The Tathāgata's Many Names
Mahāmati notices something worth pressing: the sūtras call "unborn and unceasing" both a description of reality and, elsewhere, one of the Tathāgata's own names. Which is it? The Buddha's answer is that it is both, precisely because it is neither a bare metaphysical fact nor an arbitrary label — it is the name that names the very thing every other name of the Tathāgata also names, however different those other names may sound. What follows is one of this sūtra's most striking passages: an inventory of over thirty names, drawn from every religious tradition Mahāmati's own world would recognize — knower of the world, Śiva, Viṣṇu, Kapila, the sun, the moon — every one of them, the Buddha says, naming him.
The Tathāgata's Many Names
爾時，大慧菩薩復白佛言：「世尊！如世尊說，修多羅攝受不生不滅。又世尊說，不生不滅，是如來異名。云何世尊，為無性故，說不生不滅？為是如來異名？」
佛告大慧：「我說一切法不生不滅，有無品不現。」
大慧白佛言：「世尊！若一切法不生者，則攝受法不可得，一切法不生故。若名字中有法者，惟願為說。」
佛告大慧：「善哉，善哉！諦聽！善思念之，吾當為汝分別解說。」
大慧白佛言：「唯然受教。」
佛告大慧：「我說如來，非無性，亦非不生不滅攝一切法，亦不待緣故不生不滅，亦非無義。大慧！我說意生法身如來名號，彼不生者，一切外道、聲聞、緣覺、七住菩薩，非其境界。大慧！彼不生即如來異名。大慧！譬如因陀羅釋迦、不蘭陀羅，如是等諸物，一一各有多名，亦非多名而有多性，亦非無自性。如是，大慧！我於此娑呵世界(娑呵譯言能忍)，有三阿僧祇百千名號，愚夫悉聞，各說我名，而不解我如來異名。大慧！或有眾生，知我如來者，有知一切智者，有知佛者，有知救世者，有知自覺者，有知導師者，有知廣導者，有知一切導者，有知仙人者，有知梵者，有知毘紐者，有知自在者，有知勝者，有知迦毘羅者，有知真實邊者，有知月者，有知日者，有知生者，有知無生者，有知無滅者，有知空者，有知如如者，有知諦者，有知實際者，有知法性者，有知涅槃者，有知常者，有知平等者，有知不二者，有知無相者，有知解脫者，有知道者，有知意生，者。大慧！如是等三阿僧祇百千名號，不增不減。此及餘世界，皆悉知我，如水中月，不出不入。彼諸愚夫，不能知我，墮二邊故。然悉恭敬供養於我，而不善解知辭句義趣，不分別名，不解自通，計著種種言說章句。於不生不滅，作無性想。」
Then Mahāmati Bodhisattva again said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One, as the World-Honored One has taught, the sūtras treat 'unborn and unceasing' as the [very principle they] embrace. Yet the World-Honored One has also taught that 'unborn and unceasing' is one of the Tathāgata's own names. Is 'unborn and unceasing' spoken of, World-Honored One, because [it describes] having no [fixed] nature — or is it one of the Tathāgata's own names?"
The Buddha told Mahāmati: "I teach that every dharma is unborn and unceasing, [in the sense that] neither existence nor non-existence appears there at all."
Mahāmati said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One, if every dharma is unborn, then no dharma at all could be taken hold of and embraced, since every dharma is unborn. If there is, [nonetheless,] some dharma present within [this very] name, I beg you to explain it."
The Buddha told Mahāmati: "Excellent, excellent! Listen well! Consider this carefully — I shall now explain it to you point by point."
Mahāmati said to the Buddha: "I gladly receive your teaching."
