"Have This Mind in You": A Study of the Relationship between Pauline Christology and the Tathāgatagarbha Tradition of Mahayana Buddhism

Abstract

This study of the interrelationships between the doctrine of Christ in the New Testament writings of St. Paul and the Buddha-nature (Sanskrit: Tathāgatagarbha) tradition of Mahayana Buddhism attempts to bring out some areas of potentially fruitful dialogue. In particular, three strands of parallel use of imagery emerge: the Buddha-nature is referred to as the "Truth-body" of the Buddha (dharmakāya) "when not free from the store of defilement." As such, the Buddha-nature is seen as the ultimate truth/way of all things, yet hidden by, for example, greed, hatred, and delusion. It is the disguised support of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, the cyclical world of appearances and the ultimate release from all delusion. This is compared with Christ as the Wisdom of God holding all things in being yet "secret and hidden," ceaselessly active in the world yet undefiled.

Secondly, according to some Mahayana texts, the Buddha-nature is the "true self" and is identified with the radiant substratum-consciousness or Mind. This is compared with the "new self" of the Pauline writings, identified as the "mind of Christ," which is radiant with the glory of God.

Thirdly, as the womb of Buddhahood, the Buddha-nature is full of the manifold qualities of the Buddha, showing the potential of all beings to manifest these qualities. Likewise, the "fullness of God" dwells in Christ who draws believers into his own fullness and is thus the hope of glory for all who realize their unity in the body of Christ.

This essay is an exercise in what John Cobb has called "Passing over" and "Coming back" (cf. Cobb 1982), exploring the possibilities for creative interplay between the two traditions of Christianity and Buddhism. The first phase of "passing over" refers to the attempt to understand another tradition on its own terms. The second phase of "coming back" applies these insights to one's own tradition, being aware of divergences where they occur, but also being open to the possibilities for enrichment by a fresh evaluation of previous understandings.

The Tathāgatagarbha¹ (Buddha-nature) doctrine is one of the most important keys to understanding Mahayana and particularly East Asian Buddhism. It provides a soteriological and cosmological link between ontology and anthropology, between Buddhahood and the realm of transmigration. Having looked at the definition of the term "Tathāgatagarbha," its use in the more central sūtras and śastras of this tradition will be examined.

The Sanskrit term Tathāgata is used generally in Buddhist writings as an epithet of the Buddha. It can be read either as "thus-come" into this world of transmigration out of compassion for those caught up in suffering or as "thus-gone" from saṃsāra to nirvāṇa having attained enlightenment (or in the Mahayana, having demonstrated the attainment of an enlightenment realized many eons previously).² Thus it is a designation of the Buddha that brings out his compassionate activity for the salvation of all sentient beings.

Garbha has many possible translations, but they can be summarized as "embryo" (or "germ") understood as incipient or proleptic Buddhahood and "womb" (or "matrix") referring to that which possesses in a fully developed form all the attributes and qualities of Buddhahood. The former is seen as the cause of Buddhahood, the latter as its fruit. This bivalence brings out a tension that runs through the Tathāgatagarbha writings between the potential for and actualization of enlightenment. On the one hand, the Buddhist path is necessary because the germ of Buddhahood needs to be realized in practice, but on the other hand, enlightenment is already fully present and simply obscured by (ultimately) non-existent defilements such as greed, hatred, and delusion. In other words, you can and should strive to become Buddha, and yet this is only possible because you already are a Buddha.

In China, the term Tathāgatagarbha was translated as "ru-lai-zang" (如來藏), literally the "thus-come-storehouse," showing a preference for seeing the Tathāgatagarbha in its aspect of being a womb containing the qualities of the Tathāgata. However, the term most often used in the subsequent development of the tradition was "Buddha Nature" (Chinese: 佛性 fo xing; Japanese: Bussho). This probably derives from the Sanskrit "buddhadhātu" (cf. King 1991:5) meaning "Buddha-element," a term sometimes used as a synonym for the Tathāgatagarbha in earlier writings. As such it denotes both the cause (hetu) of Buddhahood and the resultant state of "Buddhaness," which can be equated with "the true nature of things" (dharmatā). The term "Xing" (性) would have been particularly attractive to Chinese Buddhists with its echoes from the Confucian tradition in which it signified the essential goodness of human nature. Consequently, the translation "Buddha-nature" can be accurately employed for both Tathāgatagarbha and fo xing.

The origins of the Tathāgatagarbha tradition are obscure, but it is probably best described not as a distinct philosophical school (such as Madhyamika (Middle-Way) or Cittamātra (Mind-only)) but as an aggregation of ideas found in a number of different contexts and interpreted accordingly. Whether or not the tradition arose in the Yogācāra (Cittamātra) school or was assimilated into it (cf. Takasaki 1966:60), it became particularly associated with this school of thought (e.g., in the Lankāvatāra sūtra) probably due chiefly to their similarly affirmative reinterpretation of the Madhyamika understanding of emptiness (Śūnyatā, see below). Nevertheless, Tathāgatagarbha ideas are found in many different sūtras and śastras, some of the more important of which will now be examined.

