For some Buddhists, the “substantial” character of this capacity seemed to imply the presence in each of us of a “true self”—not the egoistic self that appears as a function of ignorance, habit formations and craving forms of desire, and that is dissolved through Buddhist training and the realization of no-self (anatman), but rather an unassailably aware core of being-present. In China, however, the term that was used to translate buddhadhātu—佛性 or fo-xing—opened other interpretative possibilities. In contrast with the connotations of the Sanskrit dhātu, which has connotations ranging from an individual component of existence to a realm of existents, fo-xing literally means “Buddha-nature” and carries with it dispositional or relational accents deriving from the indigenous Chinese notion of “nature” (xing, 性). Thus, Buddha-nature could be seen as a propensity for entering into enlightening forms of conduct and relationship, rather than as a substantial essence. Buddha-nature is not something hidden “in” each of us, but rather something that manifests as a distinctive pattern and quality of interactive conduct. Chan strenuously endorsed this interpretation, and illustrating it became the distinctive feature of the gong’an (公案) or “public case” literature of master-student encounters expressing the “bone” and “marrow” of Chan: communicating the meaning of enlightenment is not a matter of saying, but of showing.