The Buddha told Mahāmati: "What I mean by 'the Tathāgata' is not that he has no nature at all, nor that 'unborn and unceasing' embraces every dharma as a single principle, nor that he is unborn and unceasing simply for want of any condition — nor, for that matter, is this without real meaning. Mahāmati, I speak of the Tathāgata's name as the mind-made dharma-body — that very unborn-ness is not within the domain of any outsider, any śrāvaka, any pratyekabuddha, or even a bodhisattva at the seventh ground. Mahāmati, that very unborn-ness is itself one of the Tathāgata's own names. Mahāmati, it is like Indra, Śakra, and Purandara — such things as these each have many names, and yet it is not that many names entail many distinct natures, nor is it that there is no own-nature there at all. Just so, Mahāmati, in this present world of Sahā (Sahā, translated, means 'the world of endurance'), I have three asaṃkhyeyas of hundreds of thousands of names — the ignorant hear every one of them, and each speaks my name in his own way, yet fails to understand that these are all, alike, the Tathāgata's own names. Mahāmati, there are some sentient beings who know me as 'the Tathāgata'; some who know me as 'the one of complete wisdom'; some as 'the Buddha'; some as 'the savior of the world'; some as 'the self-awakened one'; some as 'the guide'; some as 'the broad guide'; some as 'the guide of all'; some as 'the seer'; some as 'Brahmā'; some as 'Viṣṇu'; some as 'Īśvara, the sovereign lord'; some as 'the victorious one'; some as 'Kapila'; some as 'the very limit of the real'; some as 'the moon'; some as 'the sun'; some as 'the one who is born'; some as 'the one who is unborn'; some as 'the one who is unceasing'; some as 'emptiness'; some as 'suchness'; some as 'the truth'; some as 'the true limit'; some as 'the dharma-nature'; some as 'nirvāṇa'; some as 'the eternal'; some as 'equality'; some as 'non-duality'; some as 'the markless'; some as 'liberation'; some as 'the path'; and some as 'the mind-made.' Mahāmati, these three asaṃkhyeyas of hundreds of thousands of names neither increase nor decrease — this world, and every other world besides, all alike know me this way, just as the moon reflected in water neither emerges from it nor enters into it. Yet those ignorant beings are unable to truly know me, since they have fallen into one of the two extremes. And though every one of them reveres and makes offerings to me, they fail to properly understand the meaning and intent behind these very words; they do not discriminate among the names, nor do they understand my own true realization — instead, they become attached to the manifold phrases and passages themselves, and, with respect to 'unborn and unceasing,' they form only the notion that it means having no nature at all."
The commentators trace the precise logical move connecting "unborn and unceasing" as a description and as a name: "我說不生不滅即不生義，不生而生，則一切法身異名皆從此出，故曰『意生法身如來名號』" — "when I speak of 'unborn and unceasing,' this is precisely the meaning of the unborn itself — and it is out of this very unborn-that-yet-manifests that every other name of the dharma-body arises; hence it is called 'the name of the mind-made dharma-body, the Tathāgata.'" "Unborn and unceasing" is not one name selected arbitrarily from among many equally valid options — it is the generative source every other name of the Tathāgata ultimately traces back to, which is exactly why it functions simultaneously as a description of reality and as the Tathāgata's own proper name.
On the extraordinary catalogue of names that follows — spanning Buddhist epithets, Brahmanical deities, and abstract philosophical terms side by side — the commentators are explicit that this diversity does not multiply what is actually being named: "其名雖多，人只是一，故無多性，隨物顯義，非無自性也" — "though the names are many, the person [named] is only one — hence there is no multiplication of natures; each name simply brings out a different aspect of meaning as suited to what it addresses, which does not mean there is no own-nature there at all." The commentators gloss the closing image directly: "月喻應身，水喻眾生之心，眾生心淨，如來即應，如月在水...月不下降，故云不入，亢不離水，故云不出也" — "the moon is a metaphor for the response-body; water, for the mind of sentient beings. Where a sentient being's mind is pure, the Tathāgata responds accordingly, just as the moon appears in water — the moon never actually descends into the water, hence 'it does not enter'; and yet it is never truly separate from the water either, hence 'it does not emerge.'" Every name in the long list — however foreign or however abstract it may sound — is, on this account, one more reflection of the identical moon. On why so many beings, revering and making offerings to the Tathāgata under one or another of these names, still fail to recognize what he actually is, the commentators locate the failure precisely in mistaking "unborn" for a claim about non-existence: "由執著言教，昧於實理，謂不生不滅是無體性，故於如來異名差別而皆不知" — "clinging to the mere teaching as words, and thereby obscured from the actual principle, they take 'unborn and unceasing' to mean having no essence at all — and it is for this very reason that they fail to recognize any of the Tathāgata's manifold other names as naming him." Devotion offered under a mistaken name is still devotion, but it stops short of the recognition the whole catalogue was meant to produce — that "unborn and unceasing" is not an announcement that nothing is there, but the generative name from which every other name in the list equally springs.
Part 35 Complete
This closes Part 35: "unborn and unceasing" identified as the generative source from which every other name of the Tathāgata arises, and the sweeping catalogue of names — Buddhist, Brahmanical, and philosophical alike — through which the very same reality is known across every world, without multiplying it at all. Part 36 turns to why most beings, hearing this catalogue of names, never recognize that they all name one and the same thing — and to the Buddha's own explanation of why he neither speaks nor withholds speech, since the truth itself lies entirely outside language while still depending on language to be pointed toward at all.
Continue to Part 36 — Relying on Meaning, Not on Words →