Perhaps the earliest sūtra containing the Tathāgatagarbha teaching is the Tathāgatagarbha sūtra. It describes how, despite their defilements of hatred and ignorance, all living beings have within them "the Buddha's Wisdom, Buddha's Eye, Buddha's Body sitting firmly in the form of meditation" (tr. Takasaki in Williams 1989:97). In spite of the defilements that keep the transmigratory circle going, the Buddha sees that "they (these sentient beings) are possessed of the Matrix of the Tathāgata (Tathāgatagarbha), endowed with virtues, always pure, and hence not different from me." (tr. Takasaki, Williams 1989:97) The Tathāgatagarbha doctrine is thus preached by the Buddha in order to remove the defilements of living beings and reveal their essential Buddha-nature. Although not articulated in detail in this sūtra, it is clear that Buddha-nature is seen as a soteriological doctrine: "the claim that all sentient beings have this element (the Tathāgatagarbha) is the claim that all sentient beings have it within them to attain full Buddhahood" (Williams 1989:98). In describing beings as both defiled and pure, we also see the tension already mentioned between Buddha-nature as cause and effect and the hiddenness of the true nature of beings.

A text that deals more fully with the nature of the Tathāgatagarbha is the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanāda sūtra (the "Lion's Roar of Queen Śrīmālā"). This is an early Mahayana sūtra, possibly dating from the third century CE (cf. Wayman and Wayman 1974:2). One of the main teachings of this sūtra is the identification of the Tathāgatagarbha with the dharmakāya and its description in positive terms; for example:

The Dharmakāya of the Tathāgata is named 'cessation of Suffering', and it is beginningless, uncreate, unborn, undying, free from death; permanent steadfast, calm, eternal; intrinsically pure, free from all the defilement store; and accompanied by Buddha natures more numerous that the Sands of the Ganges, which are nondiscrete knowing as liberated, and inconceivable. This Dharmakāya of the Tathāgata when not free from the store of defilement is referred to as the Tathāgatagarbha.

(Wayman and Wayman 1974:98)

The dharmakāya is the "truth-body" of the Buddha, his truest nature, referring on one level to the teachings of the Buddha, but more characteristically to both the supreme qualities of the Buddha (especially his immaculate Wisdom) and the ultimate nature of all things, the true Way of the universe. Its complement is the rūpakāya or "formbody" in which the Buddha appears in the Pure Land, in the heavens or on earth, or wherever there are sentient beings in need of the teachings that lead to enlightenment. The dharmakāya is the nature of the Buddha as he is in himself, and it is this that is equated with the Tathāgatagarbha when the dharmakāya is obscured by defilements.

In using such an affirmative description of the Tathāgatagarbha (as steadfast, calm, etc.), the sūtra rejects the possibility of a negative understanding of "emptiness" (Śūnyatā), a term that is so central to Mahayana thought in general. The Madhyamika school (at least in its Prāsaṅgika form) described emptiness as the complete absence of own-being, of substantial independent phenomena. Here the Tathāgatagarbha is described as empty of defilements, but not empty of the innumerable excellent qualities of the Buddha (Wayman:99). Emptiness is not a complete absence, but the absence of something with respect to something else, which is ultimately real. This cataphatic approach is characteristic of Buddha-nature thought.

Furthermore, the sūtra goes on to attribute to the dharmakāya and therefore the Tathāgatagarbha the very terms that had been most avoided in earlier Buddhism:

When sentient beings have faith in the Tathāgata and those sentient beings conceive (him) with permanence, pleasure, self and purity, they do not go astray … Whatever sentient beings see the Dharmakāya of the Tathāgata that way see correctly. Whoever see correctly are called the sons of the Lord … who behave as manifestation of Dharma and as heirs of Dharma.

(Wayman and Wayman 1974:102)

This is not to deny the earlier teaching of the dangers of the "four wayward views" (repeated in the text immediately before this passage), namely: the idea that the impermanent is permanent, suffering is pleasure, non-self is self, the impure is pure. These mistaken ideas refer to the grasping onto conditioned existence, failing to see its basic unsatisfactoriness (duḥkha). But to stop at the negative character of existence as impermanence and so on is to not go far enough—the perfection (pāramitā) of permanence and so on needs to be recognized in the Tathāgata.

