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One of the fundamental tenets of Mahayana Buddhism animating and groundingthe doctrine and discipline of its spiritual path, is the inherentpotentiality of all animate beings to attain the supreme and perfectenlightenment of Buddhahood. This book examines the ontologicalpresuppositions and the corresponding soteriological-epistemologicalprinciples that sustain and define such a theory. Within the field ofBuddhist studies, such a work provides a comprehensive context in which tointerpret the influence and major insights of the various Buddhist schools.Thus, the dynamics of the Buddha Nature, though non-thematic and implicit,is at the heart of Zen praxis, while it is a significant articulation inKegon, Tendai, and Shingon thought. More specifically, the book seeks toestablish a coherent metaphysics of absolute suchness (Tathata),synthesizing the variant traditions of the Tathagata-embryo(Tathagatagarbha) and the Storehouse Consciousness (Alayavijnana).The books' contribution to the broader field of the History of Religionsrests in its presentation and analysis of the Buddhist Enlightenment as thesalvific-transformational moment in which Tathata 'awakens' to itself,comes to perfect slef-realization as the Absolute suchness of reality, inand through phenomenal human consciousness. The book is an interpretationof the Buddhist Path as the spontaneous self-emergence of 'embryonic'absolute knowledge as it comes to free itself from the concealments ofadventitious defilements, and possess itself in fully self-explicitatedself-consciousness as the 'Highest Truth' and unconditional nature of allexistence; it does so only in the form of omniscient wisdom.