'Tathāgatagarbha' Doctrine
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Michael Radich The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine Hamburg Buddhist Studies 5 Series editor: Michael Zimmermann Michael Radich The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Emergence of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine Hamburg University Press Publishing house of the Hamburg State and University Library Carl von Ossietzky Imprint Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library). The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at https://portal.dnb.de. The online version is available online for free on the website of Hamburg University Press (open access). The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek stores this online publication on its Archive Server. The Archive Server is part of the deposit system for long-term preservation and availability of digital publications. Available open access on the Internet at: Hamburg University Press – http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de Persistent URL: http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/purl/HamburgUP_HBS05_Radich Archive Server of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek – https://portal.dnb.de ISBN 978-3-943423-20-4 (printed version) ISSN 2190-6769 (printed version) © 2015 Hamburg University Press, Publishing house of the Hamburg State and University Library Carl von Ossietzky, Germany Printing house: Elbe-Werkstätten GmbH, Hamburg, Germany http://www.elbe-werkstaetten.de/ Cover design: Julia Wrage, Hamburg Contents Foreword 9 Michael Zimmermann Acknowledgements 11 Introduction 13 Outline 13 Contributions of this study 16 Part I Is the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra “Our Earliest” Tathāgatagarbha Text? Introduction 19 The portion of MPNMS under consideration (“MPNMS-tg”) 20 1 MPNMS-tg as a “Tathāgatagarbha Text” 23 1.1 MPNMS-tg as a veritable “tathāgatagarbha text” 23 1.2 The Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra as a “tathāgatagarbha text” 32 2 The Date of MPNMS-tg, Relative to Other Tathāgatagarbha Texts 35 2.1 Does MPNMS-tg refer to (our present) TGS by title? 35 2.1.1 References to a/the (this?) Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra within MPNMS-tg 37 2.1.2 Reference to other titles and texts in MPNMS 40 2.1.3 MPNMS references to other Mahāyāna texts by title 50 2.1.4 Relations to other texts without mention of their title 53 2.2 Similarity of one simile between MPNMS-tg and TGS 56 2.3 Summary 57 3 Evidence for the Absolute Dates of MPNMS-tg and Other Tathāgatagarbha Scriptures 59 3.1 Evidence for the absolute date of MPNMS-tg 59 3.2 Independent evidence for the absolute dates of TGS 83 3.3 Summary 85 3.4 Takasaki’s chronology: The Anūnatvāpūrṇatva-nirdeśa and Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanāda-sūtra 85 3.5 Chronological relations between MPNMS-tg and other texts in the MPNMS group 97 3.6 Conclusions 99 Part II The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and the Origins of Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine Introduction 101 Schmithausen’s criteria for a “scenario of origin” for Buddhist concepts 102 4 Tathāgatagarbha, the Problem of Maternity, and Positive Corollaries to Docetic Buddhology 105 4.1 Terms 105 4.2 Docetism as a corporeal issue 107 4.3 The extension of docetism beyond death and birth 110 4.4 Negatively-framed docetism about the Buddha’s conception, gestation and birth 115 4.5 “Material-miraculous” positive corollaries of docetism about the Buddha’s conception, gestation and birth 118 4.6 The material-miraculous, “docetic” womb 124 4.7 Dharmakāya and vajrakāya as positive corollaries of corporeal docetism 129 4.8 Tathāgatagarbha as a “soteriological-transcendent” positive corollary to docetism about the Buddha’s conception, gestation and birth 132 4.9 Docetism and the problem of the Buddha’s mother(s) 143 4.10 Docetic reinterpretations of other branches of kinship 154 4.11 Summary 155 5 Garbha and Dhātu 159 6 Conclusions 169 6.1 Summary 169 6.2 Directions for future research 171 Appendix 1 Terms related to “tathāgatagarbha” in MPNMS 175 Appendix 2 Chinese zang 藏 (esp. in DhKṣ) and “secret teachings” 193 Appendix 3 Further apparent historical detail in the MPNMS group prophecy complex 199 1 *Sarvalokapriyadarśana 199 2 A “*cakravartinī” 202 3 Trials and tribulations of the espousers of the MPNMS group 205 Appendix 4 “MPNMS-dhk” and “MPNMS-tg” 207 Appendix 5 “Kataphatic gnostic docetism” 211 Abbreviations 215 Bibliography 219 Index 247 Foreword About Hamburg Buddhist Studies Buddhism has enjoyed a prominent place in the study of Asian religious ideas at the University of Hamburg for almost 100 years, ever since the birth of Buddhist Studies in Germany. We are proud that our program is housed in one of the pioneering academic institutions in Europe at which the study of Buddhism has become a core subject for students