Tathāgatagarbha, literally the “embryo” or “womb of the Tathāgata,” names the hidden presence of Buddhahood within sentient beings. It evokes the image of an inner Buddha-essence that is already present yet obscured, like a jewel wrapped in soiled cloth. This inner principle is described as a pure, luminous awareness temporarily veiled by adventitious defilements and ignorance. Because it is obscured rather than absent, it serves as the ground for the possibility of awakening. The language of “embryo” or “matrix” points to something both already complete in essence and still needing to be uncovered or realized.

Buddha-nature is the broader doctrinal framework that grows out of this teaching and, in many contexts, functions as the English rendering of Tathāgatagarbha. It expresses the claim that all sentient beings either are, have, or can become Buddhas precisely because this inner Buddha-principle is inherently present. To say that beings “have Tathāgatagarbha” and that they “possess Buddha-nature” is, in many Mahāyāna sources, to make essentially the same assertion. Buddha-nature philosophy elaborates how this ever-present, pure, and luminous reality remains unchanged at the deepest level, even while surface mental states are turbulent or confused. Enlightenment, on this view, is not the manufacture of something new but the uncovering or recognition of what has been there from beginningless time.

The relationship, then, can be seen as that between a technical term and the wider vision it inspires. Tathāgatagarbha designates the inner Buddha “seed” or “matrix” itself, while Buddha-nature names the doctrine that all beings are capable of Buddhahood because of that seed. Different traditions may emphasize this either as potential, as emptiness, or as an already-present awakened reality, yet they converge on the conviction that the path is a matter of removing obscurations rather than importing some foreign essence. In this way, the teaching offers both a metaphysical claim about the nature of mind and an existential encouragement: beneath confusion and suffering, the heart of awakening is already there, awaiting recognition.