Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [8]
INNATE AWARENESS IS
THE NATURAL STATE
The wonderful wisdom of the deepest secret teachings of Tibet tell us this: Each of us can (and ultimately must) become enlightened. All we have to do is search inward and discover our own innate perfection. Everything we seek is there. The Dzogchen masters of Tibet say we are all Buddhas. Not Buddhists, Buddhas. I emphasize this because once after a lecture, a woman approached me and said, “But Surya, I’m not a Buddhist; I’m a Roman Catholic. Why do you say we are all Buddhists?” I would like to be more clear about this. Even if you are not a Buddhist, and have no intention of becoming a Buddhist, you are still capable of being a living Buddha. For Buddhism is less a theology or a religion than a promise that certain meditative practices and mind trainings can effectively show us how to awaken our Buddha-nature and liberate us from suffering and confusion.
Buddhism says yes, change is possible. It tells us that no matter what our background, each of us is the creator of his or her own destiny. It tells us that our thoughts, our words, and our deeds create the experience that is our future. It tells us that everything has its own place, everything is sacred, and everything is interconnected, and it introduces a system of integrating all experiences into the path toward realizing innate perfection. Science has made great progress in harnessing and understanding matter. Buddhism, on the other hand, is a profound philosophy that, over the centuries, has developed a systematic method of shaping and developing the heart and mind: a method of awakening the Buddha within.
The problem is that most of us are sleeping Buddhas. To reach enlightenment, our only task is to awaken to who and what we really are—and in so doing to become fully awake and conscious in the most profound sense of the word. “When I am enlightened, all are enlightened,” Buddha said. Help yourself and you help the entire world.
In Pali, the original language of the Buddha scriptures, the word Buddha literally means awake. “Awaken from what?” one might ask. Awaken from the dreams of delusion, confusion, and suffering; awake to all that you are and all you can be. Awake to reality, to truth, to things just as they are.
TODAY, RIGHT NOW
The seeker who sets out upon the way shines bright over the world.
—FROM THE DHAMMAPADA
(SAYINGS OF THE BUDDHA)
If you were able to go inward right now and waken your sleeping Buddha, what would you find? Tibetan Buddhism says that at the heart of you, me, every single person, and all other creatures great and small, is an inner radiance that reflects our essential nature, which is always utterly positive. Tibetans refer to this inner light as pure radiance or innate luminosity; in fact, they call it ground luminosity because it is the “bottom line.” There is nothing after this, and nothing before this. This luminosity is birthless and deathless. It is a luminescent emptiness, called “clear light,” and it is endowed with the heart of unconditional compassion and love.
Whatever your past or present religious beliefs, you will probably recognize that Tibetans are not alone in associating luminosity with enlightenment or an incandescent spiritual presence. In Christian churches and Jewish synagogues as well as Buddhist temples, people light candles that symbolize spiritual luminosity. Saints and other figures are universally represented by shimmering halos of light, surrounded by nimbuses and auras. Some people can even see them in reality. The tradition in Judaism, the religion of my childhood, is for the women in the household to light candles at sundown on Friday night. Why? To invite the light and spirit of God into the temple of the home for the Sabbath.
Think about all the millions of men and women who have bowed their heads in prayer while lighting candles. Do any of us really think that the Buddha, or any other penultimate image of the absolute, needs