The Wind is Blowing, Blowing is the Wind
Soh
I wrote in 2013:



V: "...there is somewhere a One Thinker (of thought)"

Me: "A thinker is thinking a thought" is simply a construct of a faulty framework and view of inherent and dualistic self. Just like language is structured in a way that it often requires subject-action-object predicates, making us to say things like "the wind is blowing", "I am thinking a thought"... but is there really a truly existing and independent thing called "the wind" that "is blowing" or is "wind" and "blowing" simply two words referring to a single activity? Likewise is there truly an "I" that is "thinking, a thought" or is "I", "thinking", and "thought" three different labels imputed on a single activity? Seer, seeing and seen are just a conventional view... they only appear as separate, independent existences due to ignorance but such a view does not tally with reality.

River is flowing doesn't mean there is an independent thing called "river" that is "flowing", it actually means river IS the flowing and apart from the flowing there is no river... just conventional labels applied to a single activity. Wind is blowing means wind IS the blowing and apart from blowing there is no other wind... seeing the scenery means seeing IS the seen/scenery and apart from that seen/scenery there is no other seeing (nor a separate seer), there is no other consciousness apart from the specific manifest experience - seen/heard/sensed/smelled/touched/cognized. Mere conventions applied to a single activity, appearing to co-locate with each other in an independent and separate manner due to a distorted view that causes us to misperceive reality in a fundamental way, just like mis-perceiving a rope as a snake. Once we see that there isn't anything that 'nouns' point to than pure action/activity, then the verb alone is sufficient - 'blowing', 'flowing', 'thinking', 'seeing' - which is none other than the seen, thought, etc. There is no 'you', 'seer', 'thinker' apart from seeing which is sight, hearing which is sound, etc.

When we directly contemplate, investigate and challenge our view of 'seer-seeing-seen' and see that in the seen is merely the seen - that seeing is simply the seen and seen is just the seeing without any seer apart, that there is no other consciousness apart from the 'mere seen/mere cognized', a permanent quantum shift of perception takes place. When this is directly realized in one's experience and not merely understood inferentially, any delusion of agency (doer, controller, feeler), subject-object/perceiver-perceived gaps, divisions are seen through, the gapless/undivided self-clarity of experience without an agent, center or boundaries simply shines vividly in its raw, direct, unfiltered purity, and just that is free and liberating in itself. Later comes this seeing - the mind, the body, the breathing, the environment, in seamless exertion!

V: "Yes... only verbs... This is a great pointer!!!! Wow!!! Thank you Soh! I will sit with that pointer! It is so powerful! It is blowing my "mind" ! How could there ever be a story only with verbs? Yes! Yes! That's it! A verb can't "build" a self. Thank you so much!!!!!"
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Falling Away of Self
Soh


In this video, Adyashanti and Susanne Marie discusses the transition from Unity Consciousness and Divine Self (I AM and One Mind phase) phase to No-Self. On another note. I just wrote to our dear Jax after he remarked how rare spiritual realization is: "...when i first realised anatta i was so disappointed that only so few in the world realised anatta, i wrote about it
in my ebook
and i lost confidence in the various traditions in the world and was a bit disheartened. bcos i have already been through those insights and seen beyond that
but if u look deeper, its there in the texts of the various traditions whether dzogchen, mahamudra or zen or theravada. just that few modern teachers are realised.
i recently said to someone that among those with spiritual realizations, maybe 80% are I AM, 10% are one mind, only 2% or less are about anatta and emptiness
which is why i always share the contents of spiritual teachers i find are clear about anatta and emptiness because they are rare jems that need to be brought to light in the spiritual marketplace"

The purpose is not to brag about this or that realization but to point out the rarity of this and therefore treasure it. It is the path to liberation.
p.s. not that any sort of realization is a finality! It's really just another beginning of endless practice-actualization...
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Awareness is Experience
Soh