One reason for this is the increased stress on faith (śraddhā) in the Buddha as leading to deeper understanding, faith being a trust or confidence in the positive qualities of the Buddha. Although the faith or confidence in the Buddha is a prelude to a more direct knowledge of the Dharma, yet it is described as "flowing from true nature" (dharmatā-niṣyanda—Wayman:94) and is therefore a valid and important approach to the "ultimate."

Together with this comes a description of the Buddha as the highest, indeed allinclusive, Refuge of sentient beings. There is only one genuine vehicle (eka-yāna) or path to Buddhahood, which includes those following non-Mahayana teachings. Going to the Teachings (Dharma) and Community (Saṃgha) for refuge is drawn into and seen as part of the entrusting of oneself to the Buddha. Thus faith and the taking of refuge are focused more strongly on the Buddha, perhaps reflecting a certain "devotionalism," especially if the Śrīmālā can be linked with the Mahāsaṃgika sect and the lay practice of stupa worship (Wayman:8).³

Another important description of the Tathāgatagarbha in this sūtra is as the support (ādhāra) of both saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. As the support of the round of birth and death, the Tathāgatagarbha experiences suffering and therefore there is "aversion towards suffering as well as longing, eagerness, and aspiration towards Nirvāṇa" (Wayman:106). The argument here seems to be that the fleeting, unfixed nature of conditioned existence is not capable in itself of transcending its own condition. This is only possible because the support and base of saṃsāra are the permanent, steadfast, eternal Tathāgatagarbha. How the pure can actually be the basis of the defiled is, however, "difficult to understand. The Lord alone has the Eye, the Knowledge for it" (Wayman:106).

A text in the Tathāgatagarbha tradition that is probably contemporary with the Śrīmālā is the Anūnatvāpurnatvā-nirdeśa, now extant only in Chinese. Its chief importance for our purposes here is the identification of the Tathāgatagarbha with the sattvadhātū, the totality of sentient beings, which in turn is identified with the dharmakāya with its innumerable qualities and perfections. Again, the Tathāgatagarbha is seen as the dharmakāya when the latter is covered over with defilements.

Another sūtra that is important for the history of the Tathāgatagarbha tradition is the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra. This voluminous work was particularly revered in China where it played a decisive role in the debate concerning the universality of the Buddha-nature. Some strands of Yogācāra teaching had maintained that there were certain beings (the icchāntikas) who were destined never to attain enlightenment. The earlier chapters of the Mahaparinirvāṇasūtra, as they were being translated into Chinese from the Sanskrit, seemed to be supporting this view. The scholar Tao Sheng had maintained that all would be enlightened because all had the Buddhanature and was vindicated when this teaching became apparent in the translation of the later chapters of this sūtra.

One particular theme brought out by this sūtra is the identification of the Tathāgatagarbha with the term ātman (self): "Every being has the Buddha-nature. This is self. Such a self is, since the very beginning, under cover of innumerable illusions. That is why man cannot see it." (Yamamoto 1973:181) The Brahmanical doctrine of ātman as an abiding substratum linking the microcosm of the person with the macrocosm of all things was one of the most commonly refuted views by all previous Buddhist schools, so the use of the term here is particularly striking. Perhaps this usage reflects the influence of a Hindu renaissance in the Gupta period (cf. Williams 1989:100). Such an influence could possibly be traced through the vedic Golden Womb (Hiraṅya-garbha) seen as the source of life and sustainer of the world, a term taken up again in the Maitrī Upaniṣad (cf. Sutton 1991:58). In the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, for example, the Tathāgatagarbha is described as the ground of everything, like gold among pebbles (Sutton:61). However, the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra is particularly clear that the Tathāgatagarbha is not the same as the self of (Brahmanical) philosophers. Indeed, the question is directly asked:

Is not the Tathāgatagarbha taught by the Blessed One the same as the egosubstance taught by the philosophers … (which is) an eternal Creator, unqualified, omnipresent, and imperishable?

to which the Buddha replies:

No, Mahāmati, … what the Tathāgatas teach is the Tathāgatagarbha in the sense, Mahāmati, that it is emptiness, reality-limit, nirvāṇa, being unborn, unqualified and devoid of will-effort.

(Suzuki 1932:69)

The reason for such a teaching is to take away the fear that arises in those who hear the teaching of egolessness (anātman), which is a skillful means (upāya) to awaken people from their clinging to the idea of the ego. The teaching of the Tathāgatagarbha is an affirmative doctrine, but it has to be based on a letting go of the habitual clinging to "self."

