Buddha-nature is the spark of buddhahood in every sentient being. It is the teaching that all people are fundamentally good and that all of us have the potential to attain the complete realization of buddhahood. Two frequently-used metaphors to describe this universal nature are a golden statue encased in muck and the seed of a mango tree. The first suggests that our buddha-nature is already perfect, and only needs to be revealed in order to manifest our enlightenment. The second presents buddha-nature as a potential that must be cultivated in order to attain enlightenment. A third, less common interpretation is that we somehow produce buddhahood and thus acquire 'buddha-nature' at a certain stage of religious accomplishment. These three models, 'disclosure', 'transformation', and 'production', are used by different traditions to define buddha-nature and describe the methods to fully actualize enlightenment.
What buddha-nature actually is, and how it can be described accurately, is a major topic in Buddhist philosophy. In general Buddhists employ one of two main approaches to describe reality: positive language which asserts the qualities of enlightenment and buddha-nature, and negative language which attempts to avoid the traps of dualism. From these two approaches come two common definitions of buddha-nature: that it is none other than the natural luminosity of the mind or that it is the universal truth of emptiness. "Emptiness" refers to a theory of radical selflessness, in which all phenomena are understood to lack independent existence. It also refers to a specific way of using language to avoid implying such an existence, in which reality is consistently described by what it is not. The "natural luminosity of mind" is the idea that the fundamental nature of all sentient beings is nondual wisdom, a phenomenon also known as reflexive awareness--awareness that is aware of itself, free of the duality of subject and object that infects all forms of consciousness. Advocates of this view describe buddha-nature as fundamentally real, permanent, and unchanging, and this use of positive language puts it in conflict with emptiness theory, and so has led to centuries of sometimes contentious debates. You will find information about all these fascinating debates on the pages of this website.
Indian and Tibetan philosophers have also debated whether buddha-nature is a definitive teaching--one given by the Buddha to describe things as they are--or a provisional teaching--not true but valuable for encouraging a student to move in the right direction. A famous parable of this sort of teaching from the Lotus Sutra describes a group of children unaware that the building in which they play is burning; their father, unable to convince them to leave, tells them, falsely, that a marvelous chariot is outside the house, which they run to see, thereby surviving the fire. Like the father who tells his children an untruth in order to benefit them, the Buddha is said to have taught many doctrines that are not strictly accurate, but which benefit disciples by encouraging them to get on the path. For many philosophers, the doctrine of buddha-nature is like this--the idea that we possess this spark of enlightenment inspires us to practice, but such a thing cannot be actually said to exist because of the fundamental truth of emptiness. Others, however, take the position that the mind's natural luminosity is self-evident, and need not be explained as a rhetorical trick.
The methods of practice relating to buddha-nature naturally reflect the theory that is used to describe it. If buddha-nature is already complete and perfect, then one need not do anything to attain it. Mahāyāna meditation and virtuous deeds become something one does to display one's enlightenment, as in the case of Zen and Japanese Shingon rituals, or one need only rest in the natural purity of mind, as in Tibetan Dzogchen or Mahāmudrā. If buddha-nature is a potential that must be developed and perfected, then one has a lot of work to do and those same practices are described as necessary in order to accumulate merit and purify the obscurations, such as are described in both Tantra and Sūtra-based path structures embraced by the Geluk and other Tibetan traditions.
Buddha-nature is taught in a wide range of scriptures, both those said to be the word of the Buddha and commentaries by Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan masters. A group of early Indian sūtras introduced the theory around the third or fourth century of the common era. The diverse views presented in this literature were first systematized in a treatise known as the Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra, a title that roughly translates as “The Superior Continuum (uttaratantra) of the Mahāyāna, A Treatise (śāstra) Analyzing (vibhāga) the Source (gotra) of the Three Jewels (ratna).” In Tibet this text is divided into root verses and commentary which are separately attributed to the Bodhisattva Maitreya and the great Indian master Asaṅga, while in East Asia the entire text is believed to have been written by a north Indian named Sāramati. Popularly known in Tibet as the Gyulama (Uttaratantra in Sanskrit), the treatise has been widely taught and written about by all traditions of Buddhism there. The treatise was less influential in East Asia, where the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra was of much greater importance for the spread of buddha-nature theory.
Not all Buddhists accept the teachings of buddha-nature, and some actually disparage it as "non-Buddhist." This is because of the similarities between buddha-nature and the "self," which the Buddha famously declared does not exist. The Buddha taught that all individuals are subject to "dependent arising," which simply means we exist because of causes and conditions. We are made up of parts in dependence on other things, and so there is no clear defining line between ourselves and the world. We exist, but we exist as pieces of a larger process that is constantly changing, and there is no underlying permanence to any of it; as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, the only constant is change. Because buddha-nature is described as our "essence" or "innate nature" some teachers and scholars have argued that it is no different than the self and is therefore in contradiction with basic Buddhism. Some buddha-nature scriptures even use the word "self" (ātman in Sanskrit) to describe buddha-nature, but they mean the term in a very different way, describing a basic fact of reality shared by all beings rather than an individual essence. Proponents of buddha-nature defend the teaching by either classifying buddha-nature as "provisional," meaning a teaching of practical value that is not literally true, or by explaining that buddha-nature is not something belonging to an individual, but is rather a basic characteristic of having a mind. That is, there are no separate "buddha-natures" belonging to each person. It is like the air in our lungs—it is in us as a integral factor of our being alive, but it is not our individual air.
- Learn more about the controversies here: Questions and Controversies
- Are buddha-nature and tathagatagarbha teachings to be taken as "definitive teachings" or "provisional"?
- Is buddha-nature merely an emptiness that is a nonimplicative negation? Or does it represent all the qualities of a completely enlightened buddha?
- Is buddha-nature a potential we have that needs to be cultivated or something already perfect that simply needs to be revealed?
"Soul" is a Greek-inspired teaching of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There are many ways that these traditions understand the concept, but at its most basic a soul is said to be a permanent individual entity that survives death. Indian religious traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism do not have this idea. The Hindu ātman is individual, but more like the wave on an ocean than a truly separate entity—the individuality of the ātman is said to be illusory and is the cause of human suffering. The goal of Hindu practice is to abandon that illusion and experience the universal unity of existence, called Brahmā—for the wave to dissolve back into the ocean. Buddhism however does not accept the individual existence of anything, neither the wave nor the ocean. Both are dependent on causes and conditions to exist. Buddha-nature is neither an individual permanently-existing entity nor a universal presence manifesting as individual entities. Instead it is simply a basic characteristic of sentient existence: the innate capacity for wisdom.
Buddha-nature is the fundamental capacity of the mind to understand the world as it is. The mind is said to be like a glass of dirty water all shaken up by desire and ignorance. When the water in the glass is allowed to still the dirt all settles, revealing the basic purity of the water. So too, when the mind is properly trained, the impurities vanish, and we perceive reality as it actually is, untainted by petty desires and impulses. In other words, buddha-nature theory teaches us that we are fundamentally pure, yet obscured with ignorance. Enlightenment will be achieved by freeing the mind of that ignorance and in so doing revealing our buddha-nature.
The doctrine of buddha-nature—the innate enlightened nature of mind—is found in all Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions, but it was not present in early Buddhism and is not accepted by most contemporary Asian Theravada Buddhist traditions. In mainstream Theravada consciousness is one of the five aggregates, the conditioned aspects of existence which are left behind upon attaining nirvāṇa. The notion of a mind that exists apart from the aggregates, which is primordially pure and somehow innately enlightened, would be heretical to most Theravada Buddhists. As the contemporary Western Theravadin teacher Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu has written, "the Buddha never advocated attributing an innate nature of any kind to the mind—good, bad, or Buddha." Not only are the buddha-nature teachings not true, he continues, but they are a hindrance to the progress on the path: "If you assume that the mind is basically good, you’ll feel capable but will easily get complacent." This is not a universal view; the Thai Forest tradition that began at the turn of the Twentieth Century espouses the view that the mind is "luminous" in the sense of being innately pure, non-dual awareness, and that it continues to exist in nirvāṇa.
