In the Tathagatagarbha and Buddha-nature doctrines bodhi becomes equivalent to the universal, natural and pure state of the mind:

According to Matsumoto Shiro and Hakamaya Noriaki, the idea of an ontological reality of the Buddha-nature is an un-Buddhist idea: Their " Critical Buddhism " approach rejects what it calls " dhatu-vada " ( substantialist Buddha nature doctrines )

This conception of the nature of the mind as being fundamentally the same as that of the Buddha, has been identified with the Mahāyāna doctrines of Buddha-nature and the Buddha's Dharmakāya, as well as compared favorably with doctrines in Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Lotus Sūtra and the.

In the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Buddha insists that while pondering upon Dharma is vital, one must then relinquish fixation on words and letters, as these are utterly divorced from liberation and the Buddha-nature.

In the Sutrayana practice, a path of Mahayana, the " path of the cause " is taken, whereby a practitioner starts with his or her potential Buddha-nature and nurtures it to produce the fruit of Buddhahood.

Veneration of, and prostration toward, the Buddha image also reminds practitioners ( emphatically in the Mahayana ) of their own fundamental intrinsic Buddha-nature ( Tathagatagarbha ).

In Mahāyāna, The " Tathāgatagarbha Sutras " are a collection of Mahayana sutras which present the original concept of Buddha-nature, i. e. the original vision of the Buddha-nature as an ungenerated, unconditioned and immortal Buddhic element within all beings.

In a number of major Mahayana sutras ( e. g. the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Tathagatagarbha Sutra, the Srimala Sutra, among others ), the Buddha is presented as clarifying this teaching by saying that, while the skandhas ( constituents of the ordinary body and mind ) are not the self, there does truly exist an eternal, unchanging, blissful Buddha-essence in all sentient beings, which is the uncreated and deathless Buddha-nature (" Buddha-dhatu ") or " True Self " of the Buddha himself.

The class of Buddhist scriptures known as the " Buddha-nature " ( tathāgatagarbha ) sutras presents a seemingly variant understanding of emptiness, wherein the Buddha Nature, the Buddha and Liberation are seen as transcending the realm of the empty ( i. e. of the conditioned and dependently originated ).

Though the tathagatagarbha and the Buddha-nature have not exactly the same meaning, in the Buddhist tradition they became equated.

On the other hand, this Buddha-essence or Buddha-nature is also often explained as the potential for achieving Buddhahood, rather than an existing phenomenon one can grasp onto as being me or self.

Finding the Dao and Buddha-nature is not simply a matter of formulations, but an active response to the Four Noble Truths that cannot be fully expressed or conveyed in words and concrete associations.

The Buddha-nature can also be understood as the primordial reality from which phenomenal reality springs or the changeless reality empty of only that which is other than itself.

A koan will " have the Buddha-nature " and be marked white if and only if it complies with the rule ; otherwise, it will be marked black.

This Buddha-nature is described in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra to be incorruptible, uncreated, and indestructible.

The Source can be considered a shared Consciousness in the DC Comics Universe, where it is the non-religious equivalent to Buddha-nature.

In the Vajrayana the " path of the fruit " is taken whereby the practitioner takes his or her innate Buddha-nature as the means of practice.

" The practice of Irwon lies in wisdom ( prajñā ), fostering concentration ( samādhi ) and using virtue ( śīla ), upon enlightenment to the Buddha-nature in mundane, daily life.

Nichiren viewed his teachings as a method of efficaciously preventing this and other disasters: that the best countermeasure against the degeneracy of the times and its associated disasters was through the activation of Buddha-nature by chanting and the other practices which he advocated.

Thus Tantra, especially in its nondual forms, rejected the renunciant values of Patañjalian yoga, offering instead a vision of the whole of reality as the self-expression of a single, free and blissful Divine Consciousness under whatever name, whether Śiva or Buddha-nature.

The premise is that since we innately have an enlightened mind, practicing seeing the world in terms of ultimate truth can help us to attain our full Buddha-nature.

It is similar to prajna, to realizing the Buddha-nature, realizing sunyata and realizing suchness.

The guru does not perform initiation as an individual, but as the person's own Buddha-nature reflected in the personality of the guru.

In his ultimate transcendental " body / mind " mode as Dharmakaya, he has eternal and infinite life, is present in all things as the Buddha-nature, and is possessed of great and immeasurable qualities.

There is especially a difference between the Tibetan tradition, which endorses sunyata, and the Chinese Chán tradition, which has incorporated both the Madhyamika teachings and the Buddha-nature texts.

The Buddha-nature is ultimately identifiable as the supramundane nature of the Buddha.

The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra was an influential sutra in the development of the Buddha-nature thought.

According to others, the potential of salvation depends on the ontological reality of a salvific, abiding core reality — the Buddha-nature, empty of all mutability and error, fully present within all beings.

The Tathāgatagarbha Sutras and the idea of the Buddha-nature were endorsed, because of the perceived similarities with the Tao, which was understood as a transcendental reality underlying the world of appearances.

From this, it continues: " The Buddha-nature is in fact not the self.

According to the Shingon doctrine, enlightenment is not a distant, foreign reality that can take aeons to approach but a real possibility within this very life, based on the spiritual potential of every living being, known generally as Buddha-nature.