This understanding is also brought out in the Mahaparinirvāṇasūtra: "All common mortals continuously and one after the other abide in wrong views. In order to cut off wrong views from them, the Tathāgata shows and speaks about no-self … The true self about which the Tathāgata speaks today is the Buddha-nature." (Yamamoto 1973:200) The teaching of no-self is a preliminary measure, a bitter medicine, necessary to purify the mind of its tendency to cling on to things as if substantial, before the "true self" of the Buddha-nature can be revealed. This Buddha-nature is the Middle Path between non-self and self, void and nonvoid (Yamamoto:653) in which the Buddha and all beings are "not-one and not-two" (Yamamoto:722). This last point is particularly important as it shows that what is being described is neither an undifferentiated monism ("not-one") nor an essential duality ("not-two"). It is not that everything is subsumed into the one self—rather, categories of self (and other) are superseded.

The Ratnagotravibhāga is a text that draws together many strands of the Tathāgatagarbha tradition, quoting from earlier sūtras and including an exposition attributed to Asaṅga in its commentary. The text speaks of the Tathāgatagarbha using the term tathatā (Reality as it is):

Now with reference to 'the Reality mingled with pollution'(samalā tathatā), it is said: All living beings are possessed of the Matrix of the Tathāgata. By which meaning is it said thus?

The multitudes of the living beings are included in the Buddha's Wisdom, Their immaculateness is non-dual by nature,

Its result manifests itself in the Germ of the Buddha.

(Takasaki 1966:196)

Tathatā, often translated as "Suchness," is a synonym for dharmakāya, the Truth-body of the Buddha. Therefore here it is repeated that the Tathāgatagarbha is the dharmakāya when the latter is obscured by defilements. This is possessed by all living beings for three reasons. The first is that the Wisdom of the Buddha, his Absolute Body (dharmakāya), is all-pervading. This ties in with other descriptions of the Tathāgatagarbha as the base of support (adhārā) of both saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Secondly, as Suchness is by nature undifferentiated, "the actual nature of the awakened being and the actual nature of reality are not different" (Trangu 1983:41). Thirdly, all beings belong to a "spiritual family," the "lineage of the Tathāgata" (Tathāgatagotra) thus enabling them to attain enlightenment.

This Buddha-nature is made manifest by four practices (Takasaki 1966:200): resolve to attain and devotion to the Dharma (adhimukti); insight into emptiness and Suchness (prajñāparamitā); meditative stability (samādhi); and great compassion (mahākarunā). These lead, respectively, to the perfections of purity, self, bliss, and permanence (Takasaki:207). Again, there is a profoundly positive, cataphatic approach to ultimate reality and a stress on the importance of compassion in the path to its realization.

The text goes on to describe the Tathāgatagarbha using a number of similes (Takasaki:268ff), such as a grain inside its husk, a treasure in the ground, or a precious image still encased in its clay mould. All describe the Tathāgatagarbha as something of great value, but hidden by the obscurations of greed and ignorance.

The Ratna ends by describing how the benefits of the text accrue first and foremost to those who have faith in this teaching of the Buddha-nature (Takasaki: 296). Thus in this text, as well as in the Śrīmālā, the importance of faith (śraddhā) and the taking of Refuge in the Triple Gem (but particularly the Buddha) are linked with the realization of the Buddha-nature.

Having said that it is the highest teaching does not however decide how it is to be interpreted. Some strands of Mahayana thought would describe the Tathāgatagarbha not as final and definitive (nītārtha) but as needing interpretation (neyārtha) due to the intentional (abhiprāyika) nature of the teachings (cf. Ruegg 1989:26–27). In such a case the Buddha is seen as having the motive of attracting those who are still attached to notions of a "self" in using teachings of which the surface level (the Tathāgatagarbha as self) is actually incompatible with the deeper meaning of emptiness (Śūnyatā). This use of an expedient device to help deluded beings is one of the hallmarks of the Mahayana, being compared to the skillful use of medicines (or indeed poisons) by a doctor to cure his patient.

One alternative approach taken, for example, by the Tibetan dGe-lugs-pa school (cf. Williams 1989:106) is to admit to the definitive (nītārtha) nature of the Tathāgatagarbha, but to see it as itself equivalent to emptiness (Śūnyatā) understood in the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamika sense of the absence of inherent existence. Here, "nītārtha" is seen as what is final, rather than necessarily explicit and literal. The line of argument is that since the Tathāgatagarbha is "that which enables the attainment of enlightenment," then it must be none other than emptiness, the realization of which is the only thing capable of completely breaking the bonds of attachment and ignorance that hinder the attainment of enlightenment.

This point of view can be classified as rang stong (the Tibetan term for "selfempty"), which emphasizes emptiness as the complete absence of any inherent existence, including that posited for the Tathāgatagarbha. The opposing view in Tibet of gzhan stong ("other-empty") understands the emptiness of the Tathāgatagarbha as the absence of something from a real substratum, that is, the absence of defilements in a really existent Tathāgatagarbha. This latter view would in fact see itself as based on the former, but going one step further (known as a third or even fourth turning of the Wheel of Dharma). The existence suggested here for the Tathāgatagarbha is said to be not that of a separate substantiality (such a view being refuted by rang stong) but an altogether different level of reality that transcends being and not-being, is and not-is. This further level is described in positive terms as perfectly pure and radiant, the "Clear Light (prabhasvāra) Nature of Mind" (Gyamtso 1986:78).

