Is the Buddha's "Unborn" Any Different from the Outsiders' Own?

At that time, Mahāmati Bodhisattva, again relying on the Buddha's majestic spiritual power, said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One, the World-Honored One's teaching of 'unborn and unceasing' contains nothing extraordinary at all. Why do I say this? Because every outsider's own cause is likewise unborn and unceasing. The World-Honored One also teaches that space, cessation not through deliberate effort, and the realm of nirvāṇa are unborn and unceasing — but the outsiders, too, teach that a cause gives rise to every world, just as the World-Honored One teaches that ignorance, craving, karma, and false thought, taken as conditions, give rise to every world. Their 'cause' and this 'condition' are merely different names for the same thing, and it is the same with the causes and conditions of outer things as well — in which case, World-Honored One, this is no different at all from the outsiders' own theories. Atoms, the Excellent One, Īśvara, the Lord of Beings, and the rest — these nine substances are held to be unborn and unceasing; the World-Honored One likewise teaches that every nature is unborn and unceasing, and that being and non-being can never ultimately be apprehended. The outsiders, too, teach that the four great elements are indestructible, that their own-nature is unborn and unceasing, that the four great elements are permanent, and that these four great elements, circulating through every destiny, never once relinquish their own-nature — and what the World-Honored One teaches is exactly the same. It is for this reason that I say there is nothing extraordinary here at all. I only wish the World-Honored One would explain the difference — what makes his teaching extraordinary, surpassing every outsider's. For if there is truly no difference, then every outsider is already a buddha as well, since they too teach 'unborn and unceasing' — yet the World-Honored One teaches that it is impossible for more than one buddha to appear in a single world at the same time. But as has just been shown, a single world ought to have many buddhas at once, since there is no difference between them."

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "What I teach as 'unborn and unceasing' is not the same as the outsiders' own 'unborn and unceasing.' Why is this? Because those outsiders hold that their own-nature has a substantial nature of its own, and thereby attain a mark that is unborn and unchanging — falling, in this very way, into the [fixed] categories of being and non-being. I do not do this. Mahāmati, I am apart from the categories of being and non-being, apart from birth and cessation, neither having a fixed nature nor lacking one entirely. Because things appear the way all manner of illusions and dreams appear, this is not the same as having no nature at all. What, then, is meant by 'no nature'? It means that form, apprehended under the mark of its own-nature, either appears or fails to appear, and is either grasped or not grasped [depending entirely on conditions] — and it is for this reason that every nature is without a fixed nature, yet not simply nonexistent either. One need only become aware that this is the very measure of one's own mind's manifestation, so that false thought no longer arises, and one rests secure and joyful, with all worldly affairs forever stilled. It is the foolish and ignorant, caught up in false thought, who fabricate all this activity — not the wise and noble ones. Unreal false thought is like a gandharva city, or like a magically conjured person. Mahāmati, just as with a gandharva city or a magically conjured person, all kinds of beings — merchants among them — seem to come and go within it: the fool's own false thought takes this coming and going to be real, when in truth there is no one who comes and no one who goes at all — it is nothing but that very false thought. Just so, Mahāmati, when the foolish and ignorant give rise to a mistaken notion of 'unborn and unceasing,' they too have, in truth, neither the conditioned nor the unconditioned — like a conjured person's 'birth,' which in truth involves no birth and no cessation at all, since its own-nature, whether present or absent, has no substance whatsoever. Every dharma is exactly the same, apart from birth and cessation. The foolish and ignorant, falling short of what is truly real, give rise to false thoughts of birth and cessation — this is not the way of the wise and noble. What is not truly real is simply not so; and, [rightly understood], the false thought about own-nature and own-nature itself are likewise not different from each other. Were one to suppose that they truly differed, one would become attached to the own-nature of every dharma as something fixed, and would fail to see stillness itself. Failing to see stillness, one is, in the end, never able to leave false thought behind. It is for this reason, Mahāmati, that seeing the markless is superior; seeing what bears a mark as though it were the mark itself is not superior, since it is the very cause of taking birth. Mahāmati, the markless is where false thought no longer arises, where nothing is generated and nothing ceases — this is what I call nirvāṇa. Mahāmati, nirvāṇa is seeing things exactly as they truly are, apart from all prior false-thought states of mind and mental factors, attaining the Tathāgata's own self-realized noble wisdom — this is what I call nirvāṇa."