Svabhava (Sanskrit: स्वभाव, svabhāva; Pali: सभाव, sabhāva; Chinese: 自性; pinyin: zìxìng; Vietnamese: Tự tính; Tibetan: རང་བཞིན, Wylie: rang-bzhin)[1] literally means "own-being" or "own-becoming".
The concept and term svabhāva are frequently encountered in Hindu and Buddhist traditions such as Advaita Vedanta (e.g. in the Avadhūta Gītā), Mahāyāna Buddhism (e.g. in the Ratnagotravibhāga), Vaishnavism (e.g., the writings of Ramanuja) and Dzogchen (e.g. in the seventeen tantras).
In the post-canonical Abhidhamma literature, sabhāva is used to distinguish an irreducible, dependent, momentary phenomenon (dhamma) from a conventionally constructed object.
According to Peter Harvey, sabhāva in the Theravāda Abhidhamma is something conditional and interdependent: "They are dhammas because they uphold their own nature [sabhaava].
[10]The Vaibhāṣika school held that dharmas have a constant essence or inherent nature (svabhāva) which persists through past, present and future.
[12]Dzogchen upholds a view of niḥsvabhāva, refuting svabhāva using the same logic employed by Madhyamaka, a freedom from extremes demonstrated succinctly via catuṣkoṭi tetralemma.
[14]The Union of the Sun and Moon (Tibetan: ཉི་ཟླ་ཁ་སྦྱོར, Wylie: nyi zla kha sbyor), one of the 'seventeen tantras of the esoteric instruction cycle' (Tibetan: མན་ངག་སྡེའི་རྒྱུད་བཅུ་བདུན, Wylie: man ngag sde'i rgyud bcu bdun) which are a suite of tantras known variously as: nyingtik, upadesha or menngagde within Dzogchen discourse, states: Whoever meditates on the absence of nature [svabhāva] in objects that are objective appearances this is the non-duality of appearance and emptiness,
[15] Svabhāva is very important in the nontheistic theology of the Bonpo Great Perfection (Dzogchen) tradition where it is part of a technical language to render macrocosm and microcosm into nonduality, as Rossi (1999: p. 58) states: The View of the Great Perfection further acknowledges the ontological identity of the macrocosmic and microcosmic realities through the threefold axiom of Condition (ngang), Ultimate Nature (rang bzhin) and Identity (bdag nyid).
The Condition (ngang) is the Basis of all (kun gzhi) -- primordially pure (ka dag) and not generated by primary and instrumental causes.
The non-duality between the Ultimate Nature (i.e., the unaltered appearance of all phenomena) and the Condition (i.e., the Basis of all) is called the Identity (bdag nyid).
This unicum of primordial purity (ka dag) and spontaneous accomplishment (lhun grub) is the Way of Being (gnas lugs) of the Pure-and-Perfect-Mind [byang chub (kyi) sems].