Why is Every Living Being a Tathāgatagarbha? A Translation of the Twenty-Seventh Verse of the First Chapter in the Ratnagotravibhāga

Abstract

In modern Buddhist scholarship, J. Takasaki's English and Japanese translations of the Ratnagotravibhaga in 1966 and 1989 have been read as an exemplary one until now without any meaningful revision. This paper critically reviews his translations of the twenty-seventh verse in the first chapter of the work, which explicates the key doctrine in the Tathagatagarbha thought that every living being is a tathagatagarbha. The method is to clarify the ambiguity of expressions appeared in the verse by changing its nominal style into a general one. After resolving the problems that occur due to vague phrasing, it attempts to investigate the doctrine on the basis of the concepts of buddhakaya, tathata and gotra, which respectively consist in the first, the second, and the third pada of the twenty-seventh verse. This paper, thus, provides a new translation of the verse: "Since the Buddha's wisdom is inherent in all living beings; since the immaculateness of living beings and that of the Buddha are essentially non-dual; and since a buddha is figuratively expressed to be the effect of the buddha-nature with which all living beings are endowed; all body-possessors [=living beings] are by their nature buddhas."