High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Svabh?va (Sanskrit; alternate Sanskrit orthographies swabhawa, swabhava, svabhaava; Pali: sabh?va; Tibetan: rang bzhin) is a concept frequently encountered in Mahayana Buddhism which literally means "own-being" or "own-becoming". It might more meaningfully be rendered as "intrinsic nature", "essential nature" or "essence." In early Theravada texts, the term did not carry the technical meaning or the soteriological weight of later writings. Much of Mahayana Buddhism (as in the Prajnaparamita Sutra) denies that such a svabhava exists within any being; however, in the Tathagatagarbha sutras (notably the Nirvana Sutra), the Buddha states that the immortal and infinite Buddha-nature - or "True Self" of the Buddha - is the indestructible svabhava of beings.