All Mahāyāna traditions teach that because all phenomena arise in dependence on other phenomena they are empty of any self-nature. How to describe that emptiness is, however, a matter of considerable disagreement. Where Yogācāra masters use positive language to describe the mind and the true nature of reality, in the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nāgārjuna and his disciples only negative language can be used. "Because there are no phenomena that are not dependently arisen," Nāgārjuna wrote, "there are no phenomena that are not empty." Thus while buddha-nature is generally accepted in Yogācāra, in Madhyamaka it is considered either provisionally (meaning not literally) true or as a synonym for emptiness.
Buddha-nature is a central doctrine in all East Asian Buddhism save for the Pure Land traditions. Almost all base their teachings on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, a Chinese composition that introduced the concepts of original enlightenment and actualized enlightenment. The first is the fundamental nature of mind obscured by stains, and the second is that same innately enlightened mind freed of those obscurations. The Tiantai (Tendai in Japan), Huayan (Kegon in Japan) and Chan (Zen in Japan) and their offshoots all embraced buddha-nature, as did the Tantric Shingon School in Japan, although there are differences in their approaches. Dogen, one of the founders of Japanese Zen, taught that meditation is performed not to attain enlightenment but to express one's innate enlightenment. This expressed in the famous Zen proverb "If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him." That is, if you think that the Buddha is someone or somewhere else, you're wasting your time; destroy that idea and realize your own innate enlightenment. In Pure Land there remains some disagreement, with some sects arguing that ordinary beings do not have buddha-nature, only acquiring it upon being saved by the Buddha Amitābha and born in the Pure Land.
The dominant Tibetan and Himalayan Tantric traditions of Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu and Geluk are better understood as loose categories of affiliation than as closed systems, and leaders often move between monasteries to pursue their education. There is therefore no buddha-nature position that can be said to belong to any one particular tradition. Rather, buddha-nature teachings in Tibet are debated along the framework of provisional / definitive, and whether buddha-nature is simply another word for emptiness or has qualities of its own. That is, whether buddha-nature is empty of all qualities, a position known as "self-emptiness," or is empty of all but its own qualities, or "other-emptiness." These conversations began in India but took new life in Tibet, where buddha-nature theory is largely built around the fifth-century treatise Ratnagotravibhāga, popularly known in Tibet as the Uttaratantra, or Gyulama. The two poles of dialogue described above are traditionally defined in Tibet as the "analytic" and "meditative" traditions of Ratnagotravibhāga exegesis. The analytic tradition largely relies on strict Madhyamaka presentations of emptiness, and rejects any attempt to describe ultimate reality with positive characteristics. The meditative tradition encompasses a wide span of buddha-nature theory found primarily in the Jonang, Kagyu, and Nyingma traditions, usually, although not always in some form of a unity of emptiness and luminosity.
In Western Buddhism few teachers seem overly concerned with maintaining a separation between their received tradition and the Buddhisms of other regions, and have together contributed to a new form of Buddhism marked by eclectic assortments of teachings and practices, all of which embrace buddha-nature as a core tenet, explicitly or otherwise. This is true even in the Vipassana community, despite the objection of traditionalists such as the German monk Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, mentioned at the beginning of this essay. For example, Sharon Salzberg wrote of a meeting in 1990 with the the Dalai Lama during which she asked about self-hatred. The Dalai Lama responded with incredulity that any person would hate themselves: "But you have Buddha nature" he said. "How could you think of yourself that way?" Jack Kornfield has a teaching series called "Your Buddha Nature" and leads retreats on the topic. Perhaps more than any other contemporary Western Buddhist, Joseph Goldstein models the modern Western synthesis of disparate Asian Buddhist traditions. His book One Dharma unites the Theravada Vipassana tradition of the Burmese, Thai, and Bengali teachers that formed the major part of his training with Tibetan Dzogchen and Zen. Goldstein puts forward buddha-nature (or its synonyms) as the definition of wisdom in his One Dharma synthesis:
- In Buddhism there are many names for ultimate freedom: Buddha-Nature, the Unconditioned, Dharmakaya, the Unborn, the Pure Heart, Mind Essence, Nature of Mind, Ultimate Bodhicitta, Nirvana.
