Uncovering Our Buddha Nature
The Buddha grew up in relative luxury for the time and the conditions of the city-state in which he was raised as a prince. In his teens he began to exhibit a restlessness not uncommon to people at that age. He wanted to know more than he could see within the walls in which he was ensconced. He didn’t know it initially, but he was trapped by his father’s love to protect him, as well as by the comforts he was afforded. Contemporaneously, we refer to this as the “golden chains” syndrome—where people are bound by comfort, love, and care, but ultimately kept separate from developing their essential selves in the world.
Birds struggle when they leave the nest and learn to fly. Caterpillars becoming butterflies must go through the stress and turmoil of that process. Tests were done where the cocoon was cut open to make it easier for the butterfly, and when the butterfly emerged it was unable to fly because it had not developed the necessary strength. Adversity, strength, danger, and fear are things loving parents try to protect their children from. And when a child is raised with the considerable means of a prince, there is seemingly no end to the distractions and comforts by which one may become imprisoned.
The Buddha learned archery and falconry. He enjoyed romantic connections with many women. He studied languages and the philosophies of his time. He had no shortage of challenges in martial training, sports and studies, and was supported at every opportunity in the actualization of his dreams. But where they his dreams? Or was he being directed toward his father’s and his society’s expectations? And did this leave something unfulfilled within him?
The restlessness inside a young person does not adhere to logic. It is not bound by the constraints of conventional understanding. It is an itch, an urge—something that pushes and pulls. Like a chick breaking through its shell, it can be painful, and it can lead a young person into painful situations. There were dangers on the streets in the Buddha’s time. Particularly, there was a social upheaval sometimes compared to Paris in the 20’s or Western World in the 1960’s. Young people were pulled away from societal and religious convention into the contemporaneous turbulence of influence. There were ascetics who had abandoned the safety of convention. And this has always been threatening to the status quo. In the Buddha’s case, his father, as King of the Sakya clan, had very specific ideas about his son’s calling. Siddhartha Gautama who was expected to succeed his father was expected to live a life commensurate with wealth and power of his station.
Yet, the Buddha was pulled toward his own path. Like kids jumping from their bedroom windows at night—the Buddha eventually snuck out of the palace in order to glimpse the world. Not yet ready to leave his environment entirely, he simply wanted to see what lay beyond the walls. He encountered the basic marks of existence, birth, old age, sickness and death, that he had been shielded from. This was eye-opening to him. He saw an old man. He saw a funeral with a corpse. He saw a sick man, beggars, monks. He saw suffering and dissolution. And naively asked why. Why did people suffer?
Rather than fleeing back to the safety of the palace, these discoveries strengthened his resolve to move further from away from the confines of comfort and into a deeper understanding of the nature of humanity. This became the essential characteristic that defined the Buddha throughout his life: the need to see further, to seek more clearly, to understand with direct connection what the world was beyond the usual assumptions that kept his people trapped in cycles of suffering.
He left his position, his family and his clan and traveled, studying with different ascetics and engaging in many practices and techniques—some very extreme. Having been raised in great comfort, he was nevertheless an exemplary student of meditation and yoga. He demonstrated a profound ability to abandon the trappings of the world in order to discover what was actually occurring in his heart and mind. He understood relatively early that the trappings of the world were distractions and, ultimately, sources of discomfort. There was something within human beings he wanted to reach. How could true happiness be found? How could samadhi and serenity—promised by his teachers and guides—be realized in his very life?
At some point, fasting and meditating left him exhausted, depleted, and emptied. He sat beneath the Bodhi tree. He no longer had the energy to focus his mind or apply effort. All that remained was surrender—a state of profound acquiescence. A woman came to him offering sustenance. She saw his weakened state but also sensed his presence and power. He simply needed enough energy to place his mind fully in the present moment in order to move beyond.
In this state of deep surrender, he broke his vow accepting what was offered and ate a small amount of rice milk porridge. Soon after, his strength returned, and with it the ability to settle and clarify his mind. He opened to a state neither of great pleasure nor of great pain, but beyond those designations—into a serenity that transcended good and bad, pleasure and suffering. He reached the essential state of being human. It was not an exalted place befitting a king. It was rock bottom, empty of expectation. It was just so.
As he continued to sit beneath the tree, eating modestly and rebuilding his energy, he realized an extreme clarity which stabilized into an experience referred to as enlightenment.
Some say he attained Nirvana. But Nirvana is the absence of suffering, and suffering is one of the primary human experiences. So, Enlightenment is the realization of Nirvana within samsara—it is seeing Nirvana not apart from the world but expressed within it. This is the inseparability of samsara and Nirvana, the point at which duality dissolves and we become one with experience itself.
Stepping back, we can see a process unfold. First, there is the indescribable urge to understand more, to experience more. This urge often becomes distorted when we seek shortcuts—through excessive drugs, alcohol, material accumulation, or superficial experience. The search begins inward, with personal experience. The Buddha realized the essence of being human, who he was in the present moment beyond concept. When the path is channeled into direct, embodied experience rather than abstract theory, a vast richness is revealed.
Is this experience available to us in the busy absorption of our busy lives? It sounds good, and while the Buddha’s trials have pathed the way for us, is important to make offerings of our attachment, and attachment to our comforting yet limiting, concepts of how we think we are. Our righteous anger, our justifiable love and the veils of ignorance we hide behind.
Can we do this?
The experience of the Buddha indicated we can. But the Buddha can’t affect realization for us. The Buddha is gone. But to Buddhists the Buddha is the example. He laid the groundwork for how we can journey to awakening, incrementally, with great patience. And this is entirely possible because the same components – inquisitiveness, a longing to know more and the empathy for the suffering of beings – exist in all of us. This Buddha Nature is our human birthright.
The Buddha’s awakening, is our awakening.
