Discover/YourBuddhaNature

Your Buddha-Nature

Buddha-nature is the capacity for enlightenment and freedom present within the mind of every being, a fundamental core of goodness, wisdom, and compassion that is hidden by clouds of ignorance—so hidden in fact that we might never even suspect its presence. It is like the sun that continues to shine regardless of the clouds that may cover it. By clearing away those clouds of greed, anger, and selfishness we uncover a state of perfection that is, and always has been, our own true nature.

Although it may be difficult to completely overcome all our limitations and clear away those clouds, the fact that our nature is fundamentally the same as a buddha's is what makes the whole path to enlightenment possible. We already have everything we need to begin walking a path that leads to true happiness. We simply need to have confidence in the presence of our buddha-nature and the courage to begin the journey to uncover it.

What Then?

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What Then?

Everyone has the same buddha-nature, even the Buddha. The only difference is that the Buddha recognized his and the rest of us have not. The goal of Buddhist practice is to allow our true nature to shine forth. We may not be perfect buddhas yet, but we have the capacity to develop wisdom and compassion and cease our commitment to selfishness, greed, and hatred. Buddhist teachings and practices are dedicated to revealing our true nature through retraining the mind and body, both by cultivating the proper outlook and behavior, and by ceasing the negative habits that cause dissatisfaction and suffering. This website is focused on the teachings associated with traditions of training that lead to real liberation and we hope that you can learn a great deal from reading and watching the content here, but please seek out an authentic teacher to engage in any specific practices discussed here.

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What is Buddha-Nature?

In almost all Buddhist traditions, buddha-nature is understood to be the same as the natural luminosity of mind—that is, the mind's natural, pure state of awareness which is free from any duality or defilement. All beings are said to share the potential for full enlightenment because their minds are, in some sense, already enlightened. In East Asian Buddhist traditions, this is known as the doctrine of original enlightenment, while in Tibetan contexts it is called primordial purity. Various Buddhist paths employ diverse methods to shake off the obscurations to enlightenment and cultivate the mind's natural perfection, from quiet sitting to elaborate tantric visualization and yogic endeavors.

Although the teachings related to buddha-nature are vast and the ideas manifest throughout Tibetan Buddhist literature, there is a single core text for the Tibetan tradition, which is called The Treatise on the Ultimate Continuum or the Sublime Continuum in English (learn more about the translation of the title here) and often referred to as the Gyü Lama or the Uttaratantra. In Western scholarship it has become known as the Ratnagotravibhāga. This text was originally composed in Sanskrit and translated into Tibetan sometime in the eleventh century, and many commentaries followed from many traditions right up to present day. Textual sources for these ideas are extremely important to the Buddhist traditions, and you can learn more about the history, texts, and ideas associated with buddha-nature in the pages that follow. Here, too, are some articles that introduce the idea of buddha-nature for a general audience. For more advanced readings, take a look at the Explore page or browse the Library.

Everything Is Buddhanature

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Evidence of our buddha-nature

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Two other metaphors are traditionally used to describe buddha-nature: a golden statue encased in muck and the seed of a mango tree. The first suggests that our buddha-nature is already perfect and only needs to be revealed in order to manifest our enlightenment. The second presents buddha-nature as a potential that must be cultivated in order to attain enlightenment. A third, less common interpretation is that we somehow produce buddhahood and thus acquire buddha-nature at a certain stage of religious accomplishment. These three models—disclosure, transformation, and production—are used by different traditions to define buddha-nature and describe the methods to fully actualize enlightenment.

Not all Buddhist traditions are comfortable with language that describes buddha-nature as the mind's fundamental state, suspecting that such descriptions promote the idea that buddha-nature is some kind of abiding individual self. The Buddha, of course, famously taught that such an idea of a self is wrong, a delusion we create but which causes us suffering. However, buddha-nature is not taught as an individual self but more like the natural characteristic of mind, akin to wet being the natural characteristic of water. Some Buddhist philosophers have rejected buddha-nature simply because it uses positive language. They maintain that ultimate reality cannot be described by language because language is limited by dualism (self and other, good and bad, and so forth), whereas the ultimate is nondual. Such philosophers will only say what the ultimate is not—not permanent, not individualistic, not ignorant, and so forth. The limitations of such a position for teaching about experience are obvious; how can one describe anything without language? Still others have argued that buddha-nature is misguided because it undermines the drive to improve ourselves, as though we must think of ourselves as bereft of good qualities in order to become better people.

