Discovering Your Buddha Nature
Transform the pain-filled heart to discover your own true nature
Buddha Nature describes the inherent purity and perfection in every human being. It is our true human nature, the part that is present, unchanging, and deathless. What prevents us from experiencing our own Buddha Nature? That awareness is covered by obscurations, which are the habitual patterns we use to avoid pain. As we peel away each layer of falsehood, what remains is our Buddha Nature, the undistorted core of our being.
There is a significant block to the realization of our true human nature, especially in Western culture. To reveal Buddha Nature to yourself, it is necessary to turn towards the heart with acceptance, surrender, and love. However, this can be challenging in the West because the heart is viewed as impure and sinful. Knowing our own Buddha Nature requires an ability and willingness to communicate with our heart. We will look at some ways to open that communication door. It’s something anyone can do.
The following writing describes Buddha Nature and the ways that Western culture may block the path to our deepest heart. Following that, we will consider some practices on the meditation path that open our communication with the heart.
Buddha Nature
“Maybe I’ll say a little more:
Love went on and on.
Until it reached an open door
And love itself was gone.”
-Leonard Cohen-
Buddha Nature transcends the boundaries of any single spiritual tradition; it is a universal treasure too wonderful to be confined solely to Buddhism. Touching your true human nature is on the level of having your most wonderful dreams come true. Imagine: You. As you are now with the sudden realization that you are pure bright shining awareness, a being filled with love and joy for all humanity. Whatever pain, grief, and loss that came before this moment drops away, revealing you as a wondrous being filled with a desire that all beings experience the same love and beauty you have discovered. I mean, WOW! Who knew? Once these scales of desire, aversion and indifference fall from your eyes, your awareness opens to a deep heart of love.
The trouble is, in the West, there exists a formidable barrier to this heartfelt exploration—a legacy of cultural conditioning steeped in notions of sin and deficiency that can stifle the full expression of our tender, compassionate hearts.
Western Conditioning and the Heart
“I was blinded by the devil, born already ruined.”
- Bob Dylan -
To discover your own Buddha Nature, an open heart is required. And that’s the challenge. Western culture indoctrinates us towards the view that at our core, we are fundamentally flawed. In religious contexts, this intrinsic defectiveness is reflected in notions of sin and redemption. Your heart, by this view, is impure and corrupt. Secular Western culture, though it may avoid the language of sin, still perpetuates a narrative of insufficiency, driving us to incessantly strive and achieve as proof of our worth. This relentless pursuit becomes the very essence of existence. Keep striving until you die.
This pervasive conditioning demands that we perform and measure up in order to justify our existence. The conditioning starts early. Young children are groomed to compete and perform, whether on stage, in sports, or in the classroom. The singular focus is on winning. State-mandated academic testing enforces uniformity, often at the expense of creativity and spontaneity. The future of education may be total immersion into artificial reality. Our children may soon learn through total immersion in virtual realities, navigating worlds programmed by billionaires who are discovering new ways to monetize being (https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/15/tech/meta-quest-vr-education/index.html).
We are bombarded by TV programming and social media that provide western culture’s version of reality. Life hack is the buzzword for everything from healthcare to spiritual fulfillment. We are urged to optimize every aspect of our being so that we can “Do everything better” (www.lifehacker.com). The Western ideal of the good life seems to consist of peak productivity combined with relentless entertainment. Work hard, play hard.
Beneath this relentless drive for performance and distraction lies an insidious message: we are not sufficient as we are. The Western ethos, whether secular or religious, is saturated with the notion of our inherent inadequacy.
Moreover, we each carry a storehouse of pain from our personal histories—memories and narratives of suffering that reside within our bodies, often beneath the level of conscious awareness. This accumulation includes not only the pain we've endured but also the pain we've inflicted. Years of habitual living can render us numb to these deep-seated patterns.
