QUOTE(
http://www.geocities.com/advaitavedant/contratman.htm )
Then Mahamati said to the Blessed One:
In the Scriptures mention is made of the Womb of Tathagatahood and it is taught that that which is born of it is by nature bright and pure, originally unspotted and endowed with the thirty-two marks of excellence.
As it is described it is a precious gem but wrapped in a dirty garment soiled by greed, anger, folly and false-imagination.
We are taught that this Buddha-nature immanent in everyone is eternal, unchanging, auspicious.
It is not this which is born of the Womb of Tathagatahood the same as the soul-substance that is taught by the philosophers?
The Divine Atman as taught by them is also claimed to be eternal, inscrutable, unchanging, imperishable. It there, or is there not a difference?
The Blessed One replied:
No, Mahamati, my Womb of Tathagatahood is not the same as the Divine Atman as taught by the philosophers.
What I teach is Tathagatahod in the sense of Dharmakaya, Ultimate Oneness, Nirvana, emptiness, unbornness, unqualifiedness, devoid of will-effort.
The reason why I teach the doctrine of Tathagatahood is to cause the ignorant and simple-minded to lay aside their fears as they listen to the teaching of egolessness and come to understand the state of non-discrimination and imagelessness.
The religious teaching of the Tathagatas are just like a potter making various vessels by his own skill of hand with the aid of rob, water and thread, out of the one mass of clay, so the Tathagatas by their command of skillful means issuing from Noble Wisdom, by various terms, expressions, and symbols, preach the twofold egolessness in order to remove the last trace of discrimination that is preventing disciples from attaining a self-realisation of Noble Wisdom.
The doctrine of the Tathagata-womb is disclosed in order to awaken philosphers from their clinging to the notion of a Divine Atman as a transcendental personality, so that their minds that have become attached to the imaginary notion of a "soul" as being something self-existing, may be quickly awakened to a state of perfect enlightement.
All such notions as causation, succesion, atoms, primary elements, that make up personality, personal soul, Supreme Spirit, Sovereing God, Creator, are all figments of the imagination and manifestations of mind.
No, Mahamati, the Tathagata’s doctrine of the Womb of Tathagatahood is not the same as the philosopher’s Atman.
...They ("philosophers") imagine that Nirvana consists (of) ... the absorption of the finite-soul in the supreme Atman; or who see all things as a manifestation of the vital-force of some Supreme Sprit to which all return; (...)
... clinging to these foolish notions, there is no awakening, and they consider Nirvana to consist in the fact that there is no awakening.
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