Buddha Nature . . . As It Is

"The real problem," states renowned Dzogchen master, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, "is the state of mind of the ordinary person, which is always changing from one thing to another. Sentient beings are totally unstable, but someone who has truly recognized mind essence . . . is completely free from suffering. Even in this lifetime one can be totally free of pain, and progress further and further on the path of happiness."

". . . It is never pleasant to maintain the state of mind of an ordinary person, which is always changing," he observes. "When unhappy, one is totally overcome by that feeling. Better to recognize the wide-awake empty cognizance and remain like that."

In describing Dzogchen's "pointing-out" instruction - i.e., that our inherent Buddha nature is an "unconfined empty cognizance" - and the accompanying spiritual discipline to effectively stabilize one's being in that state, the Rinpoche observes:

"Basically there is nothing to do in all this practice. Simply allowing our mind to be, without having to do anything, is entirely against our usual habits. Our normal tendency is to think, 'I want to do this. I want to do that.' Then we actually go do it. Finally, we feel happy and satisfied when it's all neat, all accomplished, accomplished by ourselves. But that type of attitude is totally wrong in this type of practice. There is nothing whatsoever to do. Anything we try to do becomes an imitation, something made up by our thoughts and concepts."

"As a matter of fact," he notes, "it may feel utterly dissatisfying, extremely disappointing, to allow our original nature to be as it naturally is. We might much rather do something, imagine something, create something, and really put ourselves through a lot of hardship. Maybe that is why the Buddha did not teach Dzogchen and Mahamudra openly - because this not-doing is in some ways contrary to human nature."

"Buddha nature is free of the three times of past, present, and future, while our mind is under the power of the three times. Wakeful knowing is free of the three times. The three times involve fixating, thinking. Wakeful knowing is free of fixation and thought."

"The Buddha," he says, "realized that different beings had various capacities, so out of great compassion and skillful means he gave teachings that were right for different individuals. Although the essence of all teachings of all enlightened ones is to simply let be in recognition of one's own nature, the Buddha taught a lot of complex instructions in order to satisfy people on all the different levels. . . . It seems to be human nature to love complications, to want to build up a lot of stuff. Later on, of course, they must allow it all to fall away."

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

As It Is, vol. 1, pp. 63-64

On Desire and Desirelessness

"Desire is a subject upon which . . . true views can only be arrived at by an almost complete reversal of the ordinary, unreflecting opinion.

-- Bertrand Russell --

A seemingly unquenchable desire is the baseline state of the ego. Physical desire thwarted by circumstance or other people breeds anger. Sexual desire unfulfilled breeds lust. Existential desire unexamined breeds further ignorance as to our human condition. And these three states - anger, lust and ignorance - are, of course, the 'Three Poisons' which the Buddha identified as the ties that keeps the unawakened being bound to the wheel of samsara (continual rebirths) in a state of dukkha, or suffering.

Who amongst us has not been convinced at one time or another that obtaining that new car, house, job, new lover etc., would fulfill us? And who, two, three or six months later, has not been just as seemingly unhappy and unfulfilled after obtaining our heart's desire? And who amongst us has not struggled with the existential struggle over the inevitability of our own death? All these struggles, blind alleys, and frustrations are a result of our unexamined desires.

If, as is possible, we "master" desire, writes William Irvine, "we will experience what . . . has been the goal of most of those who have thought carefully about desire - a feeling of tranquility . . . marked by a sense that we are lucky to be living whatever life we happen to be living - that despite our circumstances, no key ingredient of happiness is missing."

"With this sense," Irvine observes, " comes a diminished level of anxiety: we no longer need to obsess over new things - a new car, a bigger house, a firmer abdomen - that we mistakenly believe will bring lasting happiness if only we can obtain them. Most importantly, if we master desire, to the extent it is possible to do so, we will no longer despise the life we are forced to live and will no longer daydream about living the life someone else is living; instead we will embrace our own life and live it to the fullest."

[William B. Irvine,"On Desire: Why We Want What We Want,"pp. 6-7.]

To master desire, however, requires a radical acceptance of what is, an attitude of unconditional love without conditions or even objects, an attitude I have described elsewhere as an acceptive consciousness which is as different from our ordinary, egoic self-consciousness, as such self-consciousness is from ordinary, unreflective animal consciousness.

