Saving No One, Owning Nothing

Taixu draws out the logic hiding inside this denial: the sūtra has already established, back in Section 17, that the Buddha and beings stand level, with no rank of higher or lower between them. If that is true, then positing a fixed being genuinely "saved" by the Tathāgata would, absurdly, let the relation run both directions — a being could just as well be said to save the Tathāgata. Taking the notion of a saving self seriously, even in this most compassionate-sounding form, would give the Tathāgata exactly the self, person, being, and lifespan the whole sūtra has worked to clear away. "The Tathāgata has a self" is therefore only ever conventional speech, offered because worldly language needs a subject for its verbs — never a claim about something fixed found upon examination.

The section closes on "ordinary person" (凡夫) as one more name without a fixed thing behind it: there is no separate "ordinary-person nature" some beings simply have. To be confused about this very teaching, Taixu says, is what the word "ordinary person" names; to see through it is what the word "sage" names. The label describes a temporary condition of not-yet-having-seen, not a permanent category of being — which is exactly why the Tathāgata can say "ordinary person, no ordinary person, that is why it is called ordinary person," and mean it as an invitation rather than a judgment.

Taixu catches something easy to miss on a fast read: Subhūti, asked this same question he had already answered correctly back in Section 5, momentarily slips and answers "yes." The Buddha's rebuttal is immediate and concrete — a wheel-turning sage king, a legendary righteous monarch of Indian tradition, was also said to bear these same auspicious marks, without being a buddha at all. If bodily marks alone were sufficient, that king would qualify equally. Caught out, Subhūti corrects himself at once — Taixu reads the moment as a small, honest demonstration of exactly how easily even an advanced disciple can slide back into taking a mark for the reality behind it, useful precisely because it shows the error happening in real time rather than only being warned against in the abstract.

For the closing verse's second line — seeking the Buddha through sound — Taixu supplies the matching image the text leaves implicit: the kalaviṅka, a bird from Indian legend prized for a voice so beautiful it was said to outsing every other creature. A glorious voice, no more than a glorious appearance, is not the Tathāgata either. His fuller statement of the principle runs through all four possible positions at once: the Tathāgata is not seen by clinging to form or sound, and is not seen by rejecting form and sound as worthless either — not through them, and not apart from them, and not through their absence, and not apart from their absence. Only a mind that has stopped searching in any fixed direction — toward marks, or away from marks — is positioned to see the Tathāgata at all.

Taixu treats this short section as closing off the one misreading the whole sūtra risks inviting after twenty-six sections of negation: if bodily marks are not what makes the Tathāgata the Tathāgata, has the whole doctrine of merit and cause-and-effect just been declared void? He calls a mind that draws this conclusion "wild wisdom" (狂慧) — clever enough to spot the negations, but reckless enough to conclude from them that nothing whatsoever functions, which the tradition names outright as a wrong view: denying cause and effect entirely.

His summary is the cleanest formulation in the entire fascicle of the middle way this sūtra has been walking all along: from the first resolve for awakening to buddhahood itself, the sages never teach permanence — so they do not fall into the fixed view that something solid persists unchanged — and they never teach annihilation either — so they do not fall into the fixed view that nothing continues at all. Every mark is empty of fixed self-nature, and every mark still functions, still causes, still ripens into consequence. Holding both without collapsing into either is, Taixu says, exactly what "unsurpassed, perfect, complete awakening" names.

Taixu marks a deliberate shift in depth here: earlier sections established the selflessness of the person — that no fixed "I" runs through the five aggregates. This section moves to the harder companion realization, the selflessness of dharmas themselves — that not even the elements and categories used to analyze the person have a fixed nature of their own. A bodhisattva who genuinely absorbs this and holds steady in it, without being shaken or drawn back, is said to have "attained forbearance" (忍) — not mere patience under provocation, as in Section 14, but the settled capacity to rest in this deeper emptiness without flinching from it.

What makes this bodhisattva's merit exceed even worlds' worth of treasure given away is not a bigger gift but a different relationship to the gift already given: "not receiving merit" means holding no inner tally of what has been accumulated, no quiet pride collecting behind the generous act. Taixu's phrase for it is direct — no mind that receives, and no mind that craves. Because nothing is gathered up and held onto as a possession, there is, in principle, no ceiling on how far the resulting benefit can reach; a merit hoarded, however large the hoard, is bounded by the hoarding itself.