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5 Sameness with a Difference in the Tathagatagarbha Sutra 197 Against the repetitious negations that made up most of the Diamond Sutra, this chapter takes up the issue of the internal buddha, that statuesque Wgure of perfect paternity that several Mahayana sutras posited as the only legitimate subject inside the body of each sentient being. Though insisting on a perfect and permanent truth-father within the ordinary subject would turn out to be awkward for a number of reasons, it also appears to have been a rather attractive innovation in several spheres of early Mahayana writing.1 Then, once Buddhism went to East Asia, this topic became paramount for a broad range of Chinese and Japanese writers, with Chan writers appearing particularly interested in developing this notion along several tracks. To focus on the literary presentation of the internal buddha, I give a close reading of the Tathagatagarbha Sutra, which is dedicated to explaining the “visible” reality of the internal buddha and the techniques for excavating it. In line with the reading styles of the preceding chapters, I Wrst account for the narrative techniques by which the text constructs this internal truth-father for the reader and then explore the means by which the text offers itself as the avenue for gaining access to this form of paternal perfection . Without too much work it will become clear that this sutra shares many agendas and techniques with the Lotus Sutra and the Diamond Sutra. 1. Besides the Tathagatagarbha Sutra considered here, other Indian sources for notions of the internal buddha include the Lankavatara Sutra, the Mahayana version of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Ýrimala Sutra (Ýrimaladevisimhanada Sutra), and the Ratnagotravibhaga. I have chosen the Tathagatagarbha Sutra for its brevity and for its interesting construction of “direct seeing” as produced from the rather complex manipulation of the reader’s gaze. I would like to thank Michael Zimmerman for offering me useful points of criticism as I edited this chapter in fall 2001. OVERVIEW The Tathagatagarbha Sutra is a relatively short text, roughly the length of the Diamond Sutra. Though no manuscripts of it survive in Indic languages, there are two versions translated into Chinese; the older version was supposedly translated by Buddhabhadra in the Wfth century, and the other, which probably appeared in the early ninth century, is attributed to Amoghavajra.2 The later text looks much like its predecessor, though certain passages have been expanded and others deleted, and in places there is a new, more speciWc vocabulary that gains clarity by using binomes where the Buddhabhadra version more often employed single characters. Since I am ultimately interested in how these texts might have shaped early Chan rhetoric in the eighth century, I have chosen to work from the earlier translation done by Buddhabhadra.3 For the purpose of discussion and analysis, I treat Buddhabhadra’s version of the narrative in seven thematic sections: 1. The text opens with a standard Mahayana introduction with monks and bodhisattvas in attendance at the teaching site in Rajagrha. 2. Then there is a brief “historical” narrative in which, on this occasion ten years after his enlightenment, the Buddha magically displays numberless , glowing lotus flowers in the sky. The Buddha then causes the petals of the lotus to open, wilt, and rot, thereby revealing a glowing buddha at each of their cores. Not surprisingly, these glowing buddhas suspended in the sky, along with the sudden death of the magical flowers, produced wonder and doubt in the gathered audience. This doubt, as in the case of the Lotus Sutra, propels the narrative forward and represents another example of a Mahayana author exploring that interesting zone between the “history” of the teaching event and the teaching itself. 3. Right after the miracle, and with the glowing buddhas still suspended in the air, the narrative introduces the Bodhisattva Vajramati (Jin ganghui) who, for reasons that are not explained until the conclusion, is selected from the audience and made to serve as the Buddha’s interlocutor. Like 198 Sameness with a Difference 2. See T.16.457a for Buddhabadhra’s translation and T.16.460b for Amoghavajra’s. William H. Grosnick provides an excellent translation of Buddhabhadra’s text: “The Tathagatagarbha Sutra,” in Buddhism in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 92–106. However, for the sake of consistency, I have chosen to retranslate the passages that I focus on, and though I differ with Grosnick’s readings in several places, I do not...

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