It's no wonder, then, that as we delve into the path of meditation, we encounter a heart filled with pain. We may come up against walls of pain, doubt, and despair as we approach the heart. Once we begin to touch this tender heart, we experience the initial jolts of raw emotion and electric liveliness. Our initial response may be to draw back in fear and confusion, leaving us uncertain about how to proceed.
Opening towards the heart
A way of connecting with the pain-filled heart is important. Initially, there seems to be no way of communicating with the injured heart. It reminds me of children that are left alone for so long that they lose the ability to communicate their pain and distress. Likewise, our heart can no longer communicate with us. Here, we can choose to trust and surrender, taking time to uncover and comprehend the heart's silent language.
There is only one problem: the heart terrifies us. The wide open heart feels dangerous and threatening. Our conceptual mind convinces us that we must manage this danger and keep the heart under wraps. Our habitual patterns serve to distract us and keep us feeling safe.
This notion of consciously turning towards the pain-filled heart can seem like an existential threat. It may feel like approaching a nuclear reactor.
However, keeping the heart at bay really doesn’t work on the meditation path. To keep going, we must face these fears and befriend the open heart. How do we do that?
Listening to the heart with the body
One means of listening to the heart involves the body. This is important and helpful. The heart expresses itself in the body much more so than the mind. What happens in the body is immediate and visceral. When we experience the body, we begin to loosen our grip on the habits, patterns, and stories that prevent intimacy with the heart. Once we decide to embark on this part of the journey, we begin to experience an inner landscape that surprises and delights us, even though we don’t have words for what’s happening.
Listening to the body works so well because that focus is completely nonconceptual. The body exists as a dynamic expression of life, open and immediate. Experiencing the body happens in awake space, without a need for input from the conceptual mind. But because the experience of the body is so wide open, we are afraid to give it free reign. By gently shifting our focus towards the body, we can begin to get to know this fragile depth of ourselves.
This shift towards bodily awareness allows us to lower the volume of the conceptual mind. The stories are still going to be there, but we develop growing trust in this different way of being. In the world of the body, concepts and stories become less relevant. These experiences of direct knowing move us further into open-heartedness. That open-heartedness is where Buddha Nature lives. This is a beautiful thing!
Healing the shame-filled heart
This path of opening towards the heart flourishes with support. Doing it on your own may seem like a good idea, but it doesn’t work. The healing of your pain-filled heart is fostered through the bonds of sharing and connection with others. As we begin to touch the vulnerable heart, it is common to encounter deep-seated shame. This initially feels scary but it is a good thing. Why? Because shame always transforms in the presence of love.
When you talk to your sangha or your teacher, especially when you feel embarrassed and hesitant, that’s when you are healing the shame. You are learning to heal the heart when you share with others from this vulnerable space. This healing can only be known through experience. Resist the temptation to go through patterns of shame on your own. The belief that you must endure this path alone is a fallacy. Often, you will find immense relief and liberation in breaking through the isolation of shame.
Choose beauty and love over self-improvement
Do yourself a favor. Don’t take the path as a self-improvement course. I mean, you can, and western culture really pushes for everything to be about self-improvement. But let it be something much more than that. There is so much beauty to be experienced. The surprise of a lifetime is to discover that literally every human being is in the same boat as you. Everyone has the same tender-heart, the same focus on habits and rituals to avoid pain, and the same beautiful Buddha Nature.
The depth of heart opening that occurs is not an obstacle to your progress. Your deepest true heart is not holding you back or slowing you down. The discovery of open-hearted awareness and the knowing of your own true nature causes an outpouring of love for yourself, other people, animals, and the world. This discovery of your Buddha Nature, of your own true nature, is an experience and a knowing that you must not miss.
Instead of looking for workarounds and hacks, I invite you to let the path go deep, all the way into the transformation of your pain-filled heart. Allow this path to enter into the core of you; become acquainted with your deepest heart. You don’t need to change anything! Just see who is there. Don’t just sit there knocking. Open up and let yourself in. You will be glad you did and so will I.
https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Buddha-nature (for more Buddha Nature!)