By John Astin, http://www.johnastin.com/blo
Awareness is Experience
Published on May 23, 2016, by admin in Uncategorized.
In many teachings, an emphasis is placed on “recognizing” or “resting as” awareness. In this modeling of reality, awareness (i.e., that which knows) is portrayed as a special, separate privileged domain apart from, untouched by and free from its perceived content (what’s known). However, this purported separation is simply not the case, at least not experientially.
In direct experience, awareness and phenomena never appear alone but always co-occur. The perceiver and perceived always arise together and therefore represent a singular movement or reality. They arrive as a package deal. There is never actually a perceived object without a subject that perceives it, nor a perceiver without something being perceived. While the two (perceiver and perceived, subject and object) appear separate and distinguishable, in point of fact, they can never be teased apart. The subject literally depends upon the object for its existence and vice versa, awareness and its content, each known by the presence of the other.
Now some teachings will claim that there exists a domain of “pure” awareness, an awareness that has no phenomenal content in it. However, a content-less or object-less awareness is really an abstraction for in order to exist as an actuality, awareness must be experienced. And the moment it is experienced, that experience (of awareness) becomes the content of awareness. It may be an exceedingly subtle, barely perceptible content. But it’s still content, still experience, still an “object” of awareness that is known, even if that object is awareness itself.
From this vantage, we can say that to experience anything is to experience awareness (i.e., the faculty of knowing or perceiving) for awareness is inseparable from whatever is being experienced. They are one and the same reality. And because experiencing never comes to a stop (i.e., it’s continuous), recognizing awareness must also by definition be uninterrupted. In other words, there’s no need to try to sustain awareness for awareness is self-sustaining as the flow of experiencing itself, a flow that is always happening!
And so there is no actual place to go to “find” something called awareness that we can rest in, no need to quiet or stop thinking in order to recognize awareness. Awareness is simply this, this perception, this thought, this feeling, this sensation, this present experience. After all, what else could awareness possibly be?
This
Published on April 22, 2018, by admin in Uncategorized.
Spiritual traditions tend to speak about awareness and its content (experience) as two distinct domains. And while there is often an acknowledgement that these are really just two sides of the same indescribable non-dual coin, most traditions tend to emphasize this distinction, pointing again and again to the ever-present knowing/cognizing that underlies every momentary experience.
However, as powerful as this awareness-based emphasis can be, what I and others I’ve worked with invariably bump up against is that the recognition of awareness seems to come and go; sometimes it feels as if it is being recognized but sometimes not. And then whenever it seemed as if it has slipped away, there is this understandable effort to re-capture or re-recognize awareness.
But some years ago, it began to dawn on me; the experiences I was labeling as “awareness being absent” were actually 100% present. What is thought of as the non-recognition of awareness is simply another experience that is being recognized! Whatever we might call it—experience, reality, existence—something is always present even if that which is present is constantly slipping away, constantly morphing, constantly refreshing itself. This presence, let’s call it experiencing itself, never goes away. Sometimes it appears as awareness recognizing its ever-present nature; sometimes it shows up as awareness seemingly slipping away. But the experiencing is relentless.
And so in large part because of this, I find myself in my teaching emphasizing the experience side of the non-dual coin. I point to the fact that experiencing itself never turns off and that this ever-present, unstoppable flow of experiencing is actually the revelation of awareness. Two sides of a single coin, awareness and experience.
I find my favorite word to point to this singularity is This. Just This. This momentary flash that dissolves no sooner than it appears. This that is ever-present yet in constant flux. This that can never disappear and yet is constantly disappearing. This that cannot be characterized and yet appears as all characterizations. There are no words for This, no finite descriptions or pointers that could ever hope to capture Its infinite, unresolvable, indescribable nature. This, just This, This constancy that appears as all discontinuity and change…
Part of the challenge in talking about this is that when we hear words such as awareness or the ground of being, we imagine these are pointing to some dimension of reality that is distinct from other dimensions. In other words, if we have a term for something (awareness, ground of being), that MUST mean there is something that is distinct from the reality that word or phrase is pointing to. Otherwise, why even have the words in the first place!
It’s like the word God; the very existence of the word suggests there is something other than whatever entity or being or presence of divinity that word is referring to. But really, there is no God because there is ONLY God! From this vantage, all words are effectively synonyms for the same “thing.” Sorrow, joy, recognition, non-recognition, self, no-self, clarity, confusion… all the display of This.
