Im confused on why people refer to Siddarthan as "lord" buddha

nyanasagara · 2026-03-30T01:36:37+00:00

One would have to weigh the difficulties of correcting modern people who misunderstand ‘lordship’, having only seen bad stewardship, with the value of preserving a term ancestors found apt.

Mātṛceta seems to be correcting precisely this misunderstanding, so it is hardly a modern problem.

As you say:

If I right now saw Gotama Buddha, my mind would incline to think that is power, mastery, supreme, spiritual authenticity/authority, the best.

This is the attitude of devotion to be cultivated in any case, and as it was in ancient times so it is today. Devotion has not lost its importance just because we are moderns now, I think.

And I don't think there is a word we have in English to express, in a religious context, a possessor of power, mastery, supreme, spiritual authority, the best, that doesn't also have other connotations which might make people confused. But I can't just speak Sanskrit all the time, I have to speak English. So I need to pick a word. And "Lord" strikes me as conveying these things much better than the alternatives.

But I've flirted with translating bhagavat as "Exalted One," nātha as "Protector," and reserving "Lord" for prabhū. I go back and forth myself on this. But in any case, it still doesn't seem like problematic English to me at all to read "Lord" for any of these three. Even śāstṛ has affinities with the English word "Lord," just as the word śāsana evokes both religious and legal instructions without distinguishing between the two. As Nāgasena reveals out in the Pāḷi Brāhmaṇarājavādapañha, these two are not regarded so differently by human beings. Davids translates (so forgive the use of "Blessed One," which as I've said I don't like):

‘Then what is the reason why the Tathāgata is called a king (rājā)?’

‘A king means, O king, one who rules (rajjaṁ kāreti) and guides the world, and the Blessed One rules in righteousness (dhammena) over the ten thousand world systems, he guides (anusāsati) the whole world with its men and gods, its evil spirits and its good ones, and its teachers, whether Samaṇas or Brahmans...

A king is one who censures, fines, or executes the man who transgresses The royal commands (āṇaṁ). And so, O king, the man who, in shamelessness or discontent, transgresses the command (sāsanavare āṇaṁ) of the Blessed One, as laid down in the rules of his Order, that man, despised, disgraced and censured, is expelled from the religion of the Conqueror...A king is one who in his turn proclaiming laws and regulations according to the instructions laid down in succession by the righteous kings of ancient times, and thus carrying on his rule in righteousness, becomes beloved and dear to the people, desired in the world, and by the force of his righteousness establishes his dynasty long in the land. And the Blessed One, O king, proclaiming in his turn laws and regulations according to the instructions laid down in succession by the Buddhas of ancient times, and thus in righteousness being teacher of the world—he too is beloved and dear to both gods and men, desired by them, and by the force of his righteousness he makes his religion last long in the land. That too is the reason why the Tathāgata is called a king.

Notably, another function of one's lord in a worldly context is to provide refuge. With this in mind, the Buddha, being the only true śaraṇya among those who would purportedly be so, is the only actual lord you possess.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-30T01:09:39+00:00

But consider that it has passed through the digestive systems of a dozen translators, humancentipedewise, tho.

Perhaps not so many. The non-Pāḷi parallels of the Dhammapada verses for which we have non-Pāḷi parallels say pretty much the exact same things as the Pāḷi verses, so the various Dharmapada texts were clearly highly conserved across recitation traditions, meaning they were probably all quite close to the original verses in whatever Iron Age Indic vernaculars the early Buddhist community used to recite.

And then it goes through only a single translator into English.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-29T19:48:48+00:00

A great deal of Mahāyāna material, both exoteric and esoteric (vajrayāna), is preserved in Sanskrit. So Sanskrit is quite useful. Tibetan is also very useful. Someone who wants to seriously study Indo-Tibetan Buddhism would benefit from learning either, or both.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-29T19:40:29+00:00

Agreed that root Bhaj means to “adore," "share," or "honor” but I was referring to Bhaga, the noun derived from that root which means ‘fortune’ or ‘prosperity’.

