In today’s talk, Catherine Pawasarat Sensei and Doug ‘Qapel’ Duncan explore the topic of Buddha nature. They look at the various terms that are used to describe it and highlight the challenge of talking about Buddha-nature in a way that doesn’t fall into a conceptual trap that separates us from it. Qapel and Sensei also discuss switched-off and switched-on potential, how Buddhanature gets obscured, and how an effective spiritual practice helps remove these obscurations.
Helping people experience a spiritual awakening is the reason Planet Dharma exists. If you are also passionate about unfolding and awakening deeper and more quickly, we encourage you to enroll in one of our online courses. Each year Qapel and Sensei host multiple online courses live on various topics to empower participants to dive deep into their awakening spiritual practice. Learn more about upcoming opportunities to join these online offerings at planetdharma.com/online.
Podcast Transcription:
Welcome to Dharma Food. I’m Christopher, a Lolly Planet Dharmama team member and producer of the podcast in today’s talk Katherine Sensei and Doug couple Duncan explore the topic of Buddha nature, they look at the various terms that are used to describe it and highlight the challenge of talking about buddha nature in a way that doesn’t fall into a conceptual trap which separates us from it. Koppel and Sensei also discussed, switched off and switched-on potential. How Buddha’s nature gets obscured and how an effective spiritual practice helps remove these obscure actions, helping people experience a spiritual awakening is the reason planet karma exists. If you are also passionate about unfolding and awakening deeper and more quickly we encourage you to enroll in one of our online courses each year, couple and Sensei host multiple online courses live on various topics to empower participants to dive deep into their awakening spiritual practice, learn more about upcoming opportunities to join these online offerings at planet dot com slash online and now here’s today’s recording today, we’d like to speak to you about buddha nature and what is buddha nature and what kind of difference does it make in our daily lives in our spiritual practice When we talk about the buddha, the buddha was a historical person of the clan means sage of the Shakya clan.
However often when we talk about a Buddha, we’re not talking about a person, we’re talking about a realization state of rerealization when we talk about rerealization means someone who understands the true nature of reality. So it’s a kind of understanding and when we talk about nature, it’s not an object or a thing it’s more an awareness or a way of being. I was thinking we have these beautiful picture windows here, that are more than a picture window. This is like a drive-in window, we have these big windows out onto nature, this beautiful nature outside here in front of us. And I was gonna say that’s not the kind of nature meant here, but it kind of is right because consciousness is present in everything, including in nature. It’s the natural way of being, the natural way of things And consciousness is everywhere including in nature, especially in nature, which is why we love to go there So when we’re in alignment with nature, the natural way of things, then we’re in touch with this consciousness with this reality, this at one moment this feeling of unity.
So that’s why they say the Buddha or the Christ, they’re not referring to a person, they’re referring to an understanding or realization. So when we talk about Buddha nature, we’re talking about pure perception. We’re talking about consciousness without an object or not necessarily without an object per se, but not seeing any inherent reality in that object. So that means that just this moment, the way it is just now without any comments, observations, thinking or other kinds of marks of it is Buddha nature. And then when we talk about consciousness as a form of awareness, it has certain qualities that we assign names to. But in a sense, if it’s Buddha nature, it can’t be named, you can’t put a name on it because as soon as you do that, you’ve turned it into a concept you’ve turned it into an idea and now you’re caught you’re kind of trapped in the conceptual mind or the thinking mind.
So in that sense, buddha nature is awareness or pure perception and those qualities we assign it like totality, it’s kind of the, it’s the entire field of consciousness not being delineated by discriminations or divisions. It also has a quality of what we call insubstantiality. There’s no object to be found anywhere in the universe really, because as you look deeper and deeper into the atom, it gets less and less substantial So for that reason, this kind of combination of totality and insubstantiality, It’s sometimes called the gaGarbawhich means bach dinosaur garba means womb and tata to means basically that just that. So it’s kind of the womb of form or the womb of manifestation to target a garba Sanskrit and Sanskrit as we said many times, is a language that was created to describe consciousness. So it’s a fascinating language and helpful to have, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say it’s necessary to study it, but it is helpful, and as we’ve described many times if you look in the Sanskrit dictionary for words such as there’ll be many, many, many different definitions of it.