This kind of approach seems to be followed in another śastra that draws on the Tathāgatagarbha tradition: the Fo Xing Lun or Buddha Nature Treatise. Attributed to Vasubandhu, this text was translated (and possibly authored) by Paramartha in China around 560 CE (King 1991:24).

This text also talks of the Buddha-nature with reference to the term Suchness or Thusness (tathatā): "Buddha-nature is the Thusness revealed by the dual emptiness of person and things … If one does not speak of Buddha-nature, then one does not understand emptiness." (King 1991:17) Buddha-nature is bound up with the significance of emptiness—the idea that people and things are not separate independent entities but interdependent upon each other and the chain of cause and effect. But it goes beyond this to the primordially existent (Chinese: 本有 ben you) Thusness, which is beyond the opposites of existence (有 you) and non-existence (無 wu) (King:33). This description may well show the influence of Taoist thought, which saw the Tao as a substratum beyond mundane polarities and referred to it as "Ben wu" (本無, original non-being).

The nonsubstantiality of the Buddha-nature is described in the Buddha Nature Treatise by linking it with the concept of "revolution of the basis" (āśrayaparāvṛtti—King:58). This Yogācāra term denotes the radical "turning around" of the mind away from the deluding dichotomies of subject and object to the true nature of phenomena as arising from the essentially clear, calm "store consciousness" (ālaya-vijñāna). This store consciousness is identified (as in other texts such as the Laṅkāvatāra sūtra) with the Tathāgatagarbha itself. By using this terminology, the Buddha Nature Treatise is describing the awakening to the Buddha-nature as a transformation at the heart of all things.⁴

In conclusion, it may be said that there are at least three central themes found in Buddha-nature teaching. The first is the description of the Buddha-nature as the dharmakāya, the "truth-body" of the Buddha, when not free of adventitious defilements. This links the Buddha-nature both with the manifold qualities of the Buddha and with the true nature of all transient things, ultimate reality, and the emptiness of dependent origination. It is Suchness (tathatā or "reality as it is") obscured. As such it is the basis or support (adhārā) of both saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. The second theme is that the Buddha-nature is within all beings as the true self (Chinese: shih-wo 眞我), being described in positive terms as pure and radiant Mind, and realized through faith. The third theme is that it is the potentiality of all sentient beings to attain the full enlightenment of a Buddha, bringing out the two meanings of "garbha" as both embryo and womb, both the cause and fruit of Buddhahood. These three elements will now be taken up with reference to St. Paul's Christology as described in his letters included in the New Testament, by an examination of (i) Christ as the Wisdom of God through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together; (ii) Christ as the true self within, out of which those who are being saved are enabled to live; and (iii) Christ as the one who leads believers into his own fullness, as themselves the radiant image of God.

Pauline christology in the light of the tathāgatagarbha doctrine

If the Tathāgatagarbha is in some sense an all-encompassing cosmological reality, then so too, for Paul, is Christ. In order to express this, Paul uses the tradition of Jewish thought concerning the Wisdom of God. In Proverbs 8, for example, Wisdom is described as being with God at the creation of the earth, "beside him, like a master worker … rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race" (Prov. 8:30–31). Wisdom is to be sought as infinitely precious for "the Lord by Wisdom founded the earth" (Prov. 3:19); and she can say of herself "whoever finds me finds life" (Prov. 8:35). Wisdom is involved in both creation and salvation.

Such ideas are developed further in the Wisdom of Solomon. Here, Wisdom is described as the one who "orders all things well" (8:1) and is "the active cause of all things" (8:5). Her realm of activity is not only cosmological, but also moral: "her labours are virtues; for she teaches self-control and prudence, justice and courage" (8:7). One passage bears extended quotation because of its remarkable parallels with the tathāgatagarbha tradition of Buddhism:

… intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, … because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself she renews all things … .

(Wisd. Sol. 7:22–27)⁵

Here Wisdom is described as pervading and penetrating all things, as undefiled, as light, as a spotless mirror, and as one but doing all things, all of which could equally be applied to the Tathāgatagarbha.

In 1Cor.1:24 Paul describes Christ as "the power of God and the wisdom of God." Paul expands this later in the same letter: "for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (1Cor.8:6), thus reiterating that Christ functions as the upholding Wisdom of God.