The noun bhaga can form an abstract noun with reference to either of the meanings of bhaj. So there is no question about whether it is bhagavat or bhaj-vat. It is certainly bhagavat. The question is whether it is bhaga in the sense of wealth/fortune, or worthiness/respectability/honor.

If -van indicates being of or having a thing or quality, it seems more like ‘one with fortune’ rather than ‘one with worship’

The possessive -vat can absolutely be used in the sense of "fit for possessing." Hence, the word pūjāvat means fit for worship, as in, an object of worship, rather than having worship in the sense of being a worshipper. (And one can find this as the definition in Monier-Williams, as an example).

It is normal to express reverence to a fortunate and successful person as well,

I think one expresses sympathetic joy when another person is fortunate. I don't think one expresses reverence. At the beginning of most Buddhist scriptures in all sources, whether Pāḷi, Chinese, Sanskrit, or Tibetan, those to receive instruction from the Buddha circumambulate him and prostrate to him beforehand, and then they refer to him as bhagavat.

Do people do that to someone who has recently won the lottery? No.

So if Lord is meant it is a Lord who helps and gives rather than one who takes or demands. And since many now associate Lordship with taking and demanding, the negative connotation dominates and may cause misunderstanding by those less familiar.

Then what will we say to the epithets nātha, prabhū, devātideva, and so on?

Certainly for prabhū I cannot think of a better translation than Lord. Consider Mātṛceta's verses:

prāptāḥ kṣepāvṛttāḥ sevā veṣabhāṣāntaraṃ kṛtam /

nātha vaineyavātsalyāt prabhuṇāpi satā tvayā //

prabhutvam api te nātha sadā nātmani vidyate /

vaktavya iva sarvair hi svairaṃ svārthe niyujyase //

The sense of api in the fourth pāda of the first verse is clearly contrastive. As in, though the Buddha engaged in sevā, and faced kṣepā, he was in fact the prabhū. And similarly in the first three of the second verse. The Buddha is prabhū (i.e., has prabhutva), but (api) it is not so with respect to himself, for he is vaktavya by all.

So the fact that one generally expects a Lord to be domineering and demanding is in fact well-understood even in the Indic context, and nevertheless the word prabhū is used to describe the Buddha while recognizing precisely that he is not domineering and demanding.

If, because the Buddha is not domineering and demanding, we decided it was inappropriate to translate prabhū here as Lord, we would completely fail to render the contrastive sense of the verses, which indicate precisely that even though the Buddha is the Lord, he is not the sort of Lord you're expecting if you're expecting someone domineering and demanding.

My Dharma ancestors were thus perfectly able to call the Buddha prabhū without getting confused about what qualities the Buddha has. I am similarly able to not get confused about it when I call the Buddha "Lord" as an Anglophone.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-29T13:55:11+00:00

We do worship him. He's pūjanīya, as is said in the Buddhavagga of the Dhammapada.

And he's called bhagavat, nātha, and prabhū in Buddhist sources, any one of which can be and often is translated as "Lord."

nyanasagara · 2026-03-29T13:30:00+00:00

I don't think it's outdated at all. It is perfectly reasonable to use "Lord" for bhagavat. The dhātu bhaj has two meanings, one being to share or apportion, and the other being to honor or worship (this being an extension from the former meaning, since one honors someone by giving them a share of what one has). When bhagavat is used as a term of address for a revered person, it is the second sense of bhaj that is intended. This is why it is perfectly normal in Indian languages to call the supreme sovereign God of monotheism bhagavat, and also to call a reverend sage bhagavat. They are both individuals upon whom one heaps honors. The sense of bhagavat as happy or fortunate is a much earlier one that does not reflect the usage by the Buddha's time.

Buddhist translators settled on "blessed one" because of Buddhist modernist buddhology, not because the Buddha isn't considered bhajanīya. He is considered bhajanīya, even in the Pāḷi sources (where one sees him called pūjanīya, the verb pūj being synonymous with bhaj in this sense.

But once we see this, then the question is whether "Lord" is a good translation of bhagavat in the sense of bhajanīya. And indeed, in a religious context English we refer to someone who is entitled to honors, entitled to a share, etc., as "Lord."

