No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
[1]
In four of the five Maitreya works (i.e., the
Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra,
Madhyāntavibhāga,
Dharmadharmatāvibhāga, and the
Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyāna Uttaratantra[2]),
[3] we find an interesting synthesis of
Yogācāra and
Tathāgatagarbha thought. The result is a doctrine that can be defended as a teaching which asserts
definitive meaning (
nītārtha) as it does not include any possible short-comings of the
Yogācāra tenet that may lead to an extreme position that either sentient beings are completely cut off from any potential for liberation or that a dependently arising mind exists on the level of ultimate truth.
[4] While the first extreme is excluded by embracing the
tathāgatagarbha doctrine that everybody is a Buddha within, or has at least the potential to become a Buddha, the second extreme of an ultimate mind is avoided by restricting the
dependent nature (
paratantrasvabhāva) of mind to the level of relative truth. This then allows for
paratantra to be included within the
Ratnagotravibhāga 's adventitious stains that cover buddha nature (
tathāgatagarbha). Thus mind's
perfect nature (
pariniṣpannasvabhāva), or
suchness, is equated with buddha nature in the
Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra IX.37,
[5] and
luminosity in Asaṅga's
[6] commentary on the
Ratnagotravibhāga 1.148
[7] That this
luminous perfect nature is empty of the adventitious stains of the imagined (
parikalpitasvabhāva) and dependent natures follows in final analysis from the
Ratnagotravibhāga and the
Dharmadharmatāvibhāga,
[8] two texts that appear to have been mostly ignored in India for more than five centuries. Things seemed to have changed, however, when Maitrīpa (ca. 1007- ca. 1086) started to integrate tantric
mahāmudrā teachings he received from his teacher Śavaripa into mainstream
Mahāyāna. Maitreya's synthesis of the three-nature theory and buddha nature proved to provide good doctrinal support for Maitrīpa's approach. The importance of the
Dharmadharmatāvibhāga and the
Ratnagotravibhāga for Maitrīpa's
mahāmudrā is further underlined by the traditional account that Maitrīpa rediscovered and taught these two texts to *Ānandakīrti and Sajjana. With the help of the latter, the Tibetan scholar Rngog Blo ldan shes rab (1059-1109) translated the
Ratnagotravibhāga and its
vyākhyā into Tibetan.