Buddhist scriptures can divided into two main categories: those which are said to be the word of the Buddha and those which were composed by the great masters to explain the doctrine. The Buddha is said to have given as sermons a core group of buddha-nature scriptures, collectively known as the tathāgatagarbha sūtras.
Following the appearance of these discourses, which lay out the basic parameters of buddha-nature theory, Indian scholars began to produce treatises that systematized the received teachings. The earliest and most influential Indian commentary on buddha-nature is the Ratnagotravibhāga. It became the main scriptural source for buddha-nature theory in Tibet. Who wrote this important text is not known. According to Chinese tradition the author was a man named Sāramati, a member of the kṣatriya clan from Central or Northern India. A northern Indian named Ratnamati is said to have come to China from Madhyadeśa between 498 and 508 and translated the Ratnagotravibhāga between 511 and around 520 in Luoyang. He may or may not have brought the manuscript with him, and may have been assisted by Bodhiruci. The later Indian and Central Asian traditions, however, holds that it was written by Maitreya—either a man by that name or the bodhisattva. In the Tibetan tradition it is believed that the Bodhisattva Maitreya revealed the root verses of the treatise to the fourth-century founder of Yogācāra, Ārya Asaṅga, who then composed the prose commentary. It was translated into Tibetan by six different teams, including Atiśa Dīpaṃkara by Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab, who worked with his Indian teacher Sajjana. Many of the greatest Tibetan philosophers have written commentaries, including Ngok Lotsāwa, Pakpa Lodro Gyeltsen, the Third Karmapa, Dolpopa, Gyeltse Tokme, Gyeltsabje, Bodong Paṇchen, Go Lotsāwa, Śākya Chokden, Tāranātha, Jamgon Kongtrul, and Mipam, to name only a few masters from all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.
Buddha-nature in East Asian Buddhism is largely based on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, another treatise whose author is not easily identified. The second-century Indian poet Aśvagoṣa is considered by Chinese tradition to have been the author, but most scholars consider that unlikely. The sixth-century Indian monk Paramārtha is credited with its translation, and he may well have been its author, in China, together with a team of Chinese scribes. The first commentary appeared in 580, written by the monk Tanyan and was followed over the centuries by more than one hundred seventy written in China, Japan, and Korea, by some of the great religious leaders of East Asian Buddhism. These included Jingying Huiyuan of the Chinese Southern Dilun School, the Chinese Chan patriarch Shenxiu, the great Korean monk Wǒnhyo, the Chinese Huayan founder Fazang, and the Japanese founder of the Shingon School, Kukai.
The Japanese scholar D.T. Suzuki first translated the Awakening of Faith into English, in 1900. Some of the most influential early-Twentieth Century American converts used it in their promotion of Buddhism, most notably Paul Carus, the author of The Gospel of the Buddha, and Dwight Goddard, the author of The Buddhist Bible. Columbia University professor Yoshito S. Hakeda published a reliable translation in 1967. The Russian Buddhologist Eugène Obermiller first translated Ratnagotravibhāga into English, in 1931. Japanese scholar Takasaki Jikidō published a second English translation in 1966.
