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Within the Mahāyāna branch of Buddhism, there exists an important class of sutras (influential upon Ch'an and Zen Buddhism), generally known as Buddha nature (tathāgatagarbha) sutras (also: "Buddha-matrix" or "Buddha-embryo" sutras), a number of which affirm that, in contradistinction to the impermanent "mundane self" of the five skandhas (the physical and mental components of the mutable ego), there does exist an eternal true self, which is in fact none other than the Buddha himself in his ultimate nirvanic nature. This is the "true self" in the self of each being, the ideal personality, attainable by all beings due to their inborn potential for enlightenment. The Buddha nature does not represent a substantial self (ātman); rather, it is a positive language and expression of emptiness (śūnyatā) and represents the potentiality to realize Buddhahood through Buddhist practices;
the intention of the teaching of Buddha nature is soteriological rather than theoretical.Prior to the period of the tathāgatagarbha genre, Mahāyāna metaphysics had been dominated by teachings on emptiness in the form of Madhyamaka philosophy. The language used by this approach is primarily negative, and the tathāgatagarbha genre of sutras can be seen as an attempt to state orthodox Buddhist teachings of dependent origination using positive language instead,
to prevent people from being turned away from Buddhism by a false impression of nihilism. In these sutras the perfection of the wisdom of not-self is stated to be the true self; the ultimate goal of the path is then characterized using a range of positive language that had been used in Indian philosophy previously by essentialist philosophers, but which was now transmuted into a new Buddhist vocabulary to describe a being who has successfully completed the Buddhist path.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atman_Buddhism