Hinayanists would say that you could become good. They say that you are neither good nor bad, but you have possibilities of both. Mahayanists would say that you are intrinsically good already, and any obstacles and problems are temporary. The hinayana approach is the good-student approach, and the mahayana approach is that of the good warrior. According to hinayanists, Buddha was an ordinary man, and he achieved ordinary enlightenment. They think that because the Buddha got a splinter in his foot, this showed he was still an ordinary human being who had to die as an ordinary human being as well. They saw the Buddha as a fellow elder, as a good person rather than heroic. But according to the mahayana, the Buddha is the Victorious One. He actually conquered confusion and became a king.
The hinayana is based on repetitive practice. But each time you practice, you connect in a new way to what you are doing. For instance, even though you have spent ten years with the person you love, each time you kiss it is slightly different, and at the same time it is very ordinary. In hinayana monasticism, in particular, there is practice taking place all the time, so the everyday situation is great. That constant repetitive practice makes hinayana monasticism fantastic.
DELIGHTFUL DOUBT
The precision of shamatha and the greater awareness of vipashyana provide the practitioner with a sense of positive ground. The development of both peace and greater awareness produces the possibility of something else, a delightful doubt that you may have the buddha seed in you. You may have been approaching practice impersonally, but something personal may be involved after all. There is a hint of buddha nature, which can only be brought about by accomplishing shamatha-vipashyana practice.
Seeing such a possibility within you is a pleasant surprise. This discovery is not only possible at advanced levels of the path, but it could develop early on, at the beginning of the path. Mahayana practitioners have advance warnings of such pleasant surprises and the possibility of having buddha nature. Not only could arhats, bodhisattvas, and higher beings have that kind of hint, but ordinary laypeople could as well. The discovery of buddha nature is the result of constant meditation practice, extreme diligence, faith, energy, and so forth.
When you begin to sit and discipline yourself a great deal, there is a gradual awakening in spite of any neurosis that comes up. In other words, we could quite safely say that out of hopelessness, greater hope begins to arise. That is the promise of the mahayana path. The discovery of buddha nature is not regarded as a myth and it is not based purely on blind faith, but it could become very real. Discovering this and working with it means you are relating with nonduality. The possibility of a split reality no longer exists, and the factory of karma-making is no longer useful. The past still means a great deal to you. You cannot forget your past with its emotional hang-ups and memories, but you are approaching things in an entirely different way.
When you have completely accomplished the shamatha-vipashyana practice, you have a sense of reward. You experience joy in the possibility of buddha nature, but you may still feel skeptical. Although you begin to feel that buddha nature is a possibility, you think the whole thing may be a hoax. You begin to doubt the teachings. The idea that you already have a built-in buddha in you is something that you cannot quite imagine. It seems to be too good to be true, and you begin to feel that maybe it is not true. You think that the whole thing may be a big put-on, a big joke, a lie.
The birth of mahayana spirit begins with a combination of distrust and the possibility of good news. It is a very powerful emotional experience, a sweet-sour feeling. That quality of joy and delight is wisdom, or jnana,1 and the doubt or distrust is compassion. Doubt and compassion are both very direct. Compassion is somewhat more spacious, but the pain of doubt and compassion is the same. There is a sense of something touching your heart, and it is painful.
At this point, you have the possibility of wisdom and compassion, but they are not completely finalized. It is like a fetus whose limbs are not quite formed. It is as though you are pregnant with buddha nature: you realize that something is happening even before the baby begins to kick. However, this pregnancy is different from ordinary pregnancy. Unlike a fetus, buddha nature is not a foreign body, it is a part of your whole being. You cannot have an abortion because it is too powerful to get rid of. You have to accept the whole thing.
The eighth-century Indian Buddhist scholar Shantideva said that an ordinary person’s attitude is like a dead tree, and a bodhisattva’s attitude is like a growing tree.2 A bodhisattva’s commitment, merit, and development continuously advance, even while you are unconscious or while you are asleep or eating. While you are doing ordinary daily work, the inspiration of the bodhisattva continues to grow in you.
As your practice becomes more strenuous, and you become more and more industrious, you would like to identify yourself with this particular inspiration and doubt. In doing so, the doubt tends to become less hostile and more soft, and the joy less intoxicating. As the joy becomes less intoxicating and more solid, you feel more rooted. It is like a mother who at first feels that pregnancy is a joyful thing, but further along sees that the pregnancy is a responsibility. She begins to approach it in a very businesslike way by going to the doctor, taking the right vitamins, or what have you. So joy begins to transform itself into acceptance and solidity, and doubt begins to become more like a playful complaint.
At this point, the birth of buddha nature is still at a very elementary level, and your experiences of it are temporary. Flashes of buddha nature happen, but then more ordinary things happen as well. But over time those flashes become much more predominant. The only way to acknowledge your buddha nature as a reality is to commit yourself to the path of the bodhisattva. You need to think back and identify yourself with the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the past, who also experienced it. You cannot complain too much, because you begin to realize that you belong to the same family, the family of the Buddha. You have inherited the genes of the Buddha, so you have no choice.
