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How good is Sutton’s book? Interesting translation “reabsorption”, – I’ve always known of only “turn-about”.
Sutton’s scope is purely a hermeneutical one–i.e., the study of different methodological
principles of interpretation in approaching the Lanka–yet, it’s an excellent tool of observation. Sutton essentially sums up this approach with the following:
“The Tathagata-garbha concept is one of the most widely discussed in the Mahayana literature, and like the Citta-matra principle–its epistemological counterpart in the Yogaracara school–has engendered a broad range of scholarly interpretations and comments regarding its meaning and significance. However important this may be, I will not attempt to review here the relevant literature regarding the meaning of the term garbha, since a) it has been done elsewhere in great detail, and b) it falls beyond the limited scope of the present work. What I intend to pursue in this section is the hermeneutics of the concept, as it appears in the Lankavatara-sutra (using both philological and historical approaches, when appropriate), in the hope that more light can be shed on its multiple and complementary levels of meaning, and on its relation with other, parallel, metaphysical constructs, both Buddhist and Hindu (e.g., Alaya Vijnana, the Repository-of-impressions, and Atman, the Self, respectively).” Sutton, pg. 51