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No Longer Finding Self in Identity
Soh
https://www.adyashanti.org/
From Adyashanti's Omega Institute Retreat, September 25, 2017.
I've been asked many times, “Adya, I'm experiencing this strange sort of fear, like I'm at the door of some void, and it's just going to swallow me. And somehow I'm strangely, deeply compelled towards it, and absolutely terrified of it, because it feels like it's going to be the end of me.” It's very common in doing this kind of deep work that you can run into this.
Ultimately, in the end, we see through self, but at that point, self isn't a thought and it's not really a feeling, except for fear. It's something you can't identify, like some sort of presence of being that feels extraordinarily threatened. When this really opens up, you quite literally experience the disappearance of everything you know. It seems like the body, the mind, the entire world -- all of existence blinks out of existence.
In a certain sense, the most real sense that there can be, you actually do go through a death. It's not the same thing as a near-death experience -- as transformative as those can be -- it's a death experience. It's the thing we're afraid of, because you think of your body dying, which is what most people are afraid of. But you're only afraid of your body dying because you think that you are associated with the body. What is it that's associated with the body? It's you.
If you were 100% completely convinced that you survive your body dying, death wouldn't feel like a threat to you at all. But since the identification runs so deep there, any threat to your body feels like a threat to your life—as a threat to your ideas can feel like a threat to your life. If you let go here, it feels like, "I will cease to be." This is to experience the death of the entire ego identity. If it really happens all the way through, something doesn't come back from it. There is an irrevocable change or transformation. The good news is that you aren't what you feel is going to die. The only way to know that entirely is for it to die.
My hunch is that when the Buddha associated nirvana with extinction and cessation, this is what he was talking about: to yank identity up from the root. Because until then, it is the journey of identity: "I'm me" -- whatever your sense of yourself is -- "Oh, I'm not, I'm the aware space." And then you have emotional identities: "I'm this open, wide, loving, benevolent presence. That's what I am -- beautiful." Or "I am That -- everywhere I look, there I am." Or if you're a little bit differently oriented, "Everywhere I look, there's the face of God. Okay, now that is what I am. I'm a son or daughter of God."
The fear of it is that it is the death of identity, which is almost impossible to contemplate. The journey is that the identity gets more and more transparent and boundless, until finally identity itself falls away. Then the question "What is it that I am?" is no longer there—not because you have an answer, but because identity is no longer relevant.
In conventional language, you may give it a name like "the infinite." I call it "pure potentiality." There are different ways the void is talked about, and this is one of them. Pure potentiality would necessarily be void if it's pure -- no manifestation at all—pure potential, pure creative impulse.
That doesn't mean that you no longer have a personality, that you no longer have human things about you, that you no longer have a certain kind of principle that orients you—you may even call that an identity. But you no longer find self in identity, and so it's freed up.
When the Buddha says "enlightenment," one way of articulating it is that it's the freedom from identity, from having to be or not be anything. Does that mean you no longer experience the oneness, being everything, seeing the face of God, your true being, or Buddha nature in everything? No, that's still there. Things are still there, but there's no longer identity in them. I don't really know how to describe that, because the nature of it is beyond description. You can't even think about it. It's the borderline between being and nonbeing.
So this is just part of the journey: awakening at the level of mind, heart awakening to the unity of all things, and each one of these provides more spaciousness and openness. Your sense of yourself gets more and more transparent, therefore there's less to defend. There's less necessity to assert yourself in the world, which doesn't mean you are not an assertive being. You can still be a very assertive being.
How does all that translate down into your human experience? There's still a human being there. The human being hasn't started to glow and become incapable of any stupidity. It hasn't suddenly become God's shining example of utter perfection. Each dimension of being exists within its own dimension.
In my experience, what it does is it frees these dimensions up so they're no longer in conflict, and life is no longer about protecting and asserting a kind of ego structure. It's about something different. There are still other dimensions of our humanness that need attention if we want to be able to function well and have what we've realized be able to flow out into all the dimensions of what it is to be a human being.
© Adyashanti 2017
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Non-Dual and Body
Soh
The Daily Quote from Rupert Spira, 7th August 2018