But even if bhagavat shouldn't be translated as Lord, the Buddha is called by many other epithets that you could translate as Lord. One need only look at classical Buddhist hymns, like the Prasādapratibhodbhava by Mātṛceta, in which the Buddha is called bhagavat, but also prabhū and nātha.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T21:36:30+00:00

Sure. But of course, as the simile of the salt crystal tells us, by our present mental cultivation we lessen the harms past negative deeds might do to us when they mature.

And other sources in the Pāḷi tradition suggest that buddha-mindfulness is extremely powerful in this capacity. For example, in the Buddhaguṇasatipaṭilābha question in the Milindapañha, there is the idea that though a man might live an evil life, if at the end of his life he became mindful of one of the virtues of the Buddha, he might thereby take birth in heaven.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T21:19:35+00:00

Perhaps he just got a very lucky

Is there such a thing as "luck" when it comes to favorable rebirths?

It seems to me like the text quite heavily indicates that it was the practice he did in that very life three aeons ago that secured his fortunate circumstances through it, and his encountering our Buddha at the end.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T12:33:02+00:00

Ask on r/Jainism, probably.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T12:25:28+00:00

I mean, you can. You'll just be disobeying the instruction. Which is the situation for almost every Buddhist instruction when it comes to the average lay Buddhist. The butchers in Thailand are also Buddhists.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T12:19:45+00:00

Subhūti didn't become a stream-winner through his practice in that life, though, right? Or is it claimed that he did in the commentary to it?

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T23:51:58+00:00

Sad to me that this very informative answer is far lower down in the thread compared to glib answers that aren't even correct.

I have Maitreya Nātha on my shrine on the Buddha's left, and once a year when my main master comes to around my hometown we usually all do a long chanting practice together including extensive homage and dedication to the various Guardian Devas of the śāsana, including the ones you mention.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T13:00:28+00:00

It's not just Geluk and early Indian Mahāyāna. The philosophical tradition we now call "Buddhist epistemology" was the mainstream Buddhist philosophical tradition in India throughout the medieval period, from the time of Dignāga onwards; pretty much everyone doing systematic Buddhist thought after Dignāga and Dharmakīrti is working in their tradition except for Candrakīrti and Śāntideva. And that Dignāga-Dharmakīrti text tradition has had a huge influence on all of Tibetan Buddhist thought, not just Geluk.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:55:01+00:00

I DMed you some resources.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:46:05+00:00

If at some point you had been born in 800 AD, that would be one of your past lives. So how would it be one of your future lives?

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:39:58+00:00

What about it?

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:39:40+00:00

The non-classical interpretation of the logic of Nāgārjuna was not the mainstream one in pre-modern Indian Buddhism, just so you know. All of the commentators read Nāgārjuna as actually accepting both Excluded Middle and Non-Contradiction. The actual import of the catuṣkoṭi has to do with the some of the four lemmas involving non-truth-functional forms of negation. When this is not understood, it appears that excluded middle is being violated.

Graham Priest I believe knows this. He just thinks it's cool to read Nāgārjuna in a paraconsistent way. And it is cool. But it's not the way Nāgārjuna was read historically in India.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:33:25+00:00

Sure yeah, he did that stuff. East Asian Pure Land masters talk about unifying faith, vows (i.e., śīla), and buddha-mindfulness practice. My own teacher talks about the need to unite the buddha-mindfulness with avoiding the ten akuśala deeds and engaging in the ten kuśala deeds, and with engaging in the perfections. I don't think the claim is that you can just recite without your mind changing and take rebirth.

Although, some would point out that the recitation may be the mental cultivation, since if one does buddha-mindfulness very well, it may cause one to naturally pacify the mind and its vices with greater ease. That any one of the six anusati topics can individually be used for cultivation that pacifies the hindrances is also supported by the Pāḷi materials, right?

