such concept on which tathāgatagarbha theory relies is gotra, a Sanskrit term that refers to family unit by bloodline and is used metaphorically in Buddhism to refer to “class,” “lineage,” or “disposition.” Buddhist teachings since the early days of the religion discussed the various predilections of followers, a way of separating the children of the “noble” class—those who are sincere in their renunciation and diligent in their austerities—from the rest of humanity. In the Mahāyāna three basic classes of Buddhist practitioners were said to exist: śrāvakas, who will become arhats by following the Hīnayāna path; pratyekabuddhas, who will become arhats without being taught; and bodhisattvas, or those destined to become buddhas on the Mahāyāna path. An additional gotra was posited in some sūtras: that of the icchantika, who does not possess tathāgatagarbha and therefore has no possibility of becoming enlightened.[10] Whether or not such a class of beings truly existed was one of the earliest controversies in buddha-nature theory.
Tathāgatagarbha Scripture[edit]
A handful of texts that are sometimes collectively labeled “tathāgatagarbha sūtras” are generally agreed upon as the initial group of literature that developed the concept of buddha-nature as we know it today. These stand distinct from the Yogācāra scriptures such as the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra, and from the Prajñāpāramitā literature that provided the foundation for the Madhyamaka; so much so that some historians have posited the existence of a third Indian Mahāyāna school alongside them: the Tathāgatagarbha school. Among the most important of these texts are the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta, the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādanirdeśa, the Mahābherīsūtra, and the Aṅgulimālīyasūtra. While later Mahāyāna scriptures such as the Laṅkāvatāra and the Lotus Sūtra also teach tathāgatagarbha, the above-named scriptures predate the popular Ratnagotravibhāga, a fourth-[11] or early fifth-century[12] Indian treatise that systematized tathāgatagarbha theory, and so are considered the first wave of the doctrine. The dates of their creation are unknown, and there is as yet little consensus concerning the sequence of their appearances.
The Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra and the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra are the likeliest candidates for the earliest surviving instance of the term tathāgatagarbha used in the sense that it has come down to us. Michael Radich dates the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra to as early as the second century CE and claims that it is the earliest of the group,[13] while Michael Zimmermann dates the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra to the third century;[14] he once argued that this sūtra was the earliest of the group but has since backed away from that assertion in light of Radich’s findings.
The Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, like the Hīnayāna sūtra of the same name, is ostensibly a narrative about the final days of the Buddha, but this one extends into a discourse of Mahāyāna doctrine. The Buddha is depicted not as dying but as entering a nirvāṇa that is an enduring presence rather than an extinction. This seems to be the main thrust of the sūtra: to proclaim that the Buddha is ever-present and to equate parinirvāṇa with the eternal and all-pervading dharmakāya, which eventually came to be equated in the sūtra with tathāgatagarbha.[15] The sūtra in fact inverts what are known as the four viparyāsas, or wrong views: that any phenomenon can be described as being free from suffering, permanent, pure, or endowed with a self. The Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra instead states that the Buddha, his enlightenment, and the buddhadhātu should all be properly described as blissful, permanent, pure, and endowed with a self. That permanent buddhahood, which is only masked by temporary stains, is tathāgatagarbha. (In typical parochial Mahāyāna fashion, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra reserves complete enlightenment for only those who have completed the Mahāyāna path; the nirvāṇa of the arhat is merely free of the stains, lacking the awareness of the buddhadhātu and bliss.)
