| Key Term |
svabhāva |
| Hover Popup Choices |
intrinsic nature; own nature; self-nature |
| In Tibetan Script |
རང་བཞིན་ |
| Wylie Tibetan Transliteration |
rang bzhin |
| Devanagari Sanskrit Script |
स्वभाव |
| Romanized Sanskrit |
svabhāva |
| Tibetan Phonetic Rendering |
rangzhin |
| Chinese Script |
自性 |
| Chinese Pinyin |
zìxìng |
| English Standard |
intrinsic nature |
| Karl Brunnhölzl's English Term |
nature |
| Richard Barron's English Term |
nature of being; inherent nature; natural state; naturalness |
| Jeffrey Hopkin's English Term |
inherent nature |
| Dan Martin's English Term |
own-ness |
| Gyurme Dorje's English Term |
essential nature; natural expression; nature |
| Ives Waldo's English Term |
intrinsic nature |
| Term Type |
Noun |
| Source Language |
Sanskrit |
| Basic Meaning |
The nature or essence of a thing, which originates only from itself and is not dependent on any external entities, causes, or conditions. |
| Has the Sense of |
An innate attribute that establishes the completely independent existence of an entity, which is typically refuted in the Madhyamaka notion of emptiness. |
| Definitions |
| Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism |
See page 879: In Sanskrit, “self-nature,” “intrinsic existence,” or “inherent existence,” the term has a general sense of “essence” or “nature,” but is used in philosophical literature. |
| Rangjung Yeshe's English Term |
An inherently existent and independent entity of the individual self or of phenomena. Something that can serve as a valid basis for individual attributes. |
| Other Definitions |
Richard Barron: the very nature of things |