Tathāgata (Devanagari: तथागत) in Pali and Sanskrit) is the name the Buddha of the scriptures uses when referring to himself. The term means, paradoxically, both one who has thus gone (tathā-gata) and one who has thus come (tathā-āgata). Hence, the Tathagata is beyond all coming and going – beyond all transitory phenomena. He is one who has found the truth.

The Buddha is reported on numerous occasions in the Pali Canon as referring to himself as the Tathagata instead of using the pronouns me, I or myself. This serves to emphasize by implication that the teaching is uttered by one who has transcended the human condition, one beyond the otherwise endless cycle of rebirth, beyond all death and dying, i.e. beyond suffering.

The term also occurs as a synonym for arahant, identifying one who has attained the ultimate in the holy life. There is even a sense in which such a one is no longer human... "a tathāgata, a superior state of being (uttama-puriso)".

Sanskrit grammar offers two possibilities for breaking up the compound: either tathā and āgata or tathā and gata.Tathā means thus in Sanskrit and Pali, and Buddhist thought takes this to refer to what is called reality as-it-is (yathā-bhūta). This reality is also referred to as thusness or suchness (tathatā) indicating simply that it (reality) is what it is.