So it’s kind of a philosophical language where it’s very difficult to translate with one word. So as Doug sensei said, garba means womb One translation is womb of such nous to target to means a kind of such nous way of being targeted. Garba can also be translated as the embryo Of one who has gone beyond. So an awakened being is sometimes referred to as one who has gone beyond this understanding of totality and this lifetime is kind of a womb for that We all have Buddha nature, and we all have this potential to have this understanding. So I like to think of us as being in that womb in the process of gestating, being born, and growing up. So despite all the teachings to the contrary, realizing your Buddha nature or realizing the innate quality of the universe as being inherently spacious, Blissful, and empty is not difficult.
It’s quite simple. InIt’so different. It’s so simple that it’s really hard because if you watch a ballerina or a professional athlete do their thing and make it look so easy. But that ease comes with great practice. So the practice that you’re involved in is to understand, first of all, that Buddhism is not a religion, it’s a methodology, it’s a map, you might call it a map to the reel and as you know, a map is not a reel, A map is a concept. It’s a construction and like a recipe, it’s not a cake. So Buddha dharma Buddha realization isn’t the recipe It isn’t the formula, it’s the cake itself. And to take it even just a little bit further. It’s not just the cake, it’s the taste.
There’s no sense hain ving a cake if you don’t eat it. So they sometimes talk about the one taste and circling back on itself. The one taste is that experience of this exact particular moment in your mind that just is by itself without concept, without thinking, without feeling, without even necessarily sensation. Just the field of the mind itself. And so in a sense, buddha dharma isn’t all about the teachings and all about the methods and all about the concepts. It’s about that one taste of resting peacefully in this moment without worrying about you. And the easiest way to do that is to drop dead. In other words, drop dead to yourself, Let yourself be dead now and appreciate the next moment that arises because with the death of you will go, all those things get into trouble. I’d like to emphasize what was said before that this is very easy and to prove it.
I’d like to point out that we have all had this experience of just being in the moment, of the sense of me passing away, and of that being very blissful. Well, that’s the only thing you ever have. I mean in truth, the only thing you ever have is this moment, and all you’re thinking and feeling and sensations and so on about it are constructs. They’re built around ideas, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, etcetera etcetera. So in a way, if your ego is butter, buddha nature is milk, and butter is just a form of milk in a way. Or you could say the same way that a seed is permeated with oil. When you have a seed you think oh I’m going to use the seed for this, that, or the other. But the essence of the seed is oil.
So these are kinds of metaphors, these are metaphors for Buddha nature. So we all have this access to Buddha nature just because everything is permeated with Buddha nature the same way that as Doug sensei says, milk is permeated with butter or seeds are permeated with oil, it’s there all the time in its potential and just could use a little help to emerge. And that’s what the methodologies are for the methodologies of Buddhism. These are the methodologies to allow the oil to emerge from the seed or to allow our Buddha nature to bake up more and more of our awareness or our day. It’s an allowance, it’s a permission, it’s a surrender. It’s an opening and that’s why we talk about it metaphorically is like dropping dead because if you’re just quiet, if you can just find that quiet space where nothing has to happen particularly, then that’s Buddha nature.
Now, the difficulty is that we live in our bodies and we have lives and jobs and careers and so on and and egos. So the difficulty is taking that realization, which is very simple, and remembering to apply it in our day-to-day lives and our interactions and what we do, and that’s where we tend to lose it again because as soon as we get back out into the so-called real world of the material we get caught up in agendas and desires and likes and dislikes and then we forget this buddha nature and that’s where our suffering tends to kick in because fundamentally whatever we’re trying to create or manifest or hold or hang on to or have in our relative worlds is obscuring the buddha nature and in the process of obscuring it, our struggles start because we’ve mistaken the appearance for the reality and to be fair part of the challenge of a spiritual being today is navigating this spending time in Buda nature together simultaneously with living in the contemporary world, which we all do.
