Tathāgatagarbha sūtras
[2] The Sanskrit term tathāgatagarbha (traditional Chinese: 如来藏; pinyin: rúláizàng; Japanese: にょらいぞう; Korean: 여래장; Vietnamese: như lai tạng) may be parsed into tathāgata "the one thus gone"[3] (referring to Buddhahood) and garbha "root, embryo, essence".
[6][7] Upon the destruction of the fetters, according to one scholar, "the shining nibbanic consciousness flashes out of the womb of arahantship, being without object or support, so transcending all limitations.
[citation needed] Although attempts are made in the Buddhist sutras to explain the tathāgatagarbha, it remains ultimately mysterious and allegedly unfathomable to the ordinary, unawakened person, being only fully knowable by perfect Buddhas themselves.
'[10] The tathāgatagarbha is the ultimate, pure, ungraspable, inconceivable, irreducible, unassailable, boundless, true and deathless quintessence of the Buddha's emancipatory reality, the very core of his sublime nature.
[14] Karl Brunnhölzl, drawing on the Tibetan tradition, provides the following list of 24 sutras "explicitly or implicitly associated with tathagatagarbha":[15] The Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra presents the tathāgatagarbha as a virtual Buddha-homunculus, a fully wisdom-endowed Buddha, "a most victorious body ... great and indestructible", inviolate, seated majestically in the lotus position within the body of each being, clearly visible only to a perfect Buddha with his supernatural vision.
Brian Edward Brown dates the composition of the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra to the Andhra Ikshvaku in the 3rd century CE, as a product of the Mahāsāṃghikas of the Āndhra region.
[18][failed verification] Wayman has outlined eleven points of complete agreement between the Mahāsāṃghikas and the Śrīmālā, along with four major arguments for this association.
King, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra does not represent a major innovation, and is rather unsystematic,[25] which made it "a fruitful one for later students and commentators, who were obliged to create their own order and bring it to the text".
Mahamati, it is like a potter who manufactures various vessels out of a mass of clay of one sort by his own manual skill and labour combined with a rod, water, and thread, Mahamati, that the Tathagatas preach the egolessness of things which removes all the traces of discrimination by various skilful means issuing from their transcendental wisdom, that is, sometimes by the doctrine of the Tathagata-garbha, sometimes by that of egolessness, and, like a potter, by means of various terms, expressions, and synonyms.
Accordingly, Mahamati, the Tathagatas who are Arhats and Fully-Enlightened Ones disclose the doctrine of the Tathagata-garbha which is thus not to be known as identical with the philosopher's notion of an ego-substance.
[40]Yet in the concluding Sagathakam portion of the text, coming after the above-quoted passage, the sutra does not deny the reality of the Self; in fact it castigates such denial of the 'pure Self'.
According to Thomas Cleary, "The original scripture rigorously rejects nihilism and does not ultimately deny either self or world",[41] and quotes the sutra: "Confused thinkers without guidance are in a cave of consciousness running hither and thither seeking to explain the self.
Yogācārins aimed to account for the possibility of the attainment of Buddhahood by ignorant sentient beings: the tathāgatagarbha is the indwelling awakening of bodhi in the very heart of samsara.
There is also a tendency in the tathāgatagarbha sutras to support vegetarianism, as all persons and creatures are compassionately viewed as possessing one and the same essential nature - the Buddha-dhatu or Buddha-nature.
There are two very influential treatises (shastras) on buddha-nature which draw on and systematize the Tathāgatagarbha sutra material: Furthermore, there are three other Indian buddha-nature treatises preserved only in Chinese:[42] Of disputed authorship, the Ratnagotravibhāga (otherwise known as the Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra or just Uttaratantra - "The Supreme Continuum"), is the only Indian attempt to create a coherent philosophical model based on the ideas found in the Tathāgatagarbha Sutras.
[43] The Ratnagotravibhāga sees the Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha) as "suchness" or "thusness" - the abiding reality of all things - in a state of tarnished concealment within the being.