The Mahāparnirvāṇa’s liberal use of the term self (ātman) to describe tathāgatagarbha was controversial, flying in the face of one of the central doctrines of Buddhism, that of no-self, or anātman. As Christopher Jones points out, two additional tathāgatagarbha sūtras do the same, the Aṅgulimālīyasūtra and the *Mahābherīsūtra (both of which will be introduced below), leading him to speculate that opposition to these sūtras from within Buddhist communities was the reason later tathāgatagarbha sūtras dropped the use of the term ātman.[16]
In his study of the scripture Radich argues that the term tathāgatagarbha, which he glosses as “womb of a buddha,” was used to explain how a perfectly pure being such as a buddha could arise out of a polluted and degraded human being; how, in other words, the conditioned could give rise to the unconditioned. This line of argument remains one of the more popular defenses against the claim that buddha-nature theory is non-Buddhist; if sentient beings and buddhas do not share the same nature, defenders assert, the attainment of enlightenment cannot be explained. Either saṃsāra must be wiped away to reveal what is already present, or a spark of enlightenment that is part of a saṃsāric being’s essence is brought to fruition. Otherwise nirvāṇa is the result of some action and therefore determined by causes and conditions, a view that is abhorrent to any Buddhist; nirvāṇa is precisely the absence of any conditioning.
As Brunnhölzl describes it, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra offers an ambiguous definition of tathāgatagarbha: it is an intrinsic pure nature that all sentient beings possess and of which they will become aware once obscurations are removed, and it is a seed or potential that will ripen into buddhahood once all conditions are present.[17] Buddha-nature, it would seem, was from the very early days a doctrine that contained both an ontological and a soteriological assertion. In the first case it is a statement about the nature of reality: sentient beings are by nature perfect, but that perfection is obscured by stains that nevertheless do not impact its essence; that perfection is moreover equated with the nature of reality itself, and therefore buddha-nature becomes the basis for both saṁsāra and nirvāṇa. In the second case it is an ethical proposal relating to salvation: the potential for perfection is present in all sentient beings, but they must each strive to actualize it. This bifurcated definition would continue through all presentations, to the delight or consternation of many commentators.
The Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra appears to have been compiled in at least three stages. As described by Liu Ming-Wood and also by Takasaki, the earliest section comprises the first five chapters, which read as a complete text and end with the final days of the Buddha.[18] Chapters 6 through 9 clarify points made in the first, a commentary of sorts in the guise of a continuation, and the final section, chapters 10 through 13, add further explanation. As Christopher Jones explained, Japanese scholar Shimoda Masahiro suggested that the earliest core of the text was concerned with the Buddha’s permanent existence; rather than vanishing into nirvāṇa, here the buddha is permanent and omnipresent. The accretion of the tathāgatagarbha doctrine represents a transition of the Buddha’s body into that of sentient beings, the Buddha’s presence becoming the true self of ordinary beings. This suggests an interesting link between the early Buddhist concern with the relics—and lasting presence—of the Buddha with the doctrine of buddha-nature.[19] In any case, the sūtra teaches, this innate buddha-body of sentient beings, which came to be called tathāgatagarbha, represents their true self.
A primary divergence between the first and later sections of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra is in their positions on buddha-nature and the icchantikas, the class of beings who are beset with the gravest of flaws such that they can never become enlightened; by definition they are devoid of buddha-nature. The first section of the sūtra is adamant that the icchantikas do not have buddha-nature and can never become enlightened; they are a scorched seed that can never sprout. The second section is ambiguous on the subject, and the third states unequivocally that icchantikas do have buddha-nature and therefore do have the potential to become enlightened.[20] By bestowing buddha-nature on the icchantika the additions brought the sūtra into full conformity with the Single Vehicle (Ekayāna) teachings of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra—the Lotus Sutra—which influenced it and other early tathāgatagarbha sūtras,[21] and concurrently into contradiction with fundamental Yogācāra doctrine of the three natures.
Whether or not it was the first tathāgatagarbha sūtra, most scholars agree that the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra was among the earliest of the group. It has been translated into English by Grosnick[22] and again by Zimmermann[23], who also prepared critical editions of the Chinese and Tibetan which he published together with a lengthy study. Zimmermann explains in patient detail that there are two versions of the text, the first of which lacks much of the content of the second, later recension (see below in the section on translations into Chinese). Like the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra offers both ontological and soteriological definition of tathāgatagarbha, although “definition” is probably not the right word: the short text simply lists nine similes to describe the concept. These include a golden statue covered in mud and a seed that is destined to grow into a tree, suggesting both an already perfected nature and the potential to become something that one is presently not.