avidyā - Literally "unknowing," it refers to a lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of the nature of reality. As such, it is considered to be the root cause of suffering and the basis for the arising of all other negative mental factors. Skt. अविद्या Tib. མ་རིག་པ་ Ch. 無明
bīja - A seed, commonly used figuratively in the sense of something which has the potential to develop or grow, and likewise as the basic cause for this development or growth. Skt. बीज Tib. ས་བོན་ Ch. 無漏種
prabhāsvaratā - In a general sense, that which clears away darkness, though it often appears in Buddhist literature in reference to the mind or its nature. It is a particularly salient feature of Tantric literature, especially in regard to the advanced meditation techniques of the completion-stage yogas. Skt. प्रभास्वर Tib. འོད་གསལ་ Ch. 光明
prabhāsvaratā - In a general sense, that which clears away darkness, though it often appears in Buddhist literature in reference to the mind or its nature. It is a particularly salient feature of Tantric literature, especially in regard to the advanced meditation techniques of the completion-stage yogas. Skt. प्रभास्वर Tib. འོད་གསལ་ Ch. 光明
śūnyatā - The state of being empty of an innate nature due to a lack of independently existing characteristics. Skt. शून्यता Tib. སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་ Ch. 空,空門
anātman - The nonexistence of the self as a permanent, unchanging entity. Skt. अनात्मन् Tib. བདག་མེད་པ་ Ch. 无我
advaya - Literally, "without duality," it refers to that which is indivisible, in that it is not divided into two. Skt. अद्वय Tib. གཉིས་མེད་ Ch. 不二
neyārtha - Refers to something that is taught for a specific reason, rather than because it is entirely true. Skt. नेयार्थ Tib. དྲང་དོན་
Mahāyāna - Mahāyāna, or the Great Vehicle, refers to the system of Buddhist thought and practice which developed around the beginning of Common Era, focusing on the pursuit of the state of full enlightenment of the Buddha through the realization of the wisdom of emptiness and the cultivation of compassion. Skt. महायान Tib. ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོ། Ch. 大乘
Dzogchen - Dzogchen is an advanced system of meditation techniques to reveal the innate state of perfection primarily, but not exclusively, espoused by the Nyingma Buddhist tradition and the Tibetan Bön tradition. Skt. महासन्धि Tib. རྫོགས་ཆེན།
Mahāmudrā - Mahāmudrā refers to an advanced meditation tradition in Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna forms of Into-Tibetan Buddhism that is focused on the realization of the empty and luminous nature of the mind. It also refers to the resultant state of buddhahood attained through such meditation practice. In Tibet, this tradition is particularly associated with the Kagyu school, although all other schools also profess this tradition. The term also appears as part of the four seals, alongside dharmamūdra, samayamudrā, and karmamudrā. Skt. महामुद्रा Tib. ཕྱག་རྒྱ་ཆེན་པོ།
āvaraṇa - Literally, that which obscures or conceals. Often listed as a set of two obscurations (sgrib gnyis): the afflictive emotional obscurations (Skt. kleśāvaraṇa, Tib. nyon mongs pa'i sgrib pa) and the cognitive obscurations (Skt. jñeyāvaraṇa, Tib. shes bya'i sgrib pa). By removing the first, one becomes free of suffering, and by removing the second, one becomes omniscient. Skt. आवरण Tib. སྒྲིབ་པ་
tantra - Tantra, when juxtaposed with Sūtra, generally refers to the scriptures and texts which discuss esoteric topics. While the term is used to refer to texts on other topics, it is mostly used to refer to the genre of scriptures and texts on themes and topics associated with Vajrayāna Buddhism. Skt. तन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད། Ch. 密宗
sūtra - Sūtras mainly refer to the discourses delivered by the Buddha and his disciples, and the Sūtra corpus is one of the three main sets of teachings which form the Buddhist canon. Skt. सूत्र Tib. མདོ། Ch. 佛经
Geluk - The Geluk tradition traces its origin to Tsongkhapa, who propagated a modified version of the Kadampa lojong and lamrim teachings. It is the dominant tradition of Tibet, having established its control of the government under the figure of the Dalai Lama. Tib. དགེ་ལུགས་
These are the root verses of the Uttaratantra attributed to Maitreya by the Tibetan tradition.
These are the root verses of the Uttaratantra attributed to Maitreya by the Tibetan tradition.
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
gotra - Disposition, lineage, or class; an individual's gotra determines the type of enlightenment one is destined to attain. Skt. गोत्र Tib. རིགས་ Ch. 鍾姓,種性
Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to Buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have Bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt. बोधिसत्त्व Tib. བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ། Ch. 菩薩
Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to Buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have Bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt. बोधिसत्त्व Tib. བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ། Ch. 菩薩
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
These are the root verses of the Uttaratantra attributed to Maitreya by the Tibetan tradition.
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
Uttaratantra - The Ultimate Continuum, or Gyü Lama, is often used as a short title in the Tibetan tradition for the key source text of buddha-nature teachings called the Ratnagotravibhāga of Maitreya/Asaṅga, also known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra. Skt. उत्तरतन्त्र Tib. རྒྱུད་བླ་མ་ Ch. 寶性論
These are the root verses of the Uttaratantra attributed to Maitreya by the Tibetan tradition.