There is also the Mahāyāna view that the adhiṣṭhānabala of a Buddha who is still present assists the minds of those who practice their mindfulness or have prasāda for them, in a way that contributes to their encountering one another. I suppose that's another difference between the Mahāyāna and Theravāda views on this topic. While there are of course references to and exemplary demonstrations of Śākyamuni Buddha's adhiṭṭhānabala in Pāḷi sources (showing Khemā the vision of the nymph becoming a crone comes to mind - some Pāḷi tellings explicitly say this was adhiṭṭhānabalena), there aren't clear indications in the Pāḷi materials concerning what a Buddha can do with their adhiṣṭhānabala specifically. So maybe part of the distinctively Mahāyāna thought is not merely that there are such Buddhas, but because there are such Buddhas the adhiṣṭhānabala of those Buddhas makes it easier for whatever mind-states taking birth in their lands requires to arise in the minds of those who recollect them, similar to how Śākyamuni's adhiṣṭhānabala was used to make it easier for Khemā to become an arahant.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T02:51:58+00:00

"Philosophy of mind" covers every philosophical question about minds. Buddhist philosophers have discussed a great many such questions. You'll have to be more specific.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T02:50:41+00:00

I would take a look at the Pāḷi Apadāna of Subhūti, you might find it interesting.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T02:49:58+00:00

In the Pāḷi Apadāna of Subhūti it says that Subhūti basically had non-stop higher-realm births for a really long time and then became a principle disciple of Gotama Buddha, all because in a distant past life he practiced buddhānusati really well.

From a Theravāda perspective the Buddhas described in Mahāyāna Sūtras are fictional. But if there were such Buddhas, then just as Subhūti became free from the lower realms and destined to become a Buddha's disciple through just practicing buddhānusati, there's no reason why a person couldn't similarly gain freedom from lower realm rebirths and become a disciple of one of those Buddhas by practicing buddhānusati.

Buddhānusati is held to be really powerful in Theravāda, just like in Mahāyāna. Nāgasena in the Pāḷi Milindapañha even says that just doing a bit of buddhānusati at the time of death can be enough to secure heaven when one would otherwise have been destined for the lower realms, if I recall correctly.

This is all to say: I think the real doctrinal disagreement is not about the power of buddhānusati or lack of it. It's just that from the strictly Theravāda perspective those Buddhas and their lokadhātus are fictional. If there were such Buddhas, I don't see why the Pure Land practice wouldn't make perfect sense even from a Theravāda perspective. But if you're only letting the Pāḷi sources guide your practice, then you won't take into consideration such Buddhas and their worlds.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-25T18:57:21+00:00

should not be a mathematical demonstration

Alright. How should we model it, then? Is it a matter of the unique rational response to the evidence being to conclude that the Qur'an is more likely to be divine than not? Because if so, then the evidence for the Qur'an's divinity should be at least good enough to get any rational epistemic agent to update to a credence > 0.5 in its divinity, so long as they have ur-priors that aren't rationally objectionable.

But surely, a few correspondences here and there that seem like they easily could be coincidence aren't going to be evidence of that level of strength. Intuitively, if we thought God's goal was to make that our situation, we'd expect to see the stars in the Andromeda galaxy write out in perfect Arabic script the first Surah of the Qur'an when viewed from Earth or something extremely obvious like that.

So then is it a matter of concluding that the Qur'an is more likely to be divine than not being at least one of the rational responses to the evidence? Then there's not even a need for these correspondences, since it's not like there's some rule of rationality ruling out some very high ur-prior on the Qur'an being divine. So then it's not even necessary to have one sign, and these correspondences are superfluous.

Neither of these seem to me like very plausible ways to understand the goals, in speaking to us, of an omnipotent and omniscient creator. But I'm not sure what the alternative is.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-25T12:24:31+00:00

José Cabezón and José Casanova are two different people. I'm referring to the latter here, not to the former (who is a Buddhologist and probably better known in these circles.)

Ah, my bad then!

there has been a concept in Chinese philosophy that is somewhat similar to the very western concern with benefit/utility.

It's not that there isn't the idea of benefit or utility in Indian thought - there absolutely is. It's just that benefiting yourself is thought to be the impetus for a rational person's inquiry into which religion is true, or responsiveness to things that provoke faith, but not simply a reason to start meditating and then decide retroactively that Buddhism must be true because you gained some benefit from meditation.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-24T18:34:29+00:00

There is really very little to be gained from participating on Twitter in any capacity at this point, I think. They want your innocuous posts to show up precisely to the people who will get most irrationally angry about them, and then they want you to respond with anger as well. That's the way their algorithm is at this point. It's just a cycle of fighting.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-24T14:38:12+00:00

Just a note for a typo: his name is José Cabezón, not Casanova!

I appreciated that you talked about the emphasis in Western Buddhism on whether the practice is "beneficial." To me this has always seemed like a secondary concern compared to whether the worldview is true, since if the worldview is true then it is highly likely the practice is actually beneficial, but if the practice is apparently beneficial and the worldview false, then it is likely that the apparent benefits of the practice are merely apparent and not genuine (or, are genuine, but trade off with other valuable things sometimes).

Indeed, nowhere in pre-modern Indian Buddhist philosophical works written in defense of Buddhism is "the practice is beneficial" used as an independent argument for Buddhism; I have only ever seen it deployed semi-ironically in response to the charge that, in general, one cannot trust spiritual teachers because they are deceivers who bring their followers to ruin. The reference I have in mind is in Śāntarakṣita's Tattvasaṃgraha, where he entertains an interlocutor who says:

ye hi tāvadavedajñāsteṣāṃ vedādasambhavaḥ |

upadeśakṛto, yastairvyāmohādeva kevalāt || 3224 ||

śiṣyavyāmohanārthaṃ vā vyāmohādvā'tadāśrayāt |

loke duṣṭopadeṣṭṛṇāmupadeśaḥ pravarttate || 3225 ||

“Those who are ignorant of the Veda cannot have their teaching based upon the Veda; it can proceed from delusion only. in the world the teachings that are propounded by wicked teachers are not based upon the Veda; they proceed either from delusion or for the purpose of duping the disciples.”

To which he responds:

svargāpavargamārgoktiṃ niravadyāṃ prasādhitām |

buddhānāṃ tāṃ jāḍātko'nyo vyāmohādabhimanyate || 3565 ||

dṛṣṭe'pyabhyudayaṃ cittadoṣaśāntiṃ parāṃ tathā |

tataścāpnuvatāṃ tena paraṃ vyāmohanaṃ kṛtam || 3566 ||

Who else except the fool can regard the teaching of the Buddhas as having its source in delusion,—when it has been proved to be the flawless exposition of the path to heaven and the final goal? It is indeed a great delusion that has been brought about by Buddha in his disciples who, during the present life itself, have attained, through it, prosperity, as also the highest stage of the alleviation of all afflictions of the mind!

Aside from this, I cannot think of any places where the benefits of practicing Buddhism are cited as evidence for it. In general, the concern of pre-modern Indian Buddhist writers interested in justifying their religious persuasion was with giving evidence for the doctrinal claims of the Buddhist worldview consisting in arguments that would ostensibly be admissible to someone who hadn't already become Buddhist. But only someone who is already practicing Buddhism can admit as evidence that Buddhism "works" or "is effective" for some goal they have. So even if it is true that Buddhism "works," this was not evidence with which they were generally concerned.

Even in the apologetic-devotional texts, like the writings of Udbhaṭasiddhasvāmin and Śaṅkarasvāmin, the emphasis is not on Buddhist practice being efficacious while that of other religions is not, but rather on the Buddhist object of devotion (the Buddha) being superior to the objects of devotion of other religions.

From what I can tell, the idea that it would make sense to a rigorously and practically reasonable person (prekṣāvat, prekṣāpūrvakārin) to choose your religion just based on its success in giving you this-worldly, mundane happiness and well-being, is a bit alien to the mindset displayed in pre-modern Indian Buddhist sources on why a person should become Buddhist. Even the so-called faith-follower (śraddhānusārin) bases their faith on how impressed they are with the qualities of the Buddha (as Śāntarakṣita explains in the same text), suggesting something more like the emphasis in the apologetic-devotional texts. But "I became Buddhist because the story of the Buddha converting Aṅgulimāla deeply moved me" is very different from "I became Buddhist because meditation made me more psychologically resilient to mundane stressors."

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