Zimmermann and others have noted that tathāgatagarbha theory may have initially been developed more for an ethical and soteriological purpose; the Tāthagatagarbhasūtra did not have to explain the idea with complicated philosophical arguments because it was intended to encourage and inspire, not convince. It is an appeal to emotion rather than the intellect. Madhyamaka and Yogācāra schools of doctrine were then in ascendance in Mahāyāna communities, and it is reasonable to hypothesize that practitioners were put off by the seeming nihilism of Madhyamaka; emptiness is too easily interpreted to mean that the ultimate is, terrifyingly, simply a void. Yogācāra, meanwhile, advocated a theory of “class” or “disposition” (gotra) in which only certain beings were said to be able to attain enlightenment. Such a doctrine might leave some of the faithful—not to mention potential converts—feeling left out. The early tathāgatagarbha literature countered both. It offered a positive description of the ultimate—buddha-nature, the true and real nature of both a person and reality—and it guaranteed complete and perfect enlightenment to all beings who were willing to strive for it (on the Mahāyāna path, of course). Yogācāra, it should be noted, also uses positive language to describe the ultimate—mind, at least in later Yogācāra scriptures, is said to be truly existent—and this has led some scholars to erroneously label tathāgatagarbha a Yogācāra doctrine.[24]
Another early tathāgatagarbha scripture, perhaps one of the most influential, was also an early instance of the concept of a single vehicle, merging all previous Buddhist doctrine into a single doxographical order. This was the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādanirdeśa, known in English as The Lion’s Roar of Queen Śrīmālā. Although it is no longer extant in Sanskrit, it was evidently highly influential in India, judging by the many references to it in other scripture.[25] Diana Paul argues that it was composed at least by the year 350, to give it time to gain popularity in India and be brought to China, where it was translated in 435.[26] In the sūtra Queen Śrīmālā of Ayodhyā is prompted by a letter from her parents to supplicate the Buddha, who appears before her and inspires her to teach. The main topics of her discourse are tathāgatagarbha, the single vehicle, and the Four Noble Truths. Although the sūtra affirms that all beings share the same buddha-nature, the Śrīmālā asserts that śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas (that is, non-Mahāyāna Buddhists) cannot comprehend the steps needed to shed adventitious stains and reveal the intrinsic purity of mind; only bodhisattvas can. Thus while the sūtra proclaims a single vehicle and universal buddha-nature, it does so with some reservation, suggesting a Yogācāra influence. This inequality is probably an indication of the scripture’s early date: Mahāyāna communities were still in competition with the earlier Buddhist orders, and bodhisattvas and śrāvakas could not be depicted as equals.
In When the Clouds Part Karl Brunnhölzl draws attention to a novel conception of emptiness in the Śrīmālā: tathāgatagarbha “is empty of adventitious stains but not empty of its limitless inseparable qualities.”[27] With this the sūtra seems to be addressing the question of how tathāgatagarbha theory is to be addressed by Madhyamikas. If tathāgatagarbha is another name for emptiness, as some Madhyamaka theorists would argue, then buddha-nature ought to conform with Madhyamaka definitions of emptiness and lack its own qualities. Instead, buddha-nature is described as empty of all but its own characteristics, an early suggestion of a philosophical view that came to be known in Tibet as “other-emptiness.”
