Articles/Klaus-Dieter Mathes Interview on Buddha-Nature

Buddha-Nature in Comparative Perspective, an Interview with Klaus-Dieter Mathes

Klaus-Dieter Mathes

2018/04/24

Interview

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Klaus-Dieter Mathes, Head of the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna, granted an interview to Marcus Perman and Alex Gardner @ buddha-nature.tsadra.org on April 24, 2018. The discussion is almost an hour long and ranges from Klaus' personal interest in buddha-nature teachings to his ongoing and detailed research projects on the subject. Mathes discusses buddha-nature and the key ideas behind it, the controversies it generates, and some of the related Buddhist philosophy in comparative perspective.

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Clips from the Interview

Buddha-nature has controversial points.
Do you accept buddhahood or not?
Mathes talks about reification and two approaches in the Karma Kagyu Tradition.
Mystic comes from a word that means to close ones eyes, but in Buddhism you are opening your eyes.
Different approaches to buddha-nature—the debates are alive and well in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist communities.

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་