In Indian and Tibetan traditions, philosophers have also debated whether buddha-nature is a teaching to take literally or if it was meant to promote and encourage the student to move in the right direction. Early scriptural evidence in fact points to the provisional interpretation: buddha-nature was offered to help those who were discouraged by the difficult philosophical teachings of emptiness or by the daunting project of attaining enlightenment. Most teachers, however, take the position that the mind's natural luminosity is self-evident and need not be explained as a rhetorical trick. They maintain that if the mind were not already enlightened by nature, then enlightenment would have to be produced. This would contradict the definition of ultimate reality—that is, nirvāṇa—as unproduced and unconditioned.

Video

Karmapa on The Nature of All Beings

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A commentary across lifetimes. H.H. the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, comments on a quote of the 3rd Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje: "The nature of all beings is always Buddha" (འགྲོ་བའི་རང་བཞིན་རྟག་ཏུ་སངས་རྒྱས་).

Karmapa, 17th. "All Beings Are Buddha by Nature." Interview with H.H. Karmapa conducted at Vajra Vidja Institute, Sarnath, Varanasi, India, February 2015. Video, 1:41. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pll8nGuWtU&list=PL8sDrkwWlohTjleLphxWRmLge5hgbpAXM.

Karmapa, 17th. "All Beings Are Buddha by Nature." Interview with H.H. Karmapa conducted at Vajra Vidja Institute, Sarnath, Varanasi, India, February 2015. Video, 1:41. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pll8nGuWtU&list=PL8sDrkwWlohTjleLphxWRmLge5hgbpAXM.;Karmapa on The Nature of All Beings;Karmapa, 3rd;The 17th Karmapa, Orgyen Trinley Dorje;རྒྱལ་བ་ཀརྨ་པ་ཨོ་རྒྱན་འཕྲིན་ལས་རྡོ་རྗེ།;rgyal ba karma pa o rgyan 'phrin las rdo rje; Karmapa on The Nature of All Beings

Video

Dealing with Depression: Interview with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo on Study Buddhism

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Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo discusses buddha-nature beautifully for a general audience.

Palmo, Tenzin. "Dealing with Depression." Interview by Matt Linden and Yura Milyutin. Produced by Study Buddhism (Website), September 2016. Video, 3:30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ChZpIBgSo.

Palmo, Tenzin. "Dealing with Depression." Interview by Matt Linden and Yura Milyutin. Produced by Study Buddhism (Website), September 2016. Video, 3:30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ChZpIBgSo.;Dealing with Depression: Interview with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo on Study Buddhism;provisional;potential;Potential or already-perfected;Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo;Dealing with Depression: Interview with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Video

Discovering Buddha Nature: Talk by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

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In this short teaching, Mingyur Rinpoche describes buddha-nature with the metaphor of a diamond covered in mud, explaining how the innate purity of awareness can be obscured, but never changed.

Mingyur, Yongey, 7th. "Discovering Buddha Nature." Produced by Tergar Learning Community, April 7, 2014. Video, 1:48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srRcHz9jVrg.

Mingyur, Yongey, 7th. "Discovering Buddha Nature." Produced by Tergar Learning Community, April 7, 2014. Video, 1:48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srRcHz9jVrg.;Discovering Buddha Nature: Talk by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche;Contemporary;Defining buddha-nature;Metaphors for buddha-nature;Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche;Discovering Buddha Nature

Article

Buddhanature: You're Perfect as You Are

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Why feel bad about yourself when you are naturally aware, loving, and wise? Mingyur Rinpoche explains how to see past the temporary stuff and discover your own buddhanature.

Mingyur Rinpoche. "Buddhanature: You're Perfect as You Are." Lion's Roar, November 8, 2019.

Mingyur Rinpoche. "Buddhanature: You're Perfect as You Are." Lion's Roar, November 8, 2019.;Buddhanature: You're Perfect as You Are;Contemporary;Disclosure model;Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche;&nbsp

The Questions

One of the most common questions about buddha-nature is whether it is the same as or similar to the Christian or Hindu notions of a soul. It is not. Buddha-nature is not an individual entity—there are not separate buddha-natures in each being. Christianity teaches that each person's soul exists independently and will survive that person's death. There is plenty of debate across traditions, but in general the soul is said to be fundamentally polluted by Original Sin and that it requires God's intervention to be saved. The Hindu notion of ātman is similarly understood to be real, but only in the sense of partaking in a universal divine presence called Brahman; the individuality of the ātman is believed to be illusory.

Buddha-nature, in contrast to both of these ideas, is neither individualistic nor a manifestation of a divine presence. Rather, it is the basic faculty of awareness—a natural luminosity that is unchanged no matter how ignorant or benighted we are. It is like water that has been muddied—the water is fundamentally clear, and it will return to that state when left to settle—or like a cloudy sky, where the clarity of the sky remains constant even as clouds pass through it. Because buddha-nature is empty of any conditioning, it is fundamentally pure, no different from the enlightened state of a buddha. For that reason, we all have the potential to cast off ignorance and suffering and achieve buddhahood, and we are solely responsible ourselves for doing so. Questions regarding what buddha-nature actually is, as well as several other questions, have been debated by Buddhist scholars from different traditions through the centuries. To learn more, navigate to the Questions page and the Topics page in the Explore section.

