Jika pertanyaannya adalah mengenal kata “atman” jelas Mahayanis menggunakannya. Digunakan sebagai apa? Digunakan sebagai istilah positif terhadap Nirvana. Apa manfaatnya? Manfaatnya adalah untuk menarik para ignorant/orang bodoh yang takut mengenai ajaran anatman karena masih melekat pada konsep adanya “Aku” , agar mau mendengar ajaran Buddha. Silahkan baca Lankavatara, Sutra BabVI dimana Sang Buddha sendiri menjelaskan mengapa menggunakan istilah “Tathagatagarbha”, “Aku Sejati/True Self”. Jadi bukan saya yang menafsirkannya, dan saya juga tidak menafsirkan kata-kata orang suci (di luar Buddha).
(220) At that time again, Mahāmati the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattva made a request of the Blessed One, saying: Blessed One, tell me; Sugata, tell me about the rising and disappearing of the Skandhas, Dhātus, and Āyatanas. In case there is no ego-soul, what is it that comes to exist and to disappear? The ignorant who are attached to the notion of rising and disappearing, fail to understand the extinction of pain, and thus they know not what Nirvana is.
Said the Blessed One: Then, Mahāmati, listen well and reflect well within yourself; I will tell you.
Mahāmati the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattva said: Certainly, Blessed One; and gave ear to the Blessed One.
The Blessed One said this to him: Mahāmati, the Tathāgata-garbha holds within it the cause for both good and evil, and by it all the forms of existence are produced. Like an actor it takes on a variety of forms, and [in itself] is devoid of an ego-soul and what belongs to it. As this is not understood, there is the functioning together of the triple combination from which effects take place. But the philosophers not knowing this are tenaciously attached to the idea of a cause [or a creating agency]. Because of the influence of habit-energy that has been accumulating variously by false reasoning since beginningless time, what here goes under the name of Ālayavijñāna is accompanied by the seven Vijñānas which give birth to a state known as the abode of ignorance. It is like a great ocean in which the waves roll on permanently but the [deeps remain unmoved; that is, the Alaya-] body itself subsists uninterruptedly, quite free from fault of impermanence, unconcerned with the doctrine of ego-substance, and (221) thoroughly pure in its essential nature.
As to the other seven Vijñānas beginning with the Manas and Manovijñāna, they have their rise and complete ending from moment to moment; they are born with false discrimination as cause, and with forms and appearances and objectivity as conditions which are intimately linked together; adhering to names and forms, they do not realise that objective individual forms are no1 more than what is seen of the Mind itself; they do not give exact information regarding pleasure and pain; they are not the cause of emancipation; by setting up names and forms which originate from greed, greed is begotten in turn, thus mutually conditioned and conditioning. When the sense-organs which seize [upon the objective world] are destroyed and annihilated, the other things immediately cease to function, and there is no recognition of pleasure and pain which are the self-discrimination of knowledge; thus there is the attainment of perfect tranquillisation in which thoughts and sensations are quieted, or there is the realisation of the four Dhyānas, in which truths of emancipation are well understood; whereupon the Yogins are led to cherish herein the notion of [true] emancipation, because of the not-rising [of the Vijñānas].
hmm... keknya betul juga ya... maklum inggris ku ga terlalu baik... tp keknya yg di bilang kelana betul