Thus far, this book's meditations on the concept, imagery, and narrative role of nirvana have considered it primarily as a goal for any individual: to attain (pari)nirvana, in life and at the moment of death, is to become characterized by the epithet buddha, ‘awakened’. In turning now to some closer and more extended analyses of textual dynamics, of narrative as an expression and embodiment of temporality, it will look more at those special people for whom Buddha is not merely an adjective but a name. The person whose life-story is so often told as that of the Buddha Gotama – who in Pali is specified as such either by his family name Gotama or by the phrase aṃhākaṃ Buddho, ‘our Buddha’ – can be singled out in Roman script by using the definite article, capitalizing the word, or both: not just a person who is buddha, but one who is (for us) ‘a’ or (more often) ‘the Buddha’. In Pali, such Buddhas, in the past, present, and future, are differentiated from ordinary (!) enlightened people by being called sammā-saṃbuddha-s, Fully Enlightened Beings. They rediscover the Truth (Dhamma) by themselves, at a time when it has been lost, and re-institutionalize the dissemination of the Truth in a Dispensation (sāsana). In contrast, ordinary enlightened people, male and female Arahants, are buddha, ‘awakened’, and they become so by hearing the salvific message from a Fully Enlightened Buddha or from one of his disciples or later followers.