Tathāgata
"Tathāgata" (तथागत Devanagari in both Pāli and Sanskrit) is a word that Buddha used to refer to himself. That is, in Buddhist scriptures he uses this word in place of first person pronouns such as I, me, and myself.
This is consistent with anattā (Pāli) / anātmanthe (Sanskrit) --the theory of no-self, absence of the ego.
At first I was startled to learn this bit of information, having wikigoogled it when I didn't know how to translate it from a Sanskrit text.
So, flashback to immediately after his Enlightenment... he meets these five former disciples from his ascetic period and tries to tell them he is now ~enlightened~, different from them, and they aren't buying it -- was he referring to himself like this as well? To be honest, if some emaciated monk ran up to me all excited telling me he was totally awesome and also talking about himself in the third person, I wouldn't exactly throw down my robes and follow him either, I'd rather think he finally cracked.
And then in a calmer, more composed version (trying out every angle since I can't know what this interaction was like in great detail) it almost seemed pretentious, stinking of a superiority complex and echoing from a pedestal. I'm too good for your common pronouns now! Take that, Vedic Sanskrit / vernacular Prakrit dialects!
Well something worked eventually, those five disciples did finally follow him as the Buddha.
Anyway, this was a minor thing but I kept it in the back of my head and today I found a bit of research that came as something of a relief. It looks like a student paper and provides a source for the portion of interest to this matter:
Now that's the Buddha I know...as far as I do so far.
--
The word Tathāgata is also used as a synonym for Arhat (Pāli: arahant), kind of a Buddhist saint -- someone who has reached a particularly high level of Enlightenment. Exact interpretations are disputed among linguists and Buddhist schools to this day.
Wikipedia says: Literally, it means both one who has thus gone (Tathā-gata) and one who has thus come (Tathā-āgata). Hence, the Tathagata is beyond all coming and going. It is asserted by some that the name really means one who has found the truth. (citing this as its source: Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary, 4th ed. Buddhist Publication Society, 1980)
This is consistent with anattā (Pāli) / anātmanthe (Sanskrit) --the theory of no-self, absence of the ego.
At first I was startled to learn this bit of information, having wikigoogled it when I didn't know how to translate it from a Sanskrit text.
So, flashback to immediately after his Enlightenment... he meets these five former disciples from his ascetic period and tries to tell them he is now ~enlightened~, different from them, and they aren't buying it -- was he referring to himself like this as well? To be honest, if some emaciated monk ran up to me all excited telling me he was totally awesome and also talking about himself in the third person, I wouldn't exactly throw down my robes and follow him either, I'd rather think he finally cracked.
And then in a calmer, more composed version (trying out every angle since I can't know what this interaction was like in great detail) it almost seemed pretentious, stinking of a superiority complex and echoing from a pedestal. I'm too good for your common pronouns now! Take that, Vedic Sanskrit / vernacular Prakrit dialects!
Well something worked eventually, those five disciples did finally follow him as the Buddha.
Anyway, this was a minor thing but I kept it in the back of my head and today I found a bit of research that came as something of a relief. It looks like a student paper and provides a source for the portion of interest to this matter:
In the discourses of indirect meaning, words are used which apparently refer to persisting entities such as a self or an I which, according to the Buddha, are merely "expressions, turns of speech, designations in common use in the world which the Tathagata (i.e, the Buddha) makes use of without being led astray by them."
(Trans. K. N. Jayatilleke in Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (London: Alien & Unwin, 1963), p. 319.)
Now that's the Buddha I know...as far as I do so far.
--
The word Tathāgata is also used as a synonym for Arhat (Pāli: arahant), kind of a Buddhist saint -- someone who has reached a particularly high level of Enlightenment. Exact interpretations are disputed among linguists and Buddhist schools to this day.
Wikipedia says: Literally, it means both one who has thus gone (Tathā-gata) and one who has thus come (Tathā-āgata). Hence, the Tathagata is beyond all coming and going. It is asserted by some that the name really means one who has found the truth. (citing this as its source: Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary, 4th ed. Buddhist Publication Society, 1980)