"This sūtra became an important scriptural source for the discussion of buddha-nature in China and is famous for associating the term buddhadhātu with tathāgatagarbha.
ātman - Though it can simply be used as the expression "I" or "me", in Indian thought the notion of self refers to a permanent, unchanging entity, such as that which passes from life to life in the case of people, or the innate essence (svabhāva) of phenomena. Skt. आत्मन् Tib. བདག་ Ch. 我,灵魂
ātman - Though it can simply be used as the expression "I" or "me", in Indian thought the notion of self refers to a permanent, unchanging entity, such as that which passes from life to life in the case of people, or the innate essence (svabhāva) of phenomena. Skt. आत्मन् Tib. བདག་ Ch. 我,灵魂
prabhāsvaratā - In a general sense, that which clears away darkness, though it often appears in Buddhist literature in reference to the mind or its nature. It is a particularly salient feature of Tantric literature, especially in regard to the advanced meditation techniques of the completion-stage yogas. Skt. प्रभास्वर Tib. འོད་གསལ་ Ch. 光明
prabhāsvaratā - In a general sense, that which clears away darkness, though it often appears in Buddhist literature in reference to the mind or its nature. It is a particularly salient feature of Tantric literature, especially in regard to the advanced meditation techniques of the completion-stage yogas. Skt. प्रभास्वर Tib. འོད་གསལ་ Ch. 光明
Yogācāra - Along with Madhyamaka, it was one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu around the fourth century CE, many of its central tenets have roots in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and the so-called third turning of the dharma wheel (see tridharmacakrapravartana). Skt. योगाचार Tib. རྣལ་འབྱོར་སྤྱོད་པ་ Ch. 瑜伽行派
Madhyamaka - Along with Yogācāra, it is one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Nāgārjuna around the second century CE, it is rooted in the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, though its initial exposition was presented in Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Skt. मध्यमक Tib. དབུ་མ་ Ch. 中觀見
Nyingma - The Nyingma, which is often described as the oldest tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, traces its origin to Padmasambhava, who is said to have visited Tibet in the eighth century. Tib. རྙིང་མ་
Sakya - The Sakya tradition developed in the eleventh century in the Khön family of Tsang, which maintained an imperial-era lineage of Vajrakīla and which adopted a new teaching from India known as Lamdre. Tib. ས་སྐྱ་
Kagyu - The Kagyu school traces its origin to the eleventh-century translator Marpa, who studied in India with Nāropa. Marpa's student Milarepa trained Gampopa, who founded the first monastery of the Kagyu order. As many as twelve subtraditions grew out from there, the best known being the Karma Kagyu, the Drikung, and the Drukpa. Tib. བཀའ་བརྒྱུད་
These are the root verses of the Uttaratantra attributed to Maitreya by the Tibetan tradition.
These are the root verses of the Uttaratantra attributed to Maitreya by the Tibetan tradition.
Jonang - The Jonang tradition was established by Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, a thirteenth-century Sakya monk famous for his Zhentong teachings. The Jonang teachings and monasteries were suppressed in Tibet in the seventeenth century but survived in Amdo. Tib. ཇོ་ནང་
bodhicitta - The altruistic thought to seek enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. It is said to have two aspects: compassion aimed at sentient beings and their problems and the wisdom of enlightenment as the solution. Skt. बोधिचित्त Tib. བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས། Ch. 菩提心
tathāgatagarbha - Buddha-nature, literally the "womb/essence of those who have gone (to suchness)." Skt. तथागतगर्भ Tib. དེ་བཞིན་གཤེགས་པའི་སྙིང་པོ་ Ch. 如来藏
Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to Buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have Bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt. बोधिसत्त्व Tib. བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ། Ch. 菩薩
Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to Buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have Bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt. बोधिसत्त्व Tib. བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ། Ch. 菩薩
Bodong - The Bodong tradition generally refers to the vast body of literature and activity stemming from Bodong Panchen Choklé Namgyal (1375/76-1451) and the monastery of Bodong E to the north of Sakya and the west of Narthang. Tib. བོ་དོང་