So if someone says Greg, what is your opinion, it’s probably not very skillful to say I don’t have an opinion because I am dwelling in such nous, I’m at one with the universe that is probably not gonna help the way that we’re trying to skillfully navigate contemporary society, right, your employer or your colleagues might not find that interesting or amusing or profound and yet we want to keep one ft in that space at all times because that’s where our natural vitality comes from. That’s where our insights come from, That’s where wisdom comes from. That’s where our compassion comes from and we need to walk that balance, live that balance. So the other aspect of this is no obstructions two worlds aren’t in conflict, you don’t have a problem being in Buda nature insofar as you can do that.
And also go about your day-to-day life and your job, you just have to recognize that your day-to-day life and your job is theatre. It’s a production, it’s a movie, it’s a kind of dance that you’re doing, and where we get stuck isn’t in the production of the movie or the dance or whatever it is we’re doing, where we get stuck in is when we measure or start to evaluate how we’re doing good, bad, better worse winning, losing ahead behind love, noon-love working You know, all those things are just constructs of the mind, their theater. And if you’re dwelling in Buddha nature, then you start to see life in particular but everybody’s life as theatre. It’s a, it’s a dance when we get into trouble with people, it’s because they’re refusing to play their role in our dance and we’re not playing the role they want us to play in their dance.
And again, this is where the obscuration of Buddha nature arises. The entire path of teaching all the practices, everything you do for the practices and the teaching is simply to help you see through the theatre of your own life and see the Buddha nature within. That is a great analogy because a truly great actress or actor can play any kind of role And if you’re really good, you can improvise any kind of role depending on the other players on the stage And that’s what can be challenging for us as our ego gives shape to preferences and then we don’t want to play that role, and we don’t want you to play this other role. And that’s where our suffering comes from. Yeah. So, of course, it’s always a great challenge as a teacher to remember that you’re playing the role of a teacher inherently.
You don’t need a teacher, no teacher is necessary. Life is the teacher. There’s no teacher anyway because teachers a concept, and teacher means something has been taught and nothing has to be taught because you already know this nature is what you already are. It’s already the core of what you move from. So where we get caught and our greatest perhaps our greatest obscuration in this process is kind of a belief in substantiality that there’s a thing in front of you. There’s a thing called an idea. There’s a thing called an object and so on. And science is founded on substantiality and they say, well, consciousness is a result of mind and matter. But the truth is the reverse consciousness Mind is the constructor of materiality, substantiality And it does that through karmic tendencies. So let’s take a look at this again.
In Buddhism in particular, we hear a lot about obscuration. So what that’s referring to basically is anything that is obscuring our true Buddha nature, which is there all the time, And then obscure actions cover that up and get in the way of that. And so the spiritual path is really about either removing these obscure actions or allowing the obscuration to fall away because it doesn’t need to be done. You know when I say removing the obscuration we just need to allow it to happen and that’s what every spiritual practice is designed to set up those supporting conditions. So when we talk about the spiritual path, we talk about it sometimes in three phases The first is purification. So that allows a lot of impurities, we could say or obscure attractions sometimes called the file mints to fall away and the realization we realize Buddha nature, oh this has been there all the time and beautification.
Then we get shiny. That’s where the halos come from. Right. The darkness falls away and our true nature is we are beings of light and that’s why in paintings and so on. Holy beings, beings who are whole, who have been reintegrated with their Buddha nature have halos or auras of Buddha nature. Again, enlightenment and liberation are understanding insubstantiality, 90% of the masses are from virtual particles We emerge from nothingness. How do you mean virtual particles? Well, virtual particles aren’t reel in quantum physics. There’s no such thing as a particle for instance, in a vacuum, in space, a Geiger counter will still take. What does that mean? This means that it’s measuring something even though there’s nothing there, what we’re saying is that even in a vacuum there’s consciousness, there’s a consciousness that is ticking and it’s ticking when gathering enough momentum of consciousness itself starts to produce form and from there it starts to create virtual particles.