INTRINSIC ENLIGHTENMENT
At the mahayana level, our garbage has already been somewhat cleaned up as a result of hinayana discipline, so we begin to feel a quality of space. We no longer have to struggle with our garbage, so we can sit back and breathe. There is a sense of relief. It is like abandoning a big load, then sitting down and saying “Whew!” That relief comes with a reason. We have something up our sleeve, something else in store, a quality known as tathagatagarbha, or buddha nature. It is because we have that intrinsic basic nature that we have the intelligence and guts to say “Whew!”
In the hinayana path of individual salvation, we are transcending both harming others and the basis of that harm, which is aggression. At the bodhisattva level, we not only transcend harm and causing harm to others, but we begin to create situations where we can be helpful. In our attempts to be helpful, one outstanding and harmful problem that comes up is imposing our views on others. That is what we are trying to cut in the mahayana approach to reality. The reason we impose our own values on the world is because we actually do not care all that much for others. In fact, we really do not care for others at all. We may speak in the name of caring for others and find ourselves in helpful positions such as being a teacher or volunteer, but what we really want is a confirmation of our own existence. When we help someone, it is for our own success and glory alone.
That attitude has become a big stumbling block. You are taught that you are supposed to develop your talents in order to be useful in society, but if you do so purely to build up your own individual ego, that causes problems. In such an atmosphere, it is impossible to experience bodhichitta. The ability to be helpful to others and at the same time to yourself requires a real and genuine journey. It is not simply like getting a credential, or a PhD, and it is not based on wanting to build yourself up or keep others down. Instead, there is a genuine desire to say or do something for your own development as well as for others’ benefit. When you have that attitude, you are a potential bodhisattva. You are inspire
d by the concept of the bodhisattva, a person who is brave in the search for bodhi, or awakening. Along with that potentiality, you have an element that already exists within you completely in your own mind: you possess tathagatagarbha.
Buddha nature means that we each have intrinsic enlightenment, which reacts to the chaos of samsara and aspires to wakefulness. Buddha nature is like a gene, a mind gene or psychological gene. It is like a gene in that the essence of existence can be transmitted from one generation of your physical body to the next. You transmit that gene from one life to the next, rather than from father to son, or mother to daughter. So consciousness goes on continuously, although it is also discontinuous. You have a kind of flow taking place from one body to the next, like electricity that is transmitted from one thing to another, but is at the same time different and separate. It is a psychological process of mind, which is very delicate and insubstantial, and at the same time it is substantial because it is so fickle.
Buddha nature exists constantly. It is your intrinsic essence. You are who you are, and nothing can prevent that. But it could be exaggerated; you could evolve further. The difference between buddha nature and the hinayana idea of enlightenment is that in the hinayana tradition, the emphasis is on developing enlightenment by working toward it with exercises of all kinds. It is like saying that if you do more gymnastic exercises, you might make it to the Olympics. In the mahayana we say that Olympics-ness exists in you already. The hinayana idea that enlightenment is something that you can achieve through training is somewhat removed from the mahayana idea that it is an instinct that already exists in you. According to mahayana, what you are has further potential, but you still are what you are. Rather than becoming a better person, you are what you are. However, you may have never had the chance to experience or work with what you are—and what you are is true wakefulness.
THE NATURE OF THE BODHISATTVA PATH
At the mahayana level, you are inspired to help others, based on the idea that you are less important than they are. It is an obstacle to becoming a mahayanist if you do not have enough sympathy for others and for yourself. According to ordinary logic, you cannot develop the motivation to help others unless you yourself feel good, so you always need some kind of rehearsal. But in this case, no rehearsal is necessary. So the bodhisattva’s approach is entirely different because it is based on warmth, and when there is warmth and compassion, territories do not exist.
In the bodhisattva’s warmth and friendliness, there is no need for reference point or feedback, because it is beginning to take place within the greater vision of shunyata, or emptiness. It has been said that emptiness cannot exist without compassion, and compassion cannot exist without emptiness—they work together. In contrast, in ordinary neurotic friendliness, there is still a need for feedback. There is no heroism or celebration. It’s more like putting on a Band-Aid when you have cut yourself, which has a slight air of patheticness.
The basic attitude of a bodhisattva is to be willing to admit your problems, to be willing to be a fool. A bodhisattva wouldn’t say, “I did silly things yesterday, but it was purely because I got drunk. I apologize for what I did, but today is a different world, and everything is okay. So let’s forget it.” It is the mentality of a real person rather than a fake. There is room for other people to look at you, sneer at you, laugh at you, and work with you. Something is left showing. You are not so completely guarded that nobody can do anything with you. You go through the experience and discipline of the bodhisattva path by yourself, but it is largely based on cooperation.