One of the best aspirations for such a state of total acceptance and unconditional love is from an anonymous writer who observed:

"(A)cceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place thing or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment."

"Nothing, absolutely noting," he notes, "happens in God's world by mistake. . . . (U)nless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes."

Paradoxically, to no want to gain, become or hold onto anything is itself a desire, if such is an aspiration for the future. If it is not an aspiration, but one's state of desireless being here and now, it is not. "We either makes ourselves happy or we make ourselves miserable," said Carlos Castenada's spiritual teacher, "the amount of effort is the same."

The Dalai Lama: Compassion as Life's Purpose

What is it that gives life meaning? How do we find our purpose in life or, even life's purpose? These existential questions, even if they ultimately remain unvoiced, are questions that we face virtually every day of our waking lives.

"For nearly everyone it is important to think that his or her life has a purpose," notes the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. "But these purposes may be various: the purpose of one person's life may be to achieve one kind of goal, that of another person may be to achieve a very different kind of goal. There need be no one thing that forms the purpose of every life. . . . Similarly, for many people it will be enough if at each moment there is a purpose to what they are doing, without every moment being devoted to the same purpose, and without the overall pattern itself having a purpose. The view that we are put here for a purpose, rather like being in the army, is characteristic of many religious frames of mind. It leads to bad faith when apparent certainty about what the purpose is blinds people to other possibilities and opportunities."

With this in mind, it is edifying to note that the Dalai Lama, a religious leader admired and followed by millions of Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, explicitly disclaims the need for the individual to look any further than to his or her own existence in order to find meaning in life. Below the highest metaphysical levels, he notes, it is sufficient merely to acknowledge one's own existence and then to develop an unbiased compassion for others, including all sentient beings.

"(That) our existence 'is,' no one would argue," says the Dalai Lama, in the following brief video clip. "Also the feeling (and) experience, (there is) no need to explain or prove. But then," he asks, "what is the purpose of this life? What is the purpose of this existence?"

"At deeper levels, I don't know," he admits. "Up to the metaphysical level, (however), in a general way it is not necessary to do too much," he points out. "The immediate purpose of our life is existence."




"Affection, or compassionate attitude, warmheartedness," the Dalai Lama notes, "is very, very important for one's own well-being, one's own happiness.

"So don't consider the practice of compassion (as) something of a religious matter, or (the) practice of compassion as something that is good for others, (and) not necessarily to one's self," he emphatically notes. "That is a total mistake."




The "seed compassion" one is born with, says the Dalai Lama, "can develop, (and) can further develop (into) unbiased compassion. (A compassion) not based on (and) not depend(ent) on others' attitudes, but rather (on) others' 'being' itself. "That kind of compassion," he notes, "can reach your enemies, or (all) sentient beings."

H.H XIV Dalai Lama

"That compassion," he observes, "is infinite compassion, unbiased compassion, (and) real compassion."

"If (you) become (a) compassionate person," he notes, "then your life becomes meaningful because you yourself (are) happy, calm, (and) peaceful. Your friends, (which) also includ(es) animals, (will) also . . .  get peace. So that (on) the last day of your life you feel happy. . . . Otherwise at that moment, even your belongings, your money, nothing can be used, no matter how . . . good."

"So, in order to make (a) meaningful life, he concludes, "ultimately warmheartedness is the key factor."

Ego and the Pain-Body: Liberating the Mind

In his ground-breaking work, "The Power of Now," Eckhart Tolle, an enlightened spiritual teacher, takes the reader through the mechanism by which our conditioned thinking patterns and their concomitant emotional states rule our lives.

The "ego" - our individualized and habitual way of problem-creating, thinking and problem-solving, or what the psychologist/philosopher William James identified as the "stream of consciousness" - is, Tolle teaches, always accompanied by what he calls "the pain-body." Thinking begets the pain-body, the pain-body begets yet more thinking, and so on, down the road of suffering.

Yet, like the Buddha some 2500+ years ago, Tolle also identifies a way out of suffering. End the addiction to, and the identification with, the human ego and the suffering of the pain-body will also abate. In his famous statement, "I think therefore I am," DesCartes was wholly wrong, Tolle says. "I think therfore I suffer," being much closer to the seeming truth.

"There is no ego apart from the thoughts," Tolle notes. "The thoughts, (and) identification with thoughts, is ego. But the thoughts that go through your mind, of course, are linked to the collective mind of the culture you live in (and) humanity as a whole. So they are not your thoughts as such, but you pick them up from the collective . . . most of them."

"So you identify with thinking," Tolle observes, "and the identification with thinking becomes ego; which means, simply, that you believe in every thought that arises, and you derive your sense of 'who you are' from what your mind is telling you (about) who you are."

And so our thoughts breed beliefs and motions, which in turn breed further reinforcing thoughts, beliefs and emotions, all in a psychological whirl which can quickly drive one 'mad' at any given point in time.

Stopping such thoughts is seemingly the only way in which we will break this vicious spiral. And, it is in the portal of what Tolle simply calls "Being" that we are afforded the silence that will break through into the raucous noise of the ego, bringing with it the clarity and sanity which fosters an emotional respite of peace, forbearance, compassion and well-being to a world of 'thought addicts' and 'emotional junkies.'




As the great 20th-century enlightened sage Ramana Maharshi taught:

"The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward, and make all this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind."

"Money and Wealth Are Only Partial Sources of Happiness"

I have always been unable to believe in an "anthropomorphic" God -  an ethereal 'man-God' somewhere up there, behind or outside the universe. Such a belief is essentially part of humankind's mythological past; and, thankfully, for millenia the world's great wisdom teachers have taught just the opposite, that God (or G_d) is an inward experience. "The kingdom of God is within you," Jesus plainly told the Pharisees, who later had him executed for such heresies:(Luke 17:21). And one cannot enter that kingdom, when one's mind is on the material, rather than spiritual, particularly if one is fixated with, or judges oneself by, "material success."

In his book, "Bhudda Says," (at pp. 30-31), the late spiritual guru, Osho explains this in greater detail, writing:

"God is not a person. You cannot buttress him, you cannot flatter him. You cannot persuade him to your own way; whether you believe in him or not, that doesn't matter."

"A law exists beyond your belief. If you follow it you are happy. If you don't follow it, you become unhappy . . . (T)he whole question is of a discipline, not of prayer. Understand the law and be in harmony with it. Don't be in conflict with it, that's it. . . . (W)henever you are miserable it is just an indication that you have once again gone against the law. . . . Whenever you are in misery . . . watch, observe, analyze your situation, diagnose it - you must be going somewhere against the law, you must be in conflict with the law. . . . You are punishing yourself by being against the law. . . . If you obey, you live in heaven. If you disobey, you live in hell."

But let's be clear, when Osho says if you follow the law "you are happy," it is not because of material goods. It does no good to pray for things, or for people, for that matter. As Osho observes, you cannot "buttress," "flatter" or "annoy" God into providing material goods. Nor will God withhold such goods, as lack of material possessions is unrelated to the operation of what Osho calls "the law."

Or, as the Dalai Lama explains:

"Happiness is mental. Machines cannot provide us with it, nor can we buy it. Money and wealth are only partial sources of happiness, not happiness per se. Those will not produce happiness directly. Happiness must develop from within ourselves; nobody can give it to us. The ultimate source is tranquility, or peace of mind. It doesn't matter if we lack good faculties, a good education or a successful life so long as we have inner confidence."

["The Transformed Mind," pp. 27-28.]

And the law . . . ??? "As a man thinketh, so he is."

The Battle for Happiness

"The battle for happiness is fought and won or lost primarily within the mind. The mind is the absolute key, both to enlightenment and to life. When the mind is peaceful, aware, and under your command,you will be securely happy. When your mind is unaware of its true nature, constantly in turmoil, and in command of you, you will suffer endlessly."

Robert Thurman, "Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within" (Riverhead books, New York: 2004, p. 35). Robert Thurman, a close friend and student of the Dalai Lama, was the first Westerner initiated as a full monk in the Tibetan Bhuddist tradition, before doffing the monk's robes and returning to New York where he is a prolific author, lecturer and tenured Professor at Columbia University. Mr. Thurman's efforts on behalf of humanity in spreading the Bhudda's great message of liberation and on behalf of the Tibetan people struggling to preserve their culture and their message for humanity about Tibet's millennia old experiment in inner spiritual and cultural transcendence have been tireless. It was Mr. Thurman who first turned the Wheel of the Dharma for me as I struggled towards a near fatal life-crisis, when I viewed a recording of the second of his three-part lectures for Tibet House on the Bhudda, the Dharma and the Sangha.