Treatise on Buddha Nature.
Why does the Buddha teach that every sentient being possesses buddha-nature? The Foxing Lun answers with an argument, not just an assertion — refuting rival schools of Indian philosophy one by one, defining tathāgatagarbha through three distinct senses of the word garbha, and then distinguishing buddha-nature's ten marks in exhaustive detail, from its self-essence to why it can be called by four different names without ever becoming four different things. No Sanskrit or Tibetan version of this text survives — Paramārtha's sixth-century Chinese translation (T1610) is its only witness, and, unusually for a treatise this influential, it never attracted a dedicated commentary of its own. This collection translates the whole of it across twenty-two pages.
How to read this collection
The treatise runs to roughly 37,000 Chinese characters across four fascicles (卷), read here across twenty-two pages — long enough that a single page per fascicle would have buried the argument's own turns. Fascicle One is almost entirely negative: refuting a Hīnayāna misreading, then the Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya schools of Indian philosophy in close, technical detail, then a Mahāyāna misunderstanding of the two truths. Only once this ground is cleared does Fascicle Two state, positively, what buddha-nature is — the three causes, the three natures, and the treatise's most quoted passage, the three meanings of tathāgatagarbha. Fascicles Three and Four then work through buddha-nature's ten distinguishing marks in order, closing with the treatise's own three-part statement of why it was written at all.
Because no ancient commentary on this specific text survives, the reading notes on this collection's pages are original commentary from Ru-Yi Meditation Center rather than a translation of a named master's gloss — and they appear only where a passage seemed to call for one, not on every page.
What each page includes
- The Chinese source text beside our English translation, checked against the base text for coverage.
- Original reading notes from Ru-Yi Meditation Center, marked as such, appearing only where warranted.
- Cross-references tying the treatise's several similes and classification schemes back to one another as they accumulate across pages.
- Terminology matched to this site's existing Yogācāra and tathāgatagarbha-line pages wherever the same term already has an established rendering.
The Treatise's Own Structure
Four major divisions, spanning four fascicles. The fourth, "distinguishing the marks," is by far the largest — ten marks of buddha-nature, occupying the whole of Fascicles Three and Four.
Read by Part
All twenty-two parts are translated. Each links to the full bilingual text, with original reading notes where the passage warrants one.
Fascicle One
緣起分 · 破執分Fascicle Two
顯體分 · 辯相分（自體相・明因・顯果・事能）Fascicle Three
辯相分（總攝・分別・階位・遍滿）Fascicle Four
辯相分（無變異・無差別）Translation Notes
Recurring terms, kept consistent across all twenty-two parts. Where a term already has an established rendering elsewhere on this site's Yogācāra and tathāgatagarbha-line pages, we reuse it. See the full translation notes for the complete glossary, and also this site's note on translation method.