The Questions

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The History

The seeds of buddha-nature teachings were planted in some of the earliest Buddhist scriptures. Passages such as this one, from the Aṅguttaranikāya Sutta — "Luminous, monks, is this mind, but sometimes it is defiled by adventitious defilements"— suggest a natural state that is only temporarily obscured by the stains of saṃsāra. Buddhism before the rise of the Mahāyāna, however, had little use for such a notion, focused as it was on the long and arduous transformation from delusion and suffering into enlightenment.

Only in the early centuries of the Common Era did scriptures teaching buddha-nature begin to circulate and gain attention. These were the so-called buddha-nature scriptures, such as the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, and the Śrīmālādevīsūtra. Drawing on the Mahāyāna doctrine of the unity of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa and the recasting of the Buddha as a universal principle of enlightened mind, they taught that enlightenment is an essential factor of human existence. Rather than be transformed into a buddha, these scriptures taught, one need only reveal one's true nature to become free.

The buddha-nature teachings spread to China starting in the fifth century; there they inspired the composition of the Awakening of Faith and Chinese doctrines such as original enlightenment and sudden enlightenment, becoming part of the standard doctrine of all East Asian Buddhist traditions. Tibetans knew of buddha-nature theory as early as the seventh century, but the teachings spread widely only in the eleventh century, following the translation of the Ratnagotravibhāga, a fifth-century Indian treatise.

	What is Buddha-Nature?		The Questions
	The History		The Texts
	The Traditions		The People

Dharma Teachings

Video

Karmapa on the Nature of Mind

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[START at 6 min 45 secs]. On the morning of January 3, 2013, the Gyalwang Karmapa gave an impromptu teaching on the nature of mind to a large group of international students gathered at the Root Institute for Wisdom Culture, Bodhgaya. Teaching in a mixture of Tibetan and English, he began the session by inviting questions from the students gathered. The first question was soon put forward: How do we experience Buddha-nature on a practical level? "I thought that if you asked me questions it would make it easier for me," he joked in English in response to the depth of the question, adding, "But this question makes it more complicated for me!"

As the laughter died down, the Gyalwang Karmapa delivered a profound and reasoned teaching on Buddha-nature and the nature of mind. "All sentient beings are endowed with the potential for complete Buddhahood," he began.

They are inherently Buddhas, and inherently that Buddha-nature is completely free of any stains -- it is stainless, and perfect. Yet, at the level of relative or immediate experience, our experience is not this way. Our experience is that this perfectly pure Buddha-nature is veiled by our confused outlook.

Shifting the teaching to a deeper level, the Gyalwang Karmapa then described the dharmakaya, or the Buddha's enlightened mind. "Lord Gampopa said that the nature of thoughts is dharmakaya," he explained.

Thoughts and dharmakaya are inseparable. We have this dualistic approach of seeing dharmakaya as pure and thoughts as impure, but we need to understand the inseparability of thoughts and dharmakaya.

The Gyalwang Karmapa spoke directly in English as he continued:

Every moment that we have thought, every moment that thought arises, we have the opportunity to recognize the nature of thought as emptiness or dharmakaya, whatever you want to call it. Thought and the emptiness of its nature are inseparable. We can't make them separate; there's no separation. Because thought itself is emptiness that means actually in everyday life we have lots of opportunity to recognize and realize the nature of thought, or nature of emptiness, or dharmakaya. But we just follow the appearances, the illusions -- we don't look deeper.

The Gyalwang Karmapa then responded to several more questions from the audience, teaching briefly on the progressive views of emptiness within Tibetan Buddhism which culminate in the final Madhyamaka view. The final questioner echoed the thoughts of many gathered when she asked the Gyalwang Karmapa how his students could help and support him. "I feel energized and inspired by all the love and the support that I receive from all of you. That really is sufficient. I don't need anything more than your love and support," he replied, to resounding applause.

Continuing an annual tradition, the teaching took place at the request of the Root Institute for Wisdom Culture. The Gyalwang Karmapa taught to an overflowing gompa, with hundreds of students spilling out into the surrounding balconies and gardens. In addition to mostly international students, the audience also included local Indian children from the Root Institute's school.

Karmapa, 17th. "The Nature of Mind: A Teaching at the Root Institute." Filmed January 3, 2013 in Bodhgaