Tag Archives: buddhadhātu

Svabhāva

  1. (Chapter II verse 156) [Cleary]: This world is representation, made of names, not there as it appears.  The clusters are makers of optical illusions imagined by the naïve.

I Like Cleary’s description here of the skandhas as “clusters”. Suzuki’s translation says that the skandhas are like a “hair-net wherein discrimination goes on”; Cleary refers to this as being akin to an optical-illusion maker. We are indeed just made-up like clusters of an active imagination—just naïve and complacent dupes of our Skandhic-Overlords. read more

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The Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra (Nirvana Sutra)

While not as profound as the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, or philosophically erudite as, let us say, our recent series on the  Ratnagotravibhāgaśāstra, but certainly the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra is the most intimate in terms of its exposition of the Buddha’s final days with his much-loved multitude of devotees; in particular with how he wanted his beloved Dharma to be understood. Dr. Tony Page says that “the sutra can be said to eclipse all others in its authority on the question of the Buddha-dhatu and Tathagatagarbha.” Before commencing to the sutra proper, this blog will focus on key elements within the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, most notably buddhadhātu, the Buddha-Matrix, or Tathagatagarbha, and the “True-Self”. read more

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