What is widely seen as the most striking example of Christ being described in terms of Wisdom is Col.1:15–20: "[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created … all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together … for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things" Thus, like Wisdom, Christ is the image of God (cf. Wisd.Sol.7:26), firstborn and beginning (Prov.8:22), through whom all was created, in whom all holds together, and by whom all is reconciled to God. What is experienced in Christ has to do with both creation and redemption. To use later terminology, nature and grace are not separable realms. The cosmological reality that is before and beneath all things is that which is found in the reconciliation of the Christ-event. The truth of Christ is the truth that upholds all things.

Christ is also seen to dwell within people as their truest self and life. One such key verse is Gal.2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me." The construction of the verse in Greek brings out more clearly than the translation that it is the self reconstituted by Christ rather than "ego," which lives in Paul (or rather "himself as the prototypical example of what applies to all Pauline Christians"; Betz 1979:121). Word by word it reads: "live no longer I, lives but in me Christ." By participation in the death of Christ, the "I" is itself crucified and the resurrected Christ becomes the focus of new life in its stead. It might be said that this is the Christian version of the Buddhist doctrine of anātman (no-self), though in Buddhism it is not a question of the "I" itself dying, but a relinquishing of the idea that the "I" ever existed (in ultimate terms) in the first place.

This view of the new life of Christ may be further strengthened by the following sentence: "and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in (or by the faith of) the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal.2:20b). If "tou huiou tou theou" is taken as a subjective rather than an objective genitive, meaning "(the faith) of the Son of God" rather than "(faith) in the Son of God," as is increasingly being thought possible (cf. Hooker 1990:165–186), then the believer is not set against Christ as the one believed in, but the faith or faithfulness of Christ becomes the faith(fulness) of the believer: the life of Christ is the life of the believer.

Another verse in Galatians, in talking of the Christ within, brings out a parallel of imagery with the Tathāgatagarbha. Paul says to his readers: "My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you …" (Gal.4:19) Paul compares himself to a mother bringing Christ to birth in those to whom he ministers. This verse could possibly refer to the forming of Christ's body among them corporately (the Greek word "en" meaning either "in" or "among"), and such is Paul's teaching elsewhere (e.g., 1Cor.12:27), but following Gal.4:6 ("God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts") it would seem that the stress in this passage is on the birth of Christ within each individual believer. This provides an interesting parallel with the Tathāgatagarbha, literally the "embryo" of Buddhahood within sentient beings.

Not only is Christ in the believer, but that very fact brings the hope of being conformed to the glory of Christ's image. Paul talks about the indwelling Christ with reference to the "mind (noos)⁶ of Christ" (again tying in with the Tathāgatagarbha as the Buddha Mind). This represents a turning away from the tendency to conform to worldly standards and being "transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Rom. 12v2) enabling a life pleasing to God. In Phil.2:2-11 Paul exhorts the Philippians to "be of the same mind … let the same mind be in you that was (or that you have) in Christ Jesus …" Thus there is an exhortation to participate in Christ himself (cf. Hooker 1990:88–100), in effect to "be who you are." Not only do we share Christ's sufferings (Phil.3:10) but we also share in the glory of his resurrection (Phil.3:11). The mind of Christ is the mind of those who are in Christ as they participate in his death and resurrection.

This use of the word "mind" is linked in Eph.4:22–24 to the new self created in God's image: "You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupted and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." The old self is corrupted by lusts, or in Buddhist terms "thirst" (Pali: tanhā), and put away. The new self is taken on, which brings righteousness (being right with God) and holiness (set apart from evil). This new self is probably in some sense a corporate personality (cf. Whiteley 1964:45f) and draws from the Adam–Christ typology used by Paul in, for example, Rom.5:12–21. Adam was created in the image and likeness of God (Gen.1:27); Christ, also the image of God (Col.1:15), by his life of faith/obedience brings righteousness to all (Rom.5:19). For, "just as we have borne the image of the man of dust (Adam), we will also bear the image of the man of heaven (Christ)" (1Cor.15:49). This idea of the new self being an image or reflection has important Buddhist parallels with the mirror-like nature of the Tathāgatagarbha. Both gain their importance not as things in themselves but as reflections of God or Buddhahood imaged in terms of glory/light: "And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." (2Cor.3:18) Thus Paul describes Christ as the Wisdom of God, a "cosmological reality" through whom all things are created, held in being and finally redeemed; as the new focus of life dwelling in believers, described as the mind, which is the image and reflection of God; and as the fulness to which they are conformed "from glory to glory." All of these provide points of contact with Buddhist ideas of the Tathāgatagarbha.