By far the larger part of the apparently separate self exists as a feeling in the body, not just a thought in the mind. Until the non-dual understanding penetrates deeply into the body, though our understanding may be clear, we will continue to feel, act, perceive and relate in ways that betray the apparent existence of a separate self.
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John Tan
John Tan This is very good and insightful.
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Unlocatability of Consciousness
Soh
Kyle Dixon:


If by “awareness” we mean the mind’s cognition, then what we are aiming to recognize is that said cognition is not actually a substantial substrate that is the foundation for a discrete entity in the way we assume it is.

When we have the realization that our cognitive capacity, consciousness or whatever, is unable to be located, we are recognizing that the feeling of being an internal knower of external phenomena is a fallacious assumption that is structured through habitual conditioning in our own delusion regarding the actual nature of the phenomena we are experiencing.

When we really fail to locate the mind as a substantial knower of what is known, we again, as many have pointed out for years in this group and elsewhere, are experientially having an epiphany that there is no seer, hearer, feeler, etc., as an established entity.

This insight occurs in various ways and can unfold pertaining to (i) the mind, (ii) external appearances, (iii) in the individual sense gates related to both internal and external dimensions respectively, and so on.

On the other hand, a cognition that is locatable is simply the deluded assumption that our consciousness is an established internal substrate, and the mistaken notion of a discrete identity is based on that misconception.

Which is to say no cognition is actually locatable. We just feel that it is and suffer as a result.
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What is Nirvana?
Soh
Also see:

Great Resource of Buddha's Teachings
The Deathless in Buddhadharma?
The Meaning of Nirvana




Wrote this in Reddit three years ago:


https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/2xuq7b/is_nirvana_basically_nonexistence/cp3k7c2/

Nirvana is simply the cessation of craving, aggression, and delusion. Delusion includes the construct of self, that I exist, that I am the perceiver or controller of experiences and actions. Nirvana is not annihilation because what ends is simply a process of delusional I-making and mine-making and other related mental afflictions, it is not the annihilation of some actual self (which never existed).
Nirvana is when, in seeing the seen, it's realized and experienced that there is simply that scenery, and no seer. No you in terms of that. In hearing sound, there's simply (always already) only sound, no hearer. In thinking... only thought, no thinker. When this is realized, not merely intellectualized, and directly experienced as being so, and all sense of self are being released, then that is Nirvana. This is peace, bliss, freedom from suffering. It is not boring: in fact, boredom only exist when there is a sense of self, and a sense of dissatisfaction with what is present, therefore a craving for something to be 'better than what is'. There is a subject and object here: 'I' want 'something better out there'. But when anatta is realized and actualized, there is no sense of self, there is no subject and object, no dichotomy of perceiver and perceived, and everything is just lucid and luminous and blissful and perfect as it is. Nirvana is also the cessation of craving.
(For more information check out Bahiya Sutta)
Also Buddha teaches that we have past lives and future lifetimes, but if you attain Nirvana, you are no longer stuck in this cycle of samsaric rebirth and suffering.

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The Key Towards Pure Knowingness
Soh

"The key towards pure knowingness is to bring the taste of presence into the 6 entries and exits. So that what is seen, heard, touched, tasted are pervaded by a deep sense of crystal, radiance and transparency. This requires seeing through the center." - Thusness

John Tan: Yes. That (More real than real) is also an insight that turns the mind internal. Non-arising means appearances without essence similar to a reflection, like a rainbow. That (More real than real) comes with I AMness. The different between anatta and substantiality is beside appearance, there is innate feeling of some essence separate from the appearances of colors, sensations, sound, smell, taste and thoughts. Therefore one cannot be fully open and release."

- Thusness/John Tan, 2019

John Tan wrote in 2012/2013:

In ignorance, there is hearer hearing sound.
In anatta, in hearing, only sound.
Yet sound has no true inherent nature (empty),
It is an activity and is that very activity called “hearing”.
Both “hearing and sound” are pointing to the same activity.
Only when seen to have true existence on either side does confusion arise.