The above three early tathāgatagarbha scriptures describe an ultimate nature that is naturally pure but is obscured by adventitious stains. The very short Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta further expands the ontological aspect of buddha-nature. The Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta, or “No-Increase, No-Decrease Chapter,” exists today only in Chinese translation, although it was eventually known to Tibetans through extensive quotations in the Ratnagotravibhāga (initial Tibetan translators of the Ratnagotravibhāga did not recognize the quotations and so failed to identify it as a sūtra). Jonathan Silk dates the text to at least before the early fifth century, after the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra and the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādanirdeśa,[28] as does Diana Paul,[29] while Takasaki argues for it having appeared after the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra and before the Śrīmālādevī.[30]
Like other tathāgatagarbha scriptures, this one is ambiguous as to whether tathāgatagarbha is a womb/seed or an intrinsic nature, a currently nonexistent potential or an already existent presence. Silk argues that the text understands the term in the latter sense. The title of the scripture comes from the discussion of whether the number of ordinary beings decreases when someone becomes a buddha. Such a question reveals dualistic thinking, the Buddha chides in the narrative, and is therefore flawed, because ordinary beings and buddhas are not fundamentally different in nature. As Brunnhölzl puts it, the text teaches that
- when the dharmakāya is obscured by adventitious stains, it is called “sentient being.” When this very same dharmakāya becomes weary of saṃsāra and practices the ten pāramitās and bodhisattva conduct, it is called “bodhisattva.” When it is free from all stains, it is called “buddha.”[31]
In other words, there is no essential difference between an ordinary being and a buddha, and to ask whether there is a change in population when a person attains enlightenment is nonsensical, not unlike asking whether there is a change in the number of water molecules when ice melts. It is simply that ordinary beings are afflicted by stains and a buddha is not, similar to a golden statue wrapped in rags compared to a statue on display in all its glory. (Note how in the above passage buddha-nature and dharmakāya are treated as synonyms.)
One of the main contributions of the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta is the emphasis on faith as a necessary—though not sufficient—condition of enlightenment. Such a rhetorical move might suggest an admission that tathāgatagarbha is a notion that is not available for logical proof—it does, after all, raise the specter of a quasi-Hindu transcendent self, not to mention a mystical presence that is beyond the reach of language. The use of positive terms to describe tathāgatagarbha, much less its use of the word ātman, required a lot of exegesis to convince many that the doctrine was in accordance with current understandings of emptiness and did not violate the Buddha’s teaching of no-self.[32]
The Mahābherīsūtra, another tathāgatagarbha sūtra that like the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta is concerned with the issue of whether the sum total of sentient beings can increase or decrease, also makes extensive use of the term ātman. The sūtra was translated into Chinese in the fifth century by Guṇabhadra and was influenced by the Lotus Sūtra, which it mentions by name. Christopher Jones proposed that because the presentation of the issues in the Mahābherīsūtra is less sophisticated than in the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta, it should be considered to have been composed earlier. Jones also argues that with the Mahābherīsūtra and the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta came an important expansion of the meaning of tathāgatagarbha: earlier scriptures posited that all beings have buddha-nature in them and that they had the potential to become a buddha. Jones writes that these two sūtras were responsible for equating tathāgatagarbha with dharmakāya (as we saw above), the all-pervading true nature of all reality. Buddha-nature in this way is no longer just a potential or nature of the individual; it is the fundamental nature of reality shared by all beings.[33]
A final early tathāgatagarbha sūtra, if it can fairly be included in the category, is the Aṅgulimālīyasūtra, which like the Mahāparinirvāṇa examines earlier material through a Mahāyāna lens. Here is the story of the conversion of a bandit who has killed so many people and fashioned such an impressive necklace of their fingers that he has earned the epithet Aṅgulimāla, “Rosary of Fingers.” Like the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra and the Mahābherīsūtra, the Aṅgulimālīyasūtra equates tathāgatagarbha with ātman, distinguishing it from non-Buddhist conceptions of the term. As Jones pointed out, referencing Kazuo Kano’s Japanese-language scholarship, the message of the scripture is not, as one might think, the universality of buddha-nature, even for those who commit heinous crimes. Aṅgulimāla is not actually converted in the Mahāyāna version of the Aṅgulimālīyasūtra; rather his killings are presented as illusory and the violence is justified as a defense of the dharma.[34] Buddha-nature is rather incidental to this message.
