Morning meditation — Tathāgata is not merely a title but a profound expression of the Buddha’s journey.

‘Thus, Tathāgata is not merely a title but a profound expression of the Buddha’s journey — his departure from delusion and his arrival at truth — serving as an inspiration for practitioners seeking ultimate awakening.’

Everyday Buddhism
Buddha as Person,
Buddha as Experience
White Clematis montana.
White Clematis montana.

On our Twitter account, Buddhism Now @Buddhism_Now, most mornings we post a ‘morning meditation’ like the one above.

On the net, of course, it’s morning, afternoon, evening, or night-time 😀 somewhere.

Click here to read more Morning Meditation posts.

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Categories: Buddhist Insights, Everyday Buddhism, Morning Meditaton

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3 replies

  1. Another possible (and – for me at any rate – more felicitous) reading of the term tathAgata, could be ‘One who has reached (gata) (or, equally, ‘who courses in’ – also gata) Thusness (tathA)’. This is borne out to a degree by the Tibetan translation, de bzhin gshegs pa, where de bzhin (pronounced dézhin) means ‘that as such/thatness’ and gshegs pa (pronounced shekpa) is, amongst other things, also ‘to come, to move within, and even to merge with’.

    • I don’t know many Tibetans who wrote / taught about the double meaning of Tathāgata (thus-gone thus-come).

      This wonderful verse by the great Longchenpa comes very close.

      Since awareness is timelessly present, it does not come from anywhere or go anywhere.
      It is not something newly created, nor something that ceases.
      It is the Buddha — uncontrived, self-originated, and spontaneously perfect.
      You Are the Eyes of the World (rig pa’i khu byug)

      Please let me know of any.
      Thanks.
      R

      • Yeah, that’s more or less what I was driving at: that, as the all-encompassing and ever-present root, bodhi/vidya – ‘awareness’ by any other name – cannot be ‘approached’ since it is everything that is ‘this’ and ‘here’. We are ‘in’ and part and parcel of it.
        ‘The All-creating King’ (kun byed rgyal po), the dzogchen tantra the rig pa’i khu byug you cited comes from, and all its explanatory tantras are quite explicit as regards this and the same goes for many of the other dzogchen tantras and upadeshas. Cf་. for example, the writings of Longchenpa and Mipham Rinpoche.

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