The problems of creation and dualism

One important issue raised by the comparison of Buddha-nature ideas with Pauline Christology is the importance of creation in the paradigm of salvation. God is the first and the last (cf. Is.48:12f) involved in the life of his creation and his people since the beginning, and this creative agency is particularly associated by Paul with Christ as the Wisdom of God (see above). In contrast, Buddhism is often described as "a nontheistic system which emphatically and fundamentally denies the notion of a Godcreator" (Govinda 1959:98). Buddhism, for Govinda, does not seek the unfolding of creation but the return to the uncreated Śūnyatā (Govinda:97). As we have already seen, the Tathāgatagarbha does play a role as the "cosmological" support of all things, but this idea has important differences from the Christian idea of creation. Many Buddhists, especially those influenced by the Yogācāra tradition (e.g., in Zen), reject what is seen as a necessary dualism of Creator/created—the Buddha is not different from people but the awakening of their own true nature.

We have seen above how, for Paul, salvation is a matter of participating in Christ in a relationship with God. Sharing in Christ's sonship the believer cries out to God as "Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15–17) in what may be described as an "I–Thou" relationship.

The Buddha-nature, however, is defined in terms of emptiness, interpreted either as the absence of inherent existence or the absence of defilements such as duality. Both interpretations seem to deny any possibility of relationship, the former by denying the ultimate existence of separate partners in relationship and the latter by denying duality of subject and object. And yet there are sufficient points of contact to suggest that there may be ways of understanding the Christian ideas in the light of Buddhist teachings, which enrich rather than contradict essential Christian teachings.

The tendency to objectify God as Being or as Person is one of the main points of divergence between Buddhism and Christianity. The description of the Buddhanature in terms of emptiness, especially when understood as the absence of separate independent existence (e.g., in the Tibetan rang-stong approach) is a particular challenge to the Christian view of God as substance and of Christ as sharing in that same substance. However, the reification of Christ in terms of self-existent substance is not necessarily the only way of formulating the central Christian mysteries. There is a growing consensus among Biblical scholars that the Christology of the New Testament (and Paul in particular) is functional in nature (see Robinson 1979:111). Christ is described not as one with God in substance, but as identified with the compassionate activity of God in revelation and salvation. It is not so much that Christ is what God is, but that Christ does what God does; (cf. Jn.5:19: "for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise"). If Christ can be defined in terms of the compassionate activity of God, then this may be another link with the Buddha-nature: "It is this limitlessness of a Buddha's compassion that constitutes the Buddha-nature's perfection of eternity. It is nothing but infinite compassion. There is no eternal 'thing,' Buddha-nature or other. There is simply an unrelenting series of acts." (King 1991:90) For Paul, Christ is pre-eminently the one through whom God acts, especially in as much as he is the Wisdom and Spirit of God, the creative and re-creative reaching out of God to the world.

This return to categories of function rather substance can be seen as part of what Pannikar calls the "deontologization of God" (Pannikar 1989:120). He describes this as a move away from categories of Being and Substance, taking on board the "onticapophaticism" of the Buddha (Pannikar:102). This is not merely to say that Ultimate Reality is ineffable (an epistemological apophaticism) but that even the categories of being and existence cannot be applied: it is a "radical relativity" (Pannikar:134). God is not a "thing" but a "genitival relationship"—the Reality of reality, the Truth of truth.⁷

This total reciprocity Pannikar sees as being pictured in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in which the Three Persons subsist in as much as they give themselves totally to each other. They represent the actuality of relationship without "otherness": "A relationship is not 'something' that sets antecendently given or existent 'other' things in relationship; it is the very constitution of the things as 'such'." (Pannikar 1989:136) Is this perhaps a way of formulating a non-dual I–Thou relationship within the parameters of theistic tradition? To define God in terms of relativity without a reified subject and object would indeed go some way in making contact with the distinctively Yogacara-influenced interpretation of the Buddhanature as a reality empty of the subject/object dichotomy.

A good test case for such an approach would be Martin Buber's book "I and Thou," which has provided one of the main reference points in recent thought for the categorization of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in relational terms. Buber describes our approach to the world in terms of two "primary words," "I-Thou" and "I-It" (Buber 1958:3). These primary words "do not signify things, but they intimate relations" (Buber:3). Furthermore, there is no "I" taken in itself, only the "I" of the primary words (4). The primary word I–Thou is the direct relation of the present moment beyond the categorization of ideas. It is the mutuality of all true living, capable of being spoken only by the whole being (11). It leads to knowledge of God himself, for "in each Thou we address the eternal Thou" (6).