Becoming a bodhisattva means you automatically become a potential helper or teacher, and people would like to work with somebody who is understanding. You are willing to cooperate with the phenomenal world instead of making enemies with everything. You are not constantly blaming your environment, but you are willing to work with the world. If you have a flat tire, you don’t just call a cab, but you are willing to get down and change the tire. And if someone wants to help you, you don’t say, “Go away. Don’t insult me,” but you bring them in. You are willing to say, “Please come and help, I’ve got a flat tire.” Sharing a problem with somebody becomes a promise of enlightenment. You are actually willing to work with people, willing to open, willing to bend a little bit if necessary.
The mahayana path is extremely broad and vast. As a practitioner of mahayana Buddhism, you are asked hundreds of questions, and you are expected to do all sorts of things. While you are being a boat, you might be asked to be a bridge. While you are being a bridge or a boat, you might be asked to be a highway. While you are being all of them, you might be asked to be a reservoir. You are asked to be all sorts of things, and ideally you are ready to accommodate them all.
CONFUSING EGO’S LOGIC
The virtue of the hinayana is its immense dedication. Whether you are slightly goal oriented or not, there is still a quality of dedication that continues all the time. That dedication, simplicity, and directness are the virtues of the lower yanas.3 But that goal orientation still speaks the language of ego, which might become a problem. Because of that, people begin to step toward the mahayana path. The reason mahayana is regarded as a greater vehicle is because of its larger thinking, its greater vision. Greater vision means not having any goal. That greater vision of not having any goal and just doing the discipline for its own sake rather than because of any promises that arise is very important.
Doing something for its own sake tends to confuse the regular logic of ego. You begin to get very confused and wonder, “If I’m doing this for nothing, what on earth am I doing it for? Why do I have to be nice to somebody or open myself if I don’t feel like it? Why should I sit or develop bodhichitta? What is the logic behind it?” Naturally, a lot of complaints come up, but that is not regarded as regressing from your original intention. It is regarded as the process of ego beginning to get confused and unhappy because something does not go along with its regular logic of tit for tat. Ego’s logic is that whatever you spend, you should get your money’s worth. You can blame that logic for the feeling of antagonism you have when you feel you are being cheated or used. But the obvious question in this case is, “Used by whom?”
Ego’s logic somehow does not work. Usually our feelings of being exploited and other complaints of that nature are merely the squealing of ego and nothing more. All kinds of problems of that nature come along, and from the bodhisattva’s point of view, this is regarded as great news. Finally, we are getting to it! Finally, we are cracking down the old-fashioned fortification of ego’s castle. It is beginning to be fundamentally shaken. It is like a people’s revolt against the monarchy: when the subjects of a particular king cease to pay taxes, the king’s own financial situation becomes shaky. It is possible that he will be unable to live in as rich and wealthy a manner as he would like. So finally the king, or the ego, begins to be shaken by this revolt. In this analogy, the fact that the subjects are boycotting the possibility of further entrapment because they have been conned in the past has quite a lot to do with egolessness. Egolessness comes from non–goal orientation. Transcending goal orientation brings not only the egolessness of individuality alone, but the egolessness of dharmas as well.4 So egolessness becomes very well-grounded and much more realistic and definite.
Oddly, we find that a student of the bodhisattva discipline who has transcended goal orientation can nevertheless speedily attain enlightenment. In fact, this happens much faster than it does for goal-oriented people, who are trying too hard. Students of the bodhisattva discipline have given up the possibility of getting anything for themselves; therefore, they get a lot. That is a kind of joke. It is supposed to be just a footnote, rather than being presented in the mainstream of textbooks, but I think it is worth mentioning. The interesting point is that the actual reason we are prevented from attaining enlightenment right now, at this very minute, is because we want to attain it. Once that situation is changed, once it is completely switched around, we have no further obstacles to
go through. We have no obstacles other than that.
1. Chögyam Trungpa usually referred to prajna as “knowledge,” or “transcendent knowledge,” and to the related term jnana as “wisdom.” Prajna, the sixth paramita or transcendent action of the mahayana, is sherap in Tibetan. She is “knowing,” or “knowledge,” rap is “superior,” or the “best”; so sherap means “superior knowledge.” In Tibetan, jnana is translated as yeshe, or “primordial knowing.” However, at times Trungpa Rinpoche used the term wisdom to refer to prajna, particularly in the context of indivisible upaya and prajna, or skillful means and wisdom, a key teaching of the mahayana path.
2. Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, translated by the Padmakara Translation Group (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997).
3. The lower yanas refer to the two yanas of the hinayana path: the shravakayana, or the path of hearers, and the pratyekabuddhayana, or the path of solitary realizers. For more on these yanas, see volume 1 of the Profound Treasury, chapter 61, “Shravakayana: The Yana of Hearing and Proclaiming,” and chapter 62, “Pratyekabuddhayana: The Yana of Individual Salvation.”
4. Egolessness is said to be twofold: the egolessness of individuality, or self, and the egolessness of dharmas, or phenomena.
Part Two
BUDDHA NATURE
4
Enlightened Genes
Fundamental enlightened mind or essence exists in us all the time. It is there right at the beginning, although there is no beginning. Before any kind of perception occurs, wakefulness is already there—beyond concept, beyond limitation, beyond anything measurable. We can all awaken—that is the hope and the potential.
The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion Page 4
