harmas(五法), three svabhāvas(三自性) and Ālaya-vijñāna(八識) theory. This expresses the Buddhistic view on human-beings who are innate with purity(淨) and contamination(染). It requires both sudden enlightenment(頓悟) and gradual cultivation(漸修) attitude from a soteriological point of view. The Ālaya-vijñāna(八識) or All-conserving Mind is assumed to exist behind our individual empirical consciousnesses. The Ālaya is a metaphysical entity, and no psychological analysis can reach it. What we ordinarily know as the Ālaya is its working through a relative mind. The Mahayana(大乘) calls this phase of the Ālaya tainted or defiled and tells us to be cleansed of it for the attainment of ultimate reality. The necessity of conceiving Ālaya in its double aspect, as absolute reality and as subject to causation, comes from the Mahayana idea of Buddhahood(佛性). The Ālaya is thus known as Tathāgata-garbha(如來藏), the womb of Tathagatahood(如來性). The Tathāgata-garbha(如來藏), therefore, whose psychological name is Ālaya-vijñāna(八識), is a reservoir of things good and bad, pure and defiled. In other words, the Tathāgata-garbha(如來藏) is originally, in its self-nature, immaculate, but because of its external dirt it is soiled. Ch’an Buddhism(禪宗) represents stopping the False(妄) and cultivating the Mind(心), which teaches that, although sentient beings(衆生) are in fundamental possession of the Buddha Nature(佛性), it is obscured and rendered invisible because of their beginningless ignorance(無明). In early Chinese Ch'an Buddhism, the transition from Northern(北宗) to Southern School(南宗) has been explained in terms of a shift from the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra(楞伽經) to the Diamond Sūtra(金剛經) and from the gradual(漸敎) to the sudden teaching(頓敎). The Northern School(北宗) teaching was inferior because it posited enlightenment(覺悟) as a specific goal that could be described, sought, and attained, and because it restricted the achievement of that enlightenment to those who had the opportunity to engage in long years of practice. The Southern School(南宗)'s sudden teaching, well described in the Platform Sūtra(壇經), in contrast, was superior in that enlightenment could be achieved by anyone in a sudden, instantaneous, and complete transformation.