Many of the pivotal notions in Chinese Buddhism ( e. g., Buddha-nature ) and their cardinal texts ( e. g., The Awakening of Faith ) were completely unknown in India.

Mahayana often adopts a pragmatic concept of truth: doctrines are regarded as conditionally " true " in the sense of being spiritually beneficial.

He had become " well-versed in astrology, writing and Sanskrit " by the age of three, " able to distinguish between the Buddhist and non-Buddhist doctrines " by the age of ten, and would eventually become a master of the teachings of Mahayana, Hinayana, and Vajrayana Buddhism under the guidance of over 100 different instructors.

Even though the Tendai School also contains esoteric teachings in its doctrines, it is still essentially an exoteric Mahayana school at its core.

John W. Pettit, while stating, " Mahayana has not got a strong historical claim for representing the explicit teachings of the historical Buddha ", also argues that the basic concepts of Mahāyāna do occur in the Pāli canon and that this suggests that Mahāyāna is " not simply an accretion of fabricated doctrines " but " has a strong connection with the teachings of Buddha himself ".

Shantideva also produced the Shikshasamuccaya, which is a compendium of doctrines from a huge range of Mahayana Sutras — some of which no longer extist and therefore are known only through Shantideva's quotes.

This inscription represents one of the first known mention of the Buddha as a deity, using the Indian bhakti word Bhagavat (" Lord ", " All-embracing personal deity "), suggesting the emergence of Mahayana doctrines in Buddhism.

Ongoing contact between Southeast Asia and India brought a variety of doctrines, relics, and texts into Southeast Asia from both the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, as well as the Theravada and the other early Buddhist schools.

Buddhist doctrines are reported to have reached as far as Balkh even during the life of the Buddha ( 563 BC to 483 BC ), as recorded by Husang Tsang.

Other contributions to Buddhism were the teaching of The Five Guides of Propagation, The doctrine of the Three Great Secret Dharmas and the teaching of The Three Proofs for verification of the validity of Buddhist doctrines.

Nāgārjuna's primary contribution to Buddhist philosophy is in the use of the concept of śūnyatā, or " emptiness ," which brings together other key Buddhist doctrines, particularly anātman ( no-self ) and pratītyasamutpāda ( dependent origination ), to refute the metaphysics of Sarvastivāda and Sautrāntika ( extinct non-Mahayana schools ).

In favour of skepticism towards Buddhist doctrines in general, Tibetans are fond of quoting sutra to the effect that one should test the Buddha's words as one would the quality of gold.

Some scholars attribute the disappearance of ancestor worship to the influence of Buddhist doctrines of anicca and anatta, impermanence and rejection of a ' self '.

Buddhist philosophy has its foundations in the doctrines of:

It is this religion of Bon that has persisted to our own times, absorbing doctrines from the dominant Buddhist religion but always adapting what it learned to its own needs and perspectives.

In the Buddhist traditions of India, Pure Land doctrines and practices were disseminated by well-known exponents of the Mahāyāna teachings, including Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu.

An Shigao translated Buddhist texts on basic doctrines, meditation, and abhidharma.

Throughout the centuries, except for the initiated, most of the Japanese common folk knew little about its secretive doctrines and the monks of this " Mantra School " except that besides performing the usual priestly duties of prayers, blessings and funeral rites for the public, they practiced only Mikkyō ( 密教 ）, literally " secret ways " in stark contrast to all other Buddhist schools and were called upon to perform mystical rituals that could summon rain, improve harvests, exorcise demons, avert natural disasters, heal the sick and protect the state.

It frequently treats later developments in a way that realigns them with earlier versions of Buddhist doctrines.

Xuanzang also discovered that the intellectual context in which Buddhists disputed and interpreted texts was much vaster and more varied than the Chinese materials had indicated: Buddhist positions were forged in earnest debate with a range of Buddhist and non-Buddhist doctrines unknown in China, and the terminology of these debates drew their significance and connotations from this rich context.

As a result, Tendai esoteric ritual bears much in common with the explicitly Vajrayana tradition of Shingon Buddhist ritual, though the underlying doctrines may differ somewhat.

Gaudapda took over the Buddhist doctrines that ultimate reality is pure consciousness ( vijñapti-mātra ) and " that the nature of the world is the four-cornered negation ".

The Yogic, Tantric and other systems of India, the Buddhist psychology of Tibet, as well as Chinese ( Taoist alchemy ) and Japanese ( Shingon ) esoterism are examples of doctrines that describe a subtle physiology having a number of focal points ( chakras, acupuncture points ) connected by a series of channels ( nadis, Acupuncture meridians ) that convey life-force ( prana, vayu, ch ' i, ki, lung ).

He refused, stating that Buddhist doctrines prohibited suicide and that those who committed suicide could not receive human bodies in the next reincarnation.

But although Huángbò often railed against traditional Buddhist textual practices, pointing to the necessity of direct experience over sutra study, his record shows that he was familiar with a wide selection of Buddhist doctrines and texts, including the Diamond Sutra, the Vimalakīrti Sutra and the Lotus Sutra.

While his doctrines follow the middle path, his gifts are to the brahmibns, sramansa ( Buddhist priests ) and others equally.

The first half of the work describes Nanda ’ s life, and the second half of the work describes Buddhist doctrines and ascetic practices.

In this work he carried out his most comprehensive refutation of Buddhism, singling out Buddhist doctrines and practices for detailed criticism.