In Madhyamaka Emptiness, reification is seen through.
Yet the experiential state of freedom from reification is not expounded.
However one can have a taste of that freedom from arising insight of anatta since anatta is precisely the freedom from reification of Self/self (First fold Emptiness).
In anatta, seeing is simply the full scenery, in hearing only sound…
thus, always only lights, shape, colors, sounds, scents… in clean purity.
Emptying the object further (second fold) is merely dissolving subtle bond of “externality” that creates the appearance of true existence of objects outside. When “externality” is deconstructed, it is effectively a double confirmation of anatta…
…innerly coreless and outwardly empty, all appearances are still simply sound, lights, colors and rays
In thorough deconstruction, as there is no layer that reifies, there is no conceptuality. Therefore no complication, no confusion, no stains, no boundaries, no center, no sense of dual..
no sense of activity…just self arising.
All collapse into a single sphere of natural presence and spontaneous simplicity.
Whatever appears is
neither here nor now,
Neither in nor out,
Neither arises nor ceases,
In the same space…
non-local, timeless and dimensionless
Simply present…

To Jax:
The place where there is no earth, fire, wind, space, water…
is the place where the earth, fire, wind, space and water kills “You” and fully shines as its own radiance, a complete taste of itself and fully itself.

Lastly, it is interesting to get know something about Dzogchen however the jargons and tenets are far beyond me.
Just wrote due to a sudden spurt of interest, nothing intense.
Thanks for all the sharing and exchanges.
Gone!
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Like Space
Soh

Excerpt from http://read.84000.co/translation/UT22084-031-002.html

The Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom in Ten Thousand Lines

Daśa­sāhasrikā­prajñā­pāramitā


Chapter 13

Like Space

13.1The Blessed One addressed Senior Su­bhūti as follows: “Su­bhūti, you asked where this vehicle will come to rest. In this regard, Su­bhūti, [F.134.b] the vehicle will not come to rest anywhere. If you ask why, it is because resting is non-apprehensible, and so all things do not come to rest. On the other hand, the vehicle will come to rest by way of its non-resting. Su­bhūti, just as the expanse of reality neither comes to rest, nor does it not come to rest, similarly, Su­bhūti, the vehicle does not come to rest, nor does it not come to rest. The same refrain should be extensively applied here, just as has been indicated in the context of the previous chapter.
13.2“Su­bhūti, just as non-arising neither comes to rest, nor does it not come to rest, similarly, this vehicle does not come to rest, nor does it not come to rest; in the same vein, just as non-cessation, non-signlessness, non-affliction, non-purification and non-conditioning neither come to rest, nor do they not come to rest, similarly, Su­bhūti, this vehicle does not come to rest, nor does it not come to rest. If you ask why, Su­bhūti, it is because the essential nature of the expanse of reality neither comes to rest, nor does it not come to rest. If you ask why, Su­bhūti, it is because the essential nature of the expanse of reality is empty of the essential nature of the expanse of reality. In the same vein, the essential nature of those other unconditioned phenomena, up to and including non-conditioning, is empty of non-conditioning, [and so forth]. Su­bhūti, for these reasons this [Great] Vehicle will not come to rest anywhere, but nor will it not do so. This is owing to its non-resting.
13.3“Also, Su­bhūti, you asked who will attain emancipation by means of this vehicle. In this regard, Su­bhūti, no one will attain emancipation by means of this vehicle. If you ask why, Su­bhūti, it is because all those things associated with this vehicle, and with those who would attain emancipation, and that in which emancipation is attained, are non-existent and they are non-apprehensible. [F.135.a] Since all things are accordingly non-existent and non-apprehensible, who could attain emancipation by means of anything? In what could emancipation possibly be attained? If you ask why, Su­bhūti, it is because the self and other [posited subjects], up to and including the knower and the viewer, are non-apprehensible. This being the case, the ‘self’ is never apprehensible. Similarly, [other posited subjects], from sentient beings and living creatures to knowers and viewers, are all non-apprehensible.

.......

