Increased attention to the tathāgatagarbha doctrine in the last decade has lead to significant publications and meetings on the topic of buddha-nature and related themes. Scholars in Asia, Europe, and the Americas have published new translations and studies of the foundational scriptures and commentaries, and are examining the history and literature of the doctrine. In July 2019 Tsadra Foundation partnered with the University of Vienna to bring many of these scholars together for an international symposium titled Tathāgatagarbha Across Asia. The tathāgatagarbha doctrine, which proposes that all sentient beings are already a “buddha within” or at least have the potential to attain Buddhahood, was at first largely ignored in Indian scholastic Buddhism, but increasingly attracted the attention of Mahāyāna scholars and became an important, if sometimes controversial, current of Buddhist thought all over Central and East Asia. With the Mahāyāna goal of establishing all sentient beings in Buddhahood, the possibility of enlightenment became a Buddhist axiom of central importance. Either one has to explain the causal process of its production, or accept its primordial existence, for example in terms of a buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha). The latter also applies, of course, when buddhahood is not taken to be produced from scratch. The way the process of becoming a Buddha is addressed is an ideal touchstone for systematically comparing the philosophical hermeneutical positions of various masters in Central and East Asia.