Tathāgata Substituted for Self -- Part III

In part 2 , I provided convincing evidence that the Tathāgata pericope (the Tathāgata exists after death, does not exist after death, both does & does not exist after death) originally had the word “self” instead of the word Tathāgata which the suttas currently contain.

At the end of the essay I raised the important questions of why the systemizers changed it the pericope in the first place and why they chose to replace the word “self” explicitly with Tathāgata.

While any such answers may indeed be speculation, I do believe there are motifs in some of the suttas which hint at a reasonable explanation.

In the Bhikkhu Sutta, the Buddha declares, “Monk, whatever one stays obsessed with, that's what one is measured by.” The Buddha goes on in the sutta to elaborate the meaning of this statement by saying:

If one doesn't stay obsessed with form, monk, that's not what one is measured by. Whatever one isn't measured by, that's not how one is classified.

If one doesn't stay obsessed with feeling...

If one doesn't stay obsessed with perception...

If one doesn't stay obsessed with fabrications...

If one doesn't stay obsessed with consciousness, that's not what one is measured by.

Whatever one isn't measured by, that's not how one is classified.

In this very profound sutta the Buddha declares that we can only measure or classify “what one is” when we obsess over the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousness) or elements of our experience and provide it with a conceptual identify we label as “me”.

Conversely, when we do not obsess or crave over the five aggregates of experience, we no longer participate in the creation of a notion of a being and thus there is no longer anything to measure or classify against.

This for the Buddha is what it means to become enlightened and make an end of suffering. It is important to understand that the Buddha is referring to going beyond the classification of a notion of me and not a particular attribute attributed to an enlightened being.

However, this has traditionally been interpreted in such a sense, contributing to one important piece of doctrinal misunderstanding that helps explain why “self” was changed to Tathāgata.

Another sutta which relates the same notion of the illusion of being is in the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta where the wanderer Vacchagotta asks a series of metaphysical questions that the Buddha refuses to answer. In exasperation, Vacchagotta asks the Buddha whether he has, “any position at all?"

The Buddha answers by saying, "A 'position,' Vaccha, is something that a Tathagata has done away with. I say, a Tathagata — with the ending, fading out, cessation, renunciation, & relinquishment of all construings, all excogitations, all I-making & mine-making & obsession with conceit — is, through lack of clinging/sustenance, released."

Vacchagotta persists by asking, “But, Master Gotama, the monk whose mind is thus released: Where does he reappear?"

The Buddha replies that any notion of reappearing, appearing, appearing and not reappearing and so on do not apply. At this point Vacchagotta exclaims he is “confused” and has “no clarity.” The Buddha councils him and tells him it is not surprising he is confused given that such an understanding is “subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise.”

The Buddha then questions Vacchagotta on what happens to a fire that runs out of fuel:

And suppose someone were to ask you, Vaccha, 'This fire burning in front of you, dependent on what is it burning?' Thus asked, how would you reply?

...I would reply, 'This fire burning in front of me is burning dependent on grass & timber as its sustenance.'

If the fire burning in front of you were to go out, would you know that, 'This fire burning in front of me has gone out'?

...yes...

And suppose someone were to ask you, 'This fire that has gone out in front of you, in which direction from here has it gone? East? West? North? Or south?' Thus asked, how would you reply?

That doesn't apply, Master Gotama. Any fire burning dependent on a sustenance of grass and timber, being unnourished — from having consumed that sustenance and not being offered any other — is classified simply as 'out' (unbound).

Even so, Vaccha, any physical form by which one describing the Tathagata would describe him: That the Tathagata has abandoned, its root destroyed, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising. Freed from the classification of form, Vaccha, the Tathagata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the sea. 'Reappears' doesn't apply. 'Does not reappear' doesn't apply. 'Both does & does not reappear' doesn't apply. 'Neither reappears nor does not reappear' doesn't apply.

The Buddha repeats the last passage for the rest of aggregates (feeling, perceptions, fabrications and consciousness) the sutta ends with Vacchagotta becoming a convert.

The key part of the sutta is the fire simile where the sustenance of a fire is metaphorically associated with the five aggregates. The fire is dependent on grass and timber just like the notion of a being, being dependent on the five aggregates. When the fire goes out due to lack of sustenance, like the notion of being going out due to the experience of the aggregates being abandoned, it is no longer meaningful to ask where the fire has gone in the way as it is to ask where the notion of being has gone.

This is expressing in essence what the first sutta did but in a different manner. Both indicate that something can only persist dependent on the input of something else; and this something else can be relinquished. But most importantly the main point is the same: there is no classification or measurement of something that can no longer be experienced.

And this is the key because when there is no fire or no obsession over being, there is no longer the experience of suffering.

Unfortunately, this particular sutta has been understood too literally to indicate two things: there is no rebirth for an enlightened being as there is no substrate left for it to occur and the status of an enlightened being after death is unknown. To interpret the text in this fashion is to ascribe the Buddha with a position which goes clearly against what the Buddha said earlier as having “no position.” The point is that whether there is rebirth, no rebirth, known or unknown status is not the question for such questions do not apply. As such questions no longer make sense, there is no position that can be taken even if one wanted to. This is the reason the Buddha stated he has no position.

The crux of the traditional misunderstanding centers on seeing the notion of being as an actual existing entity rather than a psychological projection. Understanding the text from a psychological perspective is clearly indicated by the Buddha who describes an enlightened being earlier in the sutta as one who has relinquished the psychological process of, "all I-making & mine making."

To be fair, to read the text from an ontological perspective is not helped by the fact that the Buddha meets Vacchagota half way when he persists in trying to explicitly get an answer to a question of the ontological status of a being after death. Through his skillful means, the Buddha takes on Vacchagota's ontological thinking and goes ahead and posits a thing, in this case a fire, in order to make the point that such questions of continuation do not make sense.

Having examined two suttas we now have two fairly clear motifs of the traditional misunderstanding derived from them: the indescribability of an enlightened being and the unknown status of an enlightened being after death.

Keeping these two motifs in mind, we can now gain a glimpse as to why “self” was substituted with Tathāgata.

The systemizers were most likely puzzled when they discovered in the suttas the Buddha refusing to directly answer whether the self exists or does not exist after death. At this point in history, the idea of karma and rebirth was firmly established and they saw no reason why the Buddha did not reply by saying the self in a way does exist after death by the means of rebirth.

For the compilers, the Buddha’s refusal to answer whether the self exists after death only made sense for enlightened beings and not for beings in general that the “self” in the pericope seemed to indicate. In their minds, when the Buddha refused to declare the status of the self after death, the Buddha must have understood this question as referring to enlightened beings as this is the only reason they could see for the Buddha’s silence. As enlightened beings were seen as being “unfathomable” and beyond any notions after death, it made sense for the Buddha to remain silent for the question could not be answered.

Thinking that they were clarifying the true meaning, they thus changed the pericope to refer to the Tathāgata instead of the self.