Virtual atoms! In other words, it’s just another way of saying insubstantiality, nowhere in the universe are you going to find a thing. So when Catherine and I do this it seems like a thing. But what you’re getting is you’re getting a law of relative densities. The density of the vibrational energies of the Catherine Sensei meet the vibrational energies of the Doug Sensei and those gravitational energetic forms bounce against each other and that creates matter and from matter comes everything that we hang on to and care about And so while you’re out in your life, living your life going about, your job, etcetera, etcetera. You need to remember in terms of Buddha-nature that you’re not there there is no Maya to be found There are vibrational energies held together by thought patterns, emotional patterns, karma, and nutrients form, and then it’s the attachment or clinging that Maya frank, for example, has to this that creates her whole life and therefore her suffering and her joys and happiness is because in buddha nature there is neither joy nor happiness, there just is less nous to target the garba buddha nature, whatever you wanna call it, which is inherently blissful.
So just a contemporary note about remembering that we’re not there that were in substantial, the spiritual realization is embodied in this lifetime. Right? And it’s very important that we also be embodied in good physical health and being grounded is very, very important for contemporary spiritual awakening. I think North Americans particular, want a very Western culture, in general, which can very appear and unenergetic we can be a very intellectual lot of spiritual seekers who also explore wings and other substances and must stay grounded on the earth, and experience the spiritualization through the vehicle of this body. So we don’t fly off into yeah into never, never land and this is why some spiritual crisis can happen that way if we’re not embodied, if we’re not grounded that can lead to spiritual crisis which we do not wish for you so grounded in the body please So one way to demonstrate this is a pile of beans.
So you’ve got a pile of beans. Now imagine a pile of beans in front of you and I think you’ll all say there’s a pile of beans. So the pile seems very real. Nobody’s gonna argue. I suppose I hope that there’s a pile of beans there. So let’s take away one bean, let’s take away another bean, we take another bean away until we’ve taken all the beans away. What happened to the pile? We thought the pile was a substantial thing but the pile is a concept. There is nothing called the pile except the concept used to describe reality. You take the beans away, the beans are still there but where did the pile go? So when we talk about our suffering and our struggles in our life and our ungrounded nous, it’s because we don’t recognize the relationship between beans in this case buddha nature and the pile which is a concept and when you apply that to your personal life, you understand your job, your career etcetera etcetera are piles, there are piles of things made up of these insubstantial moments called buddha nature.
So the ego is a construct and that’s what they call the grand delusion or the grand illusion is that the ego is a thing, but it’s a pile of beans. So we all have this Buddha nature and we all have the potential for enlightenment. So according to the classical texts potential may be switched off. However, through the spiritual practices, through the meditative methodologies offered by buBuddhismnd other their wish traditions, it is completely within our power to switch on this potential. And we do this through the cultivation of virtue and that includes things like the Eightfold Noble Path and the pyramids. That’s why we practice those things. We are practicing wholesome habits. That will lead us to a clearer space where we can have, where we can connect with Buddha, realizing this understanding of totality or the nature of reality the true nature of reality.
So imagine a mirror and your mind is a mirror. The mirror by itself is empty of an image until you put something in front of it Now, of course, you know, if a mirror is facing the wall, you’re gonna see the wall, but for a minute just imagine a mirror with nothing in front of it. And then you go stand in front of it. So the mirror generates that image. You see yourself in the mirror and then you walk away and now there’s nothing in the mirror anymore. So your Buddha nature is like a mirror, it reflects or demonstrates whatever’s put in front of it. So if you put soccer in front of the mirror reality will be the soccer game. And if you remove the soccer and you put it in ballet, then ballet will be in front of this mirror. So the nature of Buddha nature is like a mirror, it reflects whatever is put in front of it, and what gets put in front of it is based on karma it’s based on habitual patterns and habitual tendencies of you or me or Catherine or anyone to put something in front of that mirror and then get attached and cling to that image in front of the mirror when it’s still the mirror itself stains clear.
So life, your ego, and your being are like designs drawn on water and as long as you keep drawing your designs on the water you have you a, and if you rest just in the water you have the spaciousness. Now from that point of view go draw whatever design you want. And this is why we cultivate virtue. We developed these habits of say mindfulness but didn’t because it feels better to be in the present moment. So we have all different kinds of methodologies to cultivate that habit of being mindful of being aware, which feels better and allows us to have better contact with our true Buddha nature. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please rate and review dharma if you dare on your favorite podcast app to help more people find and benefit from these teachings and don’t forget to subscribe to get episodes and bonus content sent directly to your device.
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