Such ideas bear a remarkable resemblance to some of the Yogācāra teachings, perhaps revealing the influence on Buber of Eastern thought, particularly Taoism and Zen (cf. Friedman 1981). The two primary words could be used as a basis for a Judaeo-Christian understanding of the two types of "dependent aspect" (paratantrasvabhāva): I–It corresponding to the conceptualized dichotomies of subject and object (the "constructed aspect"—parikalpitasvabhāva) and I–Thou corresponding to the purified perception of relationality without objectification (the "purified aspect"—pariniṣpannasvabhāva).⁸

If, following Panikkar and Buber, it is possible to talk of God in terms of de-ontologized relationality, then how can this be specifically related to Paul's Christology? We have already mentioned how Paul describes Christ in functional terms—seeing him as the expression and locus of God's activity in creation and redemption. This in itself moves away from substantialist speculation as to the "essence" of Christ. However, it is also possible to see in Paul the use of the term "Christ" to refer to a relational "event" in which the believer participates, thus transcending the barriers of self and others. There is at least one area of Paul's thought that brings this out—his use of the term "the body of Christ" (soma Christou).

In Rom.12 Paul talks of the believers as "one body in Christ, and individually … members one of another" (Rom. 12:5). Each member has a different function, such as ministering or teaching. In 1Cor.12:12-27 he develops the implications of this teaching by saying how each member would esteem and care for each other member for "if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it" (1Cor.12:26). These principles of interdependence are taken a step further in Colossians and Ephesians by linking the body with the reconciliation of all things. In Col. 1:18, the sentence "He is the head of the body, the church" comes directly after the affirmation that in Christ all things hold together, and the words "the church" are seen by most commentators as a gloss on the idea of the cosmos as being Christ's body (see Lohse 1971:54f). The writer of Colossians would, therefore, seem to be saying that all things are the body of Christ, but the church is the pre-eminent example of that relationship to his headship.

Similarly, in Ephesians, where the mystery of God's will is to sum up all things in Christ (Eph.1:10), Christ reconciles all people in his body (2:16), which is "the fullness of him who fills all in all" (1:23). The precise meaning of this last verse is notoriously difficult to interpret, but what can be said is that Christ's body is the place of reconciliation and that this reconciliation includes in its scope all things, "things in heaven and things on earth" (1:10). This use of the image of Christ's body shows how salvation for Paul is not simply a matter between the individual and God. All are involved in the suffering and happiness of every other member of the body—a body that is ultimately all-inclusive in its scope. The discovery of oneself as a member of this body is, as with the Buddha-nature, based on a prior spiritual truth: God has already reconciled the world to himself in Christ (2Cor.5:19) just as all beings already have (or are) the Buddha-nature.

The categories I–It and I–Thou in Buber are in many ways similar to the Pauline categories of "flesh" and "spirit," both of these terms being intimately connected to the word "body" (soma). "Flesh" (sarx), when contrasted with spirit (pneuma), refers not to the physical body but to the principle of enslavement to "desires" that bring licentiousness, enmities, and strife (Gal.5:20). Spirit, however, is the principle of reciprocity, of love, joy, peace, and the other qualities that build harmonious relationship (Gal.5:22). So for Paul, this corporate life of the new self is a transcendence of "I, me, mine" into what Buber has called the primary word I–Thou and what Paul has called "the body of Christ." The Buddha-nature and Christ are involved in a discontinuity with karma and judgment by a "revolution of the basis" (āśraya-parāvṛtti) and death/resurrection, respectively. This "turning around" from the "constructed aspect" to the "purified aspect" or from the "flesh" to the "spirit" is an awakening to the "true nature" within. For both traditions this awakening involves faith in the unseen in the midst of the seen: saṃsāra is revealed as the dharmakāya, the "Body of Truth"; the world is revealed as the soma Christou, the "Body of Christ."

Conclusion

This study of the interrelationships between Pauline Christology and the Tathāgatagarbha tradition has attempted to bring out some areas of potentially fruitful dialogue. In particular, there have been three strands of parallel use of imagery: We have seen how the Tathāgatagarbha is referred to in the Śrīmālā sūtra as the dharmakāya "when not free from the store of defilement" and in the Ratnagotravibhāga as "Reality mingled with pollution" (samalā tathatā). As such, the Tathāgatagarbha is seen as the ultimate truth/way of all things, yet hidden by, for example, greed, hatred, and delusion. It is the disguised support (ādhāra) of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. This has been compared with Christ as the Wisdom of God holding all things in being yet "secret and hidden," ceaselessly active in the world yet undefiled.

Secondly, according to the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, the Buddha-nature is the "true self" and in the Laṅkāvatāra sūtra it is identified with the radiant substratumconsciousness or Mind. This has been compared with the "new self" of the Pauline writings, identified as the "mind of Christ," which is radiant with the glory of God

Thirdly, as the womb of the Tathāgata, the Tathāgatagarbha is full of the manifold qualities of Buddhahood, showing the potential of all beings to manifest these qualities. Likewise, the "fullness of God" dwells in Christ who draws believers into his own fullness and is thus the hope of glory for all who realize their unity in the body of Christ.