Tathāgatagarbha Sūtras in China[edit]
Translation of the Scriptures[edit]
All the above tathāgatagarbha scriptures were translated into Chinese between the fifth and sixth centuries, during a period of intense translation activity. As evidence of the availability of Sanskrit manuscripts, forty-one Sanskrit fragments of the Mahāparinirvāṇa have been found in Central Asia, a primary region through which Buddhism was brought from India to China.[35] Dunhuang in particular, it is believed, was a hub of buddha-nature transmission in China. Of the six scriptures described above, five were done in the fifth century. Three were translated by Guṇabhadra[36] and two by Buddhabhadra.[37] Dharmakṣema[38] translated one of these, the Mahāparinirvāṇa, a second time, and may have also translated the Śrīmāla. Bodhiruci (of the Wei)[39] translated the sixth scripture in the early sixth century.
There are three recensions of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, although only two are technically translations. The first, the Dabannihuan jing 大般泥洹經 (T376), was translated into Chinese in the southern capital of Jiankang 建康 around 416–418 by Buddhabhadra and Faxian 法顯.[40] This consists of only the first five chapters (said to be the original core) of the sūtra. The second is the Dabanniepan jing 大般涅槃經 (T374), done around 421–432 by Dharmakṣema in the northern kingdom of Beiliang 北涼.[41] This was revised in the 430s as Dabanniepan jing 大般涅槃經 (T375), also known as the “Southern Version,” produced in Liu Song 劉宋 by Huiyan 慧嚴, Huiguan 慧觀, Xie Lingyun 謝靈運 (385–433), and others. This is not technically a translation, as they did not consult a Sanskrit original.[42] According to Diana Paul the prolific translator Guṇabhadra also later corrected Dharmakṣema’s translation.[43]
- Buddha-nature is actually an English translation of a Chinese term, foxing 佛性. This term appears to have been invented in China to translate buddhadhātu, possibly also buddatā, tathatā, prakṛtivyadadāna, and other terms. See King, Buddha Nature, 173–74, n5. The most common Sanskrit term, tathāgatagarbha, means something like “womb/essence/seed (garbha) of the one who has gone/come (gata / āgata) to thusness (tathā; i.e., enlightenment).” The Chinese translation of tathāgatagarbha is rulaixing 如來性. The Tibetan equivalents of buddha-nature include rang bzhin gnas rigs and sangs rgyas kyi snying po. Tathāgatagarbha is translated as de bzhin gshegs pa’i snying po: “the essence of those who have gone/come to thusness.”
- Morris, The Aṅguttara-Nikāya, i.10, 11–16, as quoted in Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 39. For more early scriptural passages on the mind’s natural luminosity, see Skorupski, “Consciousness and Luminosity.”
- NEED A REFERENCE
- Jonathan Silk, for example, (Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 39) points out that the compilers of the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta appear to have been aware of the Aṅguttaranikāya passage, as they integrated it into that Mahāyāna sūtra nearly verbatim.
- For scholarship on luminosity in early Buddhism, see Shih, “The Concept of ‘Innate Purity of Mind’ in the Agamas and Nikayas”; and Williams, The Reflexive Nature of Awareness.
- See, for example, Collins, “Momentariness and the Bhavaṅga Mind,” in Selfless Persons; Harris, “The Problem of Idealism” in The Continuity between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism; and Harvey, “The Brightly Shining Bhavaṅga Mind,” in The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvāṇa in Early Buddhism.
- Brunnhölzl (When the Clouds Part, 3) translates tathāgatagarbha in this passage as “tathāgata heart,” as he does throughout the book. The Sanskrit is on page 985, n11).
- Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part, 3.
- Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part, 3–4.
- Various translation of icchantika into Chinese and Tibetan shed light on the ways in which the category has been understood (the Chinese transliteration is yichanti 一闡提). Tibetans translate it as “one who is cut off from a gotra” (rigs chad pa) or “one of great lust” (’dod chen po), the first signifying that the icchantikas are excluded from the beings who will reach enlightenment, the second that they are conceived of as being unable to surmount their lust (“hedonist” also has been offered as a translation). Three Chinese translations all likewise reference the aspect of excessive desire: duoyu 多欲 (“many desires”), leyu 樂欲 (“cherishing desires”), and datan 大貪 (“great greed”).
- Zimmermann, A Buddha Within, 12.
- Takasaki, A Study, 61. As discussed below, the Ratnagotravibhāga was translated into Chinese in the first decade of the sixth century.
- Radich, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, 99.
- Zimmermann, “The Process of Awakening,” 514. Radich (The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, 85) argues for no earlier than 250 and as late as the mid-fourth century.
- On the history of the concept of the dharmakāya, see Harrison, “Is the Dharma-kaya the Real ‘Phantom Body’ of the Buddha?” Harrison argues that in most early Mahāyāna scripture dharmakāya ought to be read as an adjective, meaning “the body of the buddha as the dharma,” and not as some ontological universal principle.
- Jones, “A Self-Aggrandizing Vehicle,” 121.
- Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part, 18. The same can be said about the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra’s similes; see below.
- Liu, “The Problem of the Icchantika,” in Takasaki, Collected Essays, 299. The first five chapters were also translated independently, in China in 418 by Faxien 法顯 and in Tibet by Jinamitra, Jñānagarbha, and Devacandra in the late eighth century (Hodge, Textual History) or early ninth century (Jones, “A Self-Aggrandizing Vehicle,” 122–23).
- Jones, “A Self-Aggrandizing Vehicle,” 124.
- It is important to note that a slightly later translation by Dharmakṣema altered the icchantika passages in the first five chapters in order to bring them into line with the rest of the text. Faxian, who was a committed Yogācārin, did not. We will return to this below.
- Jones, “A Self-Aggrandizing Vehicle.”
- Grosnick, Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra.
- Zimmermann, A Buddha Within.
- For example, the translations and studies of D. T. Suzuki.
- Paul, The Buddhist Feminine Ideal, 1.
- Paul, The Buddhist Feminine Ideal, 25.
- Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part, 14.
- Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 4.
- Paul, The Buddhist Feminine Ideal, 3.
- Silk, Buddhist Cosmic Unity, 21.
- Brunnhölzl, When the Clouds Part, 13.
- For a fine discussion of the use of ātman in the tathāgatagarbha sūtras, see Jones, “A Self-Aggrandizing Vehicle.”
- Jones, “Beings, Non-Beings, and Buddhas,” 61–63.
- Jones, “A Self-Aggrandizing Vehicle,” 137.
- Radich, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, 21.
- Guṇabhadra lived from 394 to 468. His name was transliterated (in contemporary Chinese pronunciation) as Qiu na ba tuo luo 求那跋陀羅.
- Buddhabhadra lived from 359 to 429. His name is transliterated as Fo tuo ba tuo luo 佛陀跋陀羅.
- Dharmakṣema lived from 385 to 433. His name was transliterated as Tan wu chen 曇無讖.
- Bodhiruci (of the Wei) lived in the sixth century. His name was transliterated as Pu ti liu zhi 菩提流支.
- Faxian’s dates are estimated as between 320 and 420. Radich, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, 20–21; Liu, “The Doctrine of the Buddha-Nature,” 64.
- Radich, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, 20–21.
- Radich, The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, 21; Liu, “The Doctrine of the Buddha-Nature,” 64.
- Paul, The Buddhist Feminine Ideal, 18. Paul names Dharmakṣema’s translation as the first but does not give dates of translation.
