Begin Discovering Your Buddha-Nature

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Discover
New to Buddhism or to the concept of buddha-nature? Discover how buddha-nature is articulated in various Buddhist traditions by exploring books, articles, and multimedia from leading Buddhist teachers and academics. This page is designed to make buddha-nature easily understandable and accessible.
Featured Content
Vienna-Symposium-Banner-for-Workshops-Meetings-Tsadra-website.jpgIncreased attention to the tathāgatagarbha doctrine in the last decade has lead to significant publications and meetings on the topic of buddha-nature and related themes. Scholars in Asia, Europe, and the Americas have published new translations and studies of the foundational scriptures and commentaries, and are examining the history and literature of the doctrine. In July 2019 Tsadra Foundation partnered with the University of Vienna to bring many of these scholars together for an international symposium titled Tathāgatagarbha Across Asia. The presentations are available here and the edited papers will be published in a collection of essays from Wisdom Publications.
See all presentations
In this wide-ranging video interview, Karl Brunnhölzl discusses buddha-nature and the key topics related to it. He begins by defining buddha-nature and then moves on to discuss such topics as the debate that the doctrine has generated, the concepts of emptiness and luminosity, and how buddha-nature relates to Vajrayana practice.

The writer-in-digital-residence is the recipient of a grant designed to support Tsadra Foundation’s Buddhist literacy projects that connect the larger public with academic research and advance understanding of specific aspects of Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Writers help to curate this online resource and write essays on the history, philosophy, and practices associated with buddha-nature teachings and tathāgatagarbha theory in Tibet. These essays are addressed to an audience of educated readers of Buddhist materials and Buddhist practitioners.

Lopen (Dr) Karma Phuntsho is one of Bhutan’s leading intellectuals. He has finished monastic training in Bhutan and India before he pursued a M.St in Classical Indian Religions, and D.Phil in Oriental Studies at Balliol College, Oxford. He was a researcher at CNRS, Paris, a Research Associate at Department of Social Anthropology and the Spalding Fellow for Comparative Religion at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, and Research Consultant at University of Virginia. An author of over hundred books and articles including the authoritative History of Bhutan and Mipham’s Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness, he speaks and writes extensively on Bhutan and Buddhism. Read a complete bio.

Tsadra Supports Translation at the University of Vienna
Translating Gö Lotsāwa Zhönu Pal (1392–1481)

Tsadra Foundation is excited to support the translation of one of the most important commentaries in the Tibetan tradition. Having already created a critical edition of the text and published widely on buddha-nature topics, Klaus-Dieter Mathes and two of his graduate students will work on Gö Lotsāwa Zhönu Pal's (1392–1481) extensive commentary on the Gyü Lama starting in 2021. In this special text we find not only a complete 15th-century Tibetan version of the Gyü Lama (including Asaṅga's commentary), but also a critical philological review of the earlier Tibetan canonical translation by Ngok Lotsāwa Loden Sherab (1059–1109) against the background of the original Sanskrit about which Gö Lotsāwa was exceptionally knowledgeable. Gö Lotsāwa's study, rife with quotations from a great variety of texts from both the Kangyur and Tengyur, thus offers representative samples from all strands of Indian Buddhist literature. Gö Lotsāwa's Gyü Lama commentary is not only the first available commentary belonging to the meditation tradition (Tib. sgom lugs) of the Maitreya works, but also includes a tradition of teaching Mahāmudrā based on the sūtras and the works of Maitreya.

Translators
Klaus-Dieter Mathes
Katrin Querl
Jamie Gordon Creek
From the experts
In this interview Professor Klaus-Dieter Mathes discusses buddha-nature and the key ideas behind it, the controversies it generates, and some of the related Buddhist philosophy in comparative perspective.
In this video interview Wulstan Fletcher discusses Mipham's and Longchenpa's approach to buddha-nature as well as his personal experiences with buddha-nature teachings and how they have influenced his practice.
In this video interview Elizabeth Callahan discusses the key terminology that is used when speaking of buddha-nature. She explains the term ordinary mind and elaborates on the meaning of buddha-nature.
Other Interviews
Publications
Study the sources
The seeds of buddha-nature teachings are sprinkled throughout the sutras and tantras of the Buddhist canon. A core group of scripture that initially taught buddha-nature known as the tathāgatagarbha sūtras date between the second and fourth centuries. These include the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, the Śrīmālādevīsūtra and several others. The famous Laṅkāvatārasūtra was also important for buddha-nature theory. In Tibetan Buddhism the late-Indian treatise Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra, or "Gyu Lama" as it is known in the Tibetan, serves as a major source for buddha-nature. In East Asia the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (大乗起信論) was the most influential treatise in spreading buddha-nature theory.
Explore the root verses
I.28

རྫོགས་སངས་སྐུ་ནི་འཕྲོ་ཕྱིར་དང་། །
དེ་བཞིན་ཉིད་དབྱེར་མེད་ཕྱིར་དང་། །
རིགས་ཡོད་ཕྱིར་ན་ལུས་ཅན་ཀུན། །
རྟག་ཏུ་སངས་རྒྱས་སྙིང་པོ་ཅན། །

Since the perfect buddhakaya radiates,
Since suchness is undifferentiable,
And because of the disposition,
All beings always possess the buddha heart.
French

संबुद्धकायस्फरणात् तथताव्यतिभेदतः
गोत्रतश्च सदा सर्वे बुद्धगर्भाः शरीरिणः

佛法身遍滿 真如無差別
皆實有佛性 是故說常有

(The Chinese translation collapses verses I:27 and I:28 into one verse. See Takasaki, page 197 note #2, for his speculation on this verse in the various languages.)
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Select a language to view commentary on this verse.

Traditional expositions