focusing on the religious dimensions of South and Central Asia. With this publication series, the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of Hamburg aims to honor this long-standing commit- ment to research and share the results of this tradition with the aca- demic community and the wider public. Today, Buddhist Studies as an academic discipline makes use of a broad variety of approaches and methods. The field covers contemporary issues as much as it delves into the historic aspects of Buddhism. Similarly, the questions shaping the field of Buddhist Studies have broadened. Understanding present-day Buddhist phenomena, and how such phenomena are rooted in a distant past, is not a matter of indulgence. Rather, it has become clear that fos- tering such an understanding is one of the many crucial obligations of modern multicultural societies in a globalized world. Buddhism is one of the great human traditions of religious and philo- sophical thought. The Hamburg Buddhist Studies series aims to discuss as- pects of the wide variety of Buddhist traditions that will be of interest to scholars and specialists of Buddhism, but it also wants to confront Bud- dhism’s rich heritage with questions whose answers might not be easily deduced by the exclusive use of philological research methods. Such questions require the penetrating insight of scholars who approach Bud- dhism from a variety of disciplines building upon and yet going beyond the solid study of textual materials. We are convinced that the Hamburg Buddhist Studies series will contribute to opening up Buddhist Studies to those who are not necessarily trained in the classical languages of the 10 The Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra and Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine Buddhist traditions but want to approach the field with their own disci- plinary interests in mind. We very much hope that this series will encou- rage a wider audience to take interest in the academic study of the Bud- dhist traditions. About this publication It is my great pleasure to introduce the fifth volume in the Hamburg Bud- dhist Studies series. In this book, Michael Radich argues against the un- derstanding of previous scholarship that the eponymous Tathāgatagar- bha-sūtra was the earliest text to articulate tathāgatagarbha doctrine. He suggests that in fact, we are best to regard the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra as most likely to be earlier. Radich then investigates the tathāgatagarbha/ “Buddha nature” doctrine of the Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra, and its con- nection to other ideas in that context, for clues to the motive of the ori- ginal authors of the doctrine. He argues that in this context, tathāgata- garbha doctrine is best understood as a part of a much wider pattern of docetic Buddhology – the understanding that Buddhas are not really as they appear – including positive corollaries of negative statements of that docetism, that is, positive claims about what in fact is true of Bud- dhas, in contrast to those deceptive appearances. Radich suggests that within this frame, tathāgatagarbha doctrine was articulated as just such a soteriologically-oriented positive substitute for one particularly troub- ling dimension of the Buddha’s ordinary human embodiment: the fact that he had a flesh-and-blood human mother, with all the distressing im- purity and degradation which that fact implied. In effect, on Radich’s reading, it is as if the subtext of the earliest tathāgatagarbha doctrine is this: Buddhas are not conceived and gestated in putrid, painful human wombs; rather, buddhahood springs from a “womb” (garbha), inherent in all sentient beings, in which glimmers the transcendent promise of final liberation from flesh altogether. Michael Zimmermann Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Luis Gómez for his kind invitation to participate in a panel entitled “Early Expressions of the Tathaga- tagarbha Doctrine in India” at the XVIth Conference of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, June 25, 2011. This invitation gave me the initial impetus to think about the ideas that eventuated in this book. A very early version of some of the ideas presented here was first aired in a talk for the Religious Studies Programme of Massey University in Pal- merston North, New Zealand, in August 2010. I thank Doug Osto, my host at that time, for that invitation. I am also grateful to Erica Baffelli and Scott Pacey for their hospitality when I presented a late version of this work at Manchester in January 2013. I am most grateful to Michael Zimmermann for doing me the honour of accepting this work into the Hamburg Buddhist Studies series, and to Isabella Meinecke of Hamburg University Press for her editorial guid- ance. I am also deeply indebted to Paul Harrison and an anonymous re- viewer for many suggestions that improved the final form of the book. Work on the final