It almost goes without saying, but Buddhism can be easily misunderstood and often is. Emptiness doctrine can be easily misunderstood in which it is turned into nihilism which then becomes the mortar for erecting false Buddhism: a religious version of materialism (i.e., only the material is real). In this negative form, emptiness doctrine logically precludes soteriology.
Tathagatagarbha (lit. tathagata embryo), i.e., the Buddhist âtman, can also be easily misunderstood, especially by those who mistakenly believe that Buddhism denies a fundamental, inherent self (âtman) when, in fact, Buddhism only denies that our self can be the five psychophysical constituents (skandha). This kind of specific denial by the Buddha leaves the door open to realizing that, fundamentally, the self is absolutely transcendent. This also leaves the soteriological door open as well which would otherwise be closed.
Another Buddhist notion easily misunderstood is dependent origination (partitysamutpada). Dependent origination only describes conditioned reality, that is, reality turned into something determinate which arises and then perishes being fundamentally nothing (shunya). By dependent origination, the unconditioned (nirvana) is hidden so that humans remain trapped in samsara, who keep grasping at conditioned things—never seeing the unconditioned.
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