Svabhāva

svabhāva (P. sabhāva; T. rang bzhin རང་བཞིན; C. zìxìng 自性) is translated as "self-nature", "intrisic existence", "inherent existence", "essence", "nature", etc.

Within the Madhyamaka school, svabhava is used to describe the concept of emptiness (sunyata). In this context, svabhava is the "essence" or "inherent existence" that things are empty of. This concept is central to Madhyamaka reasoning, in which Nagarjuna asserts that anything that arises due to causes and conditions can have no inherent existence (svabhava).

The Yogacara school uses the term differently within its doctrine of trisvabhāva ("three natures").

Early Buddhism

Paul Williams describes the development of the term in Early Buddhism:

The concept of self-existence or essence (svabhāva) was a development of Abhidharma scholars, where it seems to indicate the defining characteristic of a dharma. It is that which makes a dharma what it is, as resistance or hardness is the unique and defining characteristic of earth dharma [see Mahābhūta], for example. In the Abhidharma only "ultimate existents" (dharmas) have essences. Conventional existents – tables, chairs, and persons – do not. This is because they are simply mental constructs out of dharmas – they therefore lack their own specific and unique existences.

Sanskrit tradition

Madhyamaka

Madhyamaka is one of the two main schools of reasoning within the Sanskrit tradition (the other being Yogacara).

Regarding the Madhyamaka view, Peter Harvey writes:

Nagarjuna’s critique of the notion of svabhāva (Mmk. ch.15) argues that anything which arises according to conditions, as all phenomena do, can have no inherent existence/nature; for what it is depends on what conditions it. Moreover, if there is nothing with inherent existence, that is, self-existence, there can be nothing with ‘other-existence’ (para-bhāva), that is, something which is dependent for its existence and nature on something else which has self-existence. So there is not anything with a true, substantially existent nature (bhāva); hence no non-existent (abhāva), in the sense of a true existent that has gone out of existence. Like Nagarjuna, the Perfection of Wisdom literature therefore regards all dharmas as like a dream or magical illusion (māyā) (BTTA.166; cf. p. 58). This does not mean that they are simply unreal. Their ungraspable nature is, rather, wholly different from what it seems, like the trick of a conjurer; or, we might now say, like an illusion in a ‘virtual reality’ electronic medium – except that all components of the medium would also be seen as perceptual illusions too . . . There is something there in experience, and one can describe it well in terms of dharmas, so it is wrong to deny these exist; yet they do not have substantial existence either. What we experience does not exist in an absolute sense, but only in a relative way, as a passing interdependent phenomenon. The nature of dharmas lies in between absolute ‘non-existence’ and substantial ‘existence’, in accordance with an early Sutta passage quoted by Nagarjuna (Mmk.15.7; cf. EB.4.2.3). This is what Nagarjuna means by the ‘Middle Way’.

The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism states:

This doctrine is sufficiently central to Madhyamaka that the school is also called niḥsvabhāvavāda, the “Proponents of No Svabhāva.”

Regarding the Prajñāpāramitā sutras, Paul Williams writes:

The principal ontological message of the Prajñāpāramitā is an extension of the Buddhist teaching of no-Self to equal no essence, and therefore no inherent existence, as applied to all things without exception.

Yogacara

In the Yogacara school, the term svabhava is used in a different sense within the doctrine of trisvabhāva ("three natures").

Pali tradition

According to Peter Harvey, svabhāva in the Pali Abhidhamma is something conditional and interdependent:

The notion of svabhāva (Pali sabhāva) does occur in the Vibhajyavāda/Theravāda as well as Sarvāstivāda tradition, but in a different sense than there: as simply ‘own-nature’ rather than as also an implied ‘own-existence’. The Atthasālinī, the commentary on the first book of the Abhidhamma, explains dhammas thus: "They are dhammas because they uphold their own nature [sabhāva]. They are dhammas because they are upheld by conditions or they are upheld according to their own nature" (Asl.39). Here 'own-nature' would mean characteristic nature, which is not something inherent in a dhamma as a separate ultimate reality, but arise due to the supporting conditions both of other dhammas and previous occurrences of that dhamma. This is of significance as it makes the Mahayana critique of the Sarvastivadin's notion of own-nature largely irrelevant to the Theravāda.

Alternate translations

• self-nature
• intrinsic existence
• inherent existence
• essence
• nature
• hypostatic existence (Karma Phuntsho, Mipham’s Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness)

Sources

• Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University 
• Gethin, R.M.L. (1992). The Buddhist Path to Awakening: A Study of the Bodhi-Pakkhiyā Dhammā. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ISBN 90-04-09442-3.
• Harvey, Peter (2013), An Introduction to Buddhism (Second ed.), Cambridge University Press 
• Y Karunadasa, (1996). The Dhamma Theory: Philosophical Cornerstone of the Abhidhamma (WH 412/413). Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society. Retrieved 2008-06-30 from "BPS" (transcribed 2007) at http://www.bps.lk/wheels_library/wh_412_413.html.
• Williams, Paul (1989; repr. 2007). Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-02537-9.

External links

• Nagarjuna (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - contains detailed discussion of svabhava
• རང་བཞིན་, Rigpa Shedra Wiki
• rang_bzhin, Rangjung Yeshe Wiki
• Svabhava, Wikipedia