Senior Su­bhūti then said to the Blessed One, “Venerable Lord! This great vehicle, which is called the Great Vehicle, overpowers and attains emancipation from the world with its gods, humans, and antigods. Venerable Lord! As I understand the words spoken by the Blessed One, this Great Vehicle is equal to space. Just as in space, coming, going, and abiding are not discernible, so in this Great Vehicle, also, coming, going, and abiding are not discernible. Just as in space, the limit of the past is non-apprehensible, and the limit of the future and the intervening [present] are non-apprehensible, so in this Great Vehicle, also, the limit of the past is non-apprehensible, and the limit of the future and the intervening [present] are non-apprehensible. It is because it genuinely transcends the three times266 that this vehicle is called the Great Vehicle.”

13.14The Blessed One then replied to Senior Su­bhūti, “That is so, Su­bhūti! It is just as you have said! This vehicle is equal to space. That is why it overpowers and attains emancipation from the world with its gods, humans, and antigods. Su­bhūti, this vehicle of the bodhisattvas comprises the six transcendent perfections. [F.137.a] If you ask what these six are, they are the transcendent perfection of generosity, the transcendent perfection of ethical discipline, the transcendent perfection of tolerance, the transcendent perfection of perseverance, the transcendent perfection of meditative concentration, and the transcendent perfection of wisdom. Su­bhūti, these designate the Great Vehicle of great bodhisattva beings.
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Like Rainbow, Like Space
Soh
Thusness:

Christian, I see all phenomena like rainbow, they appear but are empty.  Neither exist nor not exist, they are free from extremes.

As for the word “exist”, I reserve it for “svabhāva”.  To exist is to possess essence or substance.  Essence means phenomenon possessing characteristic or not brought about by causal process or capable of standing by itself.  Substance means irreducible constituents of reality can be found.

...

Yes Christian, I understand. Whether it is expressed as “exist conventionally but ultimately empty” or “appear but r empty” is simply a matter of flavour.

What is important is the taste of seeing conventional things as empty till one’s entire body-mind is pervaded with emptiness - like space, free and unobstructed.
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How is Buddha Nature Unconditioned?
Soh
Malcolm wrote:

https://dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?t=19502&start=200

The Uttaratantra states:
Unconditioned, effortless,
not realized through other conditions,
endowed with wisdom, compassion and power,
buddhahood is endowed with two benefits.
But what does this really all mean?

When we examine Asanga's comments on this, he states:
When these are summarized, buddhahood is described with eight qualties. If it is asked what those eight qualities are, they are unconditioned, effortless, not realized through other conditions, wisdom, compassion, power, the abundance of one's own benefit and the abundance of others' benefit. [Buddhahood] is unconditioned because it is the nature of lacking a beginning, middle and end. It is called "effortless" because peace is endowed with the dharmakāya. It is not realized through other conditions because each person must realize it for themselves. It is wisdom because those three things are realized. [Buddhahood] is compassionate because [the Buddha] shows the path. It is powerful because it is free from suffering and affliction. The former three [unconditioned, effortless and not realized through other conditions] are for one's own benefit; the latter three [wisdom, compassion and power] are for others' benefit.

In that regard, the conditioned is fully understood as arising somewhere, and also understood as abiding and perishing. Because those do not exist [arising, abiding and perishing], buddhahood itself is unconditioned without a beginning, middle and an end. This is seen as a differentiation made through the dharmakāya. Because all proliferation and concepts are pacified, [buddhahood] is effortless [lhun gyis grub]. Buddhahood is not realized through other conditions because it is realized through wisdom oneself produced. Here, udayo [to produce] is not the arising of a desire for realization. As such, the tathāgata is unconditioned due to the truth, out of the characteristics of non-engagement, all the activities of the buddha effortlessly engaged in without impediment and without interruption for as long as samsara exists
So let us parse this out a little bit.

Asanga states in his commentary on the Uttaratantra:
...the conditioned is understood as arising somewhere, and also understood as abiding and perishing. Because those do not exist [arising, abiding and perishing], buddhahood itself is unconditioned without a beginning, middle and an end.
Buddhahood is unconditioned because the trio of arising, abiding and perishing are false. Not because in contrast to things that arise, abide and perish, buddhahood does not arise, abide and perish.

Buddhahood however has a cause, as he writes:
Buddhahood is not realized through other conditions because it is realized through wisdom oneself produced.
Buddhahood is also effortless, because, as he writes:
...all proliferation and concepts are pacified, [buddhahood] is effortless [lhun gyis grub]...As such, the tathāgata is unconditioned due to the truth; and from the characteristics of non-engagement, all the activities of the buddha are engaged in effortlessly [lhun grub], without impediment and without interruption for as long as samsara exists
As for tathāgatagarbha always existing in the continuums of sentient beings; if you think somehow tathāgatagarba is something other than or different than a sentient beings mind, there there is a fallacy of the tathāgatagarbha being something like an atman. But there is no atman in the tathāgatagarbha theory, not really. the supreme self, (paramātma) is explained very clearly in the Uttaratantra:
The supreme self is the pacification of the proliferations of self and and nonself.
But what does this mean? Asanga adds:
The perfection of self (ātmapāramitā) is known through two reasons: due to being free from proliferation of a self because of being free from the extreme of the non-buddhists and due to being free from the proliferation of nonself because of giving up the extreme of the śrāvakas.
He explains further:
From cultivating prajñāpāramita in order to turn away from seeing the five addictive aggregates as self, the non-existent self in which the others, the nonbuddhists, delight, one attains the result, the perfection of self. In this way all the others, the nonbuddhists, accept natureless things such as matter and so on as a self due to their being deceived by a characteristic of a self according to how those things are being apprehended, but that self never existed.

The Tathāgata, on the other hand, has attained the supreme perfection of the selflessness of all phenomena through the wisdom that is in accord with just how things truly are, and though there is no self according to how he sees things, he asserts a self all the time because he is never deceived by the characteristic of a self that does not exist. Making the selfless into a self is like saying "abiding through the mode of nonabiding.
There are some people who, ignoring the Nirvana Sutra's admonition to rely on the meaning rather than on the words, fall headlong into eternalism, unable to parse the Buddha's profound meaning through addiction to naive literalism.

Tathagatagarbha is just a potential to become a buddha. When we say it is has infinite qualities, this is nothing more nor less than when the Vajrapañjara praises the so called "jewel-like mind":
The jewel-like mind is tainted with
evil conceptual imputations;
but when the mind is purified it becomes pure.
Just as space cannot be destroyed,
just as is space, so too is the mind.
By activating the jewel-like mind
and meditating on the mind itself, there is the stage of buddhahood,
and in this life there will be sublime buddhahood.
There is no buddha nor a person
outside of the jewel-like mind,
the abode of consciousness is ultimate,
outside of which there isn't the slightest thing.
All buddhahood is through the mind...
Matter, sensation, perception
formations and consciousness
these all arise from the mind,
these [five] munis are not anything else.
Like a great wishfulfilling gem,
granting the results of desires and goals,
the pure original nature of the true state of the mind
bestows the result, Buddha's awakening
There is no other basis apart from this natural purity of the mind that is inseparable clarity and emptiness. We can call it whatever we want, but still this fact remains. The Lankāvatara rightly observes that tathāgatagarbha is just a name for emptiness and the ālayavijñāna for those afraid of emptiness. Jayānanda writes that ālayavijñāna is the mind that comprehends the basis, i.e. emptiness. How else can the mind be purified of evil conceptual imputations other than by realizing emptiness? Emptiness free from all extremes is the pure original nature of the true state of the mind, so why bother confusing oneself with all kinds of rhetoric? The mind itself has two aspects, emptiness and clarity, ka dag and lhun grub, and these are inseparable. This inseparable clarity and emptiness is call the ālaya in gsar ma and the basis in Nyingma. This also known as tathagatagarbha when it encased in afflictions, the dharmadhātu from its ultimate side, the ālayavijñāna from its relative side and so on. It really is not that complicated.

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Malcolm:

Are you making the assertion that use of the term “unconditioned” renders all traditions that use the term compatible? The sugatagarbha doctrine has a few variations, for example, the Lanka equates it with the all-basis consciousness. As I understand the term, tathagatagarbha refers to the union of the mind”s clarity and emptiness. That union is unconditioned, but the mind itself is conditioned. Just this is the “god” ChNN is referring to, and nothing else, since the basis is just this.
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