[Buddha-l] Re: G-d, the D-vil and other imaginary friends

[William Magee]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 19:27:15 -0000, Stephen Hodge
<s.hodge at padmacholing.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> William Magee wrote:
> 
> > This is a good point. So perhaps the term "nature" is not a good
> > translation for "garbha," usually meaning "womb."  Some translators
> > are moving to "Buddha Matrix," giving a nice sci-fi flavor to the
> > topic.
> 
> There seems to be some confusion about the terminology involved here.  I
> have previously written about this at length so will not repeat everything
> again.
> 
> There are two key terms that should be noted:  Buddha-dhaatu and
> Tathaagata-garbha.  Though they became merged in meaning, they each seem to
> have arisen as the preferred term of two seperate groups.  Both terms seem
> to have arisen in connection with stupas and their contents.  It is
> Buddha-dhaatu that, via its Chinese equivalent (fo-xing), that gets
> translated as "Buddha-nature", though the "dhaatu" bit covers a quite wider
> range of connotations than "nature" suggests.
> 
> Tathaagata-garbha is rendered into Chinese and Tibetan differently -- the
> former using an equivalent for "Buddha-womb" and the latter "Buddha-essence"
> (= embryo).  This reflects the historical shift in meaning that can be
> discerned between the Tathaagata-garbha-suutra and slightly later texts such
> as the MPNS.  To be precise, the TGS  uses the term as a bahuvrihi compound
> while the late texts understand it a tat-puru.sa.  I.e.  Tathaagata-garbha
> is either something which you have or something which you are.  This shows
> why an uninformed  mechanical approach to translation leads to
> distortions -- "Buddha Matrix" can only be used for the TGS type of usage
> and to extend it to other texts without bothering to look at them in detail
> is very misleading.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Stephen Hodge
> 
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Stephen,

Can you point me to your earlier writings on this subject?

Bill


-- 
Dr. Bill Magee
Chung-hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies
Jinshan, Taiwan