Selfhood, Secrecy, Singularity: Reassessing the Early Life of the Tathāgatagarbha in India

Gwen Witt Dorring2022-11-16T23:39:24-07:00

The early history of buddha-nature teaching in India is in the process of some reassessment. Michael Radich’s contention that there is good reason to take the Mahāparinirvāṇamahāsūtra as our earliest source for an account of the tathāgatagarbha invites a fresh look at the wider corpus of Indian literature concerned with this expression, and with it the affirmation that what is essential to a Buddha (buddhadhātu) abides in all sentient beings. My research has focused on a revised trajectory of how buddha-nature was conceptualized in the first five hundred years of the Common Era, informed by the hypothetical primacy of Indian […]

Selfhood, Secrecy, Singularity: Reassessing the Early Life of the Tathāgatagarbha in IndiaGwen Witt Dorring2022-11-16T23:39:24-07:00

Examples of the Term tathāgatagarbha Appearing in Indic Tantric Literature

Gwen Witt Dorring2022-10-26T05:07:03-06:00

This presentation focuses on the term tathāgatagarbha appearing in tantric scriptures and commentaries composed by Indic authors. In general, it has been pointed out that the tathāgatagarbha teaching has a strong doctrinal impact on tantric teachings, but actual examples of tathāgatagarbha appearing in tantric literature are rather rare in comparison with other terms of non-tantric Mahāyāna origin, such as the five jñānas of the Buddha, buddha’s bodies, etc. Through this investigation I shall clarify purposes of integration of this term into tantric contexts in each example. I have in my previous article in 2012 dealt with the literature of the […]

Examples of the Term tathāgatagarbha Appearing in Indic Tantric LiteratureGwen Witt Dorring2022-10-26T05:07:03-06:00

New research on the concept of buddha-nature in India: the beginnings

Gwen Witt Dorring2022-10-26T05:12:25-06:00

The idea that all living beings carry a buddha embryo within themselves or already have full-fledged buddha-nature is one of the most pervasive ideas in the history of Buddhist thought. Buddhist thinkers have been struggling with the different concepts based on such a thought and its meanings for soteriology and spiritual training. In the 1990s the traditions that promote the idea of buddha-nature were heavily criticized and denounced as being non-Buddhist by a Japanese group of scholars who thought of themselves as “true” followers of Buddhism which, so they claimed, always must be “critical” with regard to its underlying philosophical […]

New research on the concept of buddha-nature in India: the beginningsGwen Witt Dorring2022-10-26T05:12:25-06:00