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Buddha Nature

Buddha Nature and Four Parables

Buddha nature means discovering one’s true potential. Each one of us inherently have the potential to purify our mind, reach a higher mental state and overcome suffering. But the manifestation of this nature is prevented because our mind is buried under the load of unwanted thoughts and worldly desires, either due to our circumstances or conditioning.

Like the moon hidden behind the clouds, is not moved by them as its purity remains untarnished. Similarly, we shouldn’t be deluded into thinking that this defiled mind is our true mind or real nature.

If we continually remind ourselves of this fact and strive to awaken within ourselves the pure mind of Enlightenment. The mind that is not disturbed by things as they occur, that remains pure and tranquil under all circumstances, is the true mind and should be the master.

“As human beings we have the same experience of destructive and constructive emotions. We also have a human mind capable of developing wisdom. We all have the same Buddha nature.” 

~ Dalai Lama

Here are four parables to remind you of your Buddha nature and look beyond the delusions of the mind and find your real self taken from The Teachings of Buddha.

Parable One

Once upon a time a man looked into the reverse side of a mirror and, not seeing his face and head, he became, insane. How unnecessary it is for a man to become insane merely because he carelessly looks into the reverse side of a mirror!

It is just as foolish and unnecessary for a person to go on suffering because he does not attain Enlightenment where he expects to find it. There is no failure in Enlightenment; the failure lies in those people who, for a long time, have sought Enlightenment in their discriminating minds. Without realizing that theirs are not true minds but imaginary minds that have been caused by the accumulation of desires and illusions that cover and hides the real mind.

Parable Two

There is an old story told of a man who fell into a drunken sleep. His friend stayed by him as long as he could but, being compelled to go and fearing that he might be in want, the friend hid a jewel in the drunken man’s garment. When the drunken man recovered, not knowing that his friend had hid a jewel in his garment, he wandered about in poverty and hunger. A long time afterwards the two men met again and the friend told the poor man about the jewel and advised him to look for it.

Like the drunken man of the story, people wander about suffering in this life of birth and death, unconscious of what is hidden away within themselves.

Parable Three

There is a story of a wrestler who used to wear an ornament on his forehead of a precious stone. One time when he was wrestling the stone was crushed into the flesh of his forehead. He thought he had lost the gem and went to a surgeon to have the wound dressed. When the surgeon came to dress the wound he found the gem embedded in the flesh and covered over with blood and dirt. He held up a mirror and showed the stone to the wrestler.

Buddha-nature is like the precious stone of this story: it becomes covered over by the dirt and dust of other interests and people think that they have lost it, but a good teacher recovers it again for them. This nature exists in everyone no matter how deep it has been covered by greed, anger and foolishness, or buried by the persons own deeds and retribution. Buddha-nature can not be lost or destroyed; and when all defilements are removed, sooner or later it will reappear. Like the wrestler in the story who was shown the gem buried in his flesh and blood by means of a mirror, so people are shown their true selves, buried beneath their worldly desires and passions, by means of the light of Buddha.

Parable Four

Once upon a time a king gathered some blind men about an elephant and asked them to tell him what an elephant was like. The first man felt a tusk and said an elephant was like a giant carrot; another happened to touch an ear and said it was like a big fan; another touched its trunk and said it was like a pestle; still another, who happened to feel its leg, said it was like a mortar; and another, who grasped its tail said it was like a rope. Not one of them was able to tell the king the elephant’s real form.

Similarly if you try to define the nature of man, we would probably end up covering the flaws and the perfections. Not many of us are capable of fathoming our awakened selves or this nature of mind, given the fact that it is so rare to find awakened people.

Self and No Self

This post is taken from scholarly articles by Terry Marks-Tarlow and Mark Epstein, and from David Kalupahana's book The Principles of Buddhist Psychology 

Note: After reading, studying and contemplating this topic for months I had an epiphany - the idea of no self is not as mind bendingly complicated as I've been making it. Human beings are not separate from the rest of the beings on the planet. We are just another part of what is. When I stop and let myself float I can feel the energy of the world and I catch a glimpse of the peace that comes with no self. Our problem lies in the fact that we can think and relate to ourselves - our ego is constantly making concrete out of wind, trying to make us special and apart. This causes us to suffer and to feel lonely. It is good to just allow and be a part of everything.

After many intense years of meditation and mental development, the Buddha was sitting under a Bodhi tree on the night of a full moon and experienced a remarkable insight. He realized that any event we can see (observable phenomenon) is subject to constant change, to arising and falling away and that there is no permanent beginning or ending states—either physical or mental. Everything changes so there is no fixed essence or ultimate nature - only a process of becoming. Likewise, there is no static, permanent self or soul, only a constantly evolving pattern.

In Western culture, the word self usually refers to a unique, inherent core identity at the center of each person. Belief in the self is deeply entrenched in popular, scientific and philosophical traditions. In fact, the reality of an authentic self is normally taken entirely for granted. Beginning at an early age and continuing throughout a person’s life, the use of words such as me, me and mine reinforces the ideas of individuality and separateness. This in turn shapes how we explain the world and our place in it.

Reflecting the modern fascination and enchantment with the self, one of the few words recently added to the English dictionary is selfie — which is defined as a “complimentary self portrait photographs, typically taken with a smart phone and then displayed on social media”. The Oxford Dictionary even declared “selfie” as word of the year. Truly, the selfie seems to represent the apex of modern misunderstanding about the truth of the nature of the self and correspondingly, searching for happiness and equanimity by using pride and self admiration.

The assumption of the existence of the self has been a major preoccupation with psychologists. In 1890 the father of psychology, William James, offered a broad definition of the self: "In its widest sense a man's Self is the sum total of all that can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers (normal cognitive activity), but his clothes and his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his land and horses, and yacht and bank-account." Through the years many psychologists have offered their own ideas of a permanent self and while much has changed since the days of the early personality theorists, contemporary psychological theory does not address the standing of a more fundamental issue - the validity of an authentic, bounded and individualistic self.

In stark contrast to traditional Western views, the Buddha discovered through his mental training and awakening that the self is a fiction, an abstraction we continue to construct over the course of a lifetime. According to the Buddha one can observe and understand mental processes without any need for an innate "I" at the center of the experience. There is thinking, there is feeling and there is perception, but these activities do not require a substantial self as an authority except as a linguistic convention. In actuality, there is nothing authentic about the self except our belief in it. This realization is at the heart of the Buddha's truth of anatta or no self.

The doctrine of Anatta is the Buddha's most unique and radical teaching. Mark Epstein, psychiatrist and author, has said that, "this emphasis on the lack of a particular, substantive agent is the most distinctive aspect of traditional Buddhist psychological thought." Even though most people will commonly agree that our body, thoughts, feelings and experiences change over time, they also believe that underneath the change is a unique and consistent self and a majority of people still believe in the continuation of the self after physical death.

Similar to the famous conclusion of the philosopher, Rene Descartes, "I think therefore I am" it is normal to identify what we do, think and feel with our self - our I, me, and mine. For example, I am happy, this is me and the car is mine. For the Buddha, the roots of dukkha, or suffering, are found in such identifications. These identifications, although they are only conventional labels, once believed in, become psychologically established and propagate a view of the world in which we feel separate and alienated from out inner and outer experiences. Believing in the separateness of you and I and attempting to maintain, nourish and propagate this identification of I - often at the expense of others - we cause ourselves and others much grief and suffering through our self deception. 

While it has been said that the Buddha wanted to destroy the self or the I, this is incorrect, simply because there is no permanent and substantial basis of personal identity called self to destroy. The teaching of anatta is in no way a denial of the empirical reality of the individual personality. The Buddha taught that the individual personality is a functional, unified and casually interconnected integrity operating on many levels. Personality factors are consistent yet are also ever changing. While recognizing that the I or self is a fluid cognitive fiction, the Buddha also understood its convenient and helpful functionality. The Buddha himself used such terms and I, you, he, she, person, etc. but he did so only to facilitate communication in conventional speech with conventional understanding. So, the Buddha teaches to not destroy but transcend or surpass the ignorance which come from attributing a substantial reality to the self.

We see now that as much as the Buddha emphasized the elimination of egotism, he did not intend the annihilation or depersonalization of what modern psychology labels the empirical self or the individual experiences. The terms I or self are pragmatic linguistic conventions that reflect the living experience that all conscious living beings have. For the idea of no self doesn't mean we don't exist or that we are robots with no volition to act in the world, instead we are constantly changing beings, always in flux. Giving it a fixed name and identity is just a convention that humans came up with so we can talk about it. The whole idea of self is a fiction or narrative. The problem is that as soon as we attach labels and concepts onto something, our egos start objectifying it, conclusively establish and create fantastic stories to make something static and permanent out of it - and that begins our point of illusion and suffering.

Clinical psychologist, Terry Marks-Tarlow, describes how we cannot separate ourselves from our experience, which is organically based and which takes place through the body. He does this by saying that most of us take for granted the ability to distinguish between ourselves as observers and what we observe in the world. Outwardly our skin seems like visible proof of a clear boundary that encases and protects our organs. Inwardly our sense of self, when intact, also feels like a relatively clear boundary, at times even to the point of isolation from others. Yet whether we consider our bodies or minds, the subjective experience of closed boundaries rests precisely on the opposite state of affairs - wide open portals that continually allow transaction between inside and outside, body and world, self and no self. Cycles of re-entry continually oscillate between creating and erasing the seam where observer and observed, perceiver and perceived, inner and outer, intersect and cross paradoxically. At this seam, self and world appear mutually co-determining. These perspectives are analoguous to Buddhist psychology which seecks to transcend the distinct self/no self distinction.

As you can see, the concept of no self represents a challenge to the Western mind.