The tension the main entry describes as unresolved became, in late twentieth-century Japan, the subject of a sharp scholarly controversy known as Critical Buddhism (hihan bukkyo), in which scholars argued that buddha-nature thought is not merely philosophically risky but actually un-Buddhist.
Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro, Soto Zen scholars at Komazawa University, argued from the 1980s that tathagatagarbha doctrines, far from a legitimate development of core teaching, violate dependent origination by positing an underlying, monistic ground (dhatu-vada) from which all things arise, structurally identical, they argued, to the substantialist thinking early Buddhism was formulated to reject. They extended the critique to Japanese Buddhist institutions, arguing that buddha-nature-influenced ideas had been used historically to justify social discrimination and quietism, since if everyone is already enlightened there is no basis left for challenging injustice.
The argument drew heated responses, including from scholars who argued Hakamaya and Matsumoto had misread key texts and that Zen and Tendai contain internal resources for social criticism despite affirming buddha-nature, and the controversy became significant because it took an abstract metaphysical question and argued it had direct, damaging real-world consequences, giving the shentong-rangtong debate noted in the main entry a modern sequel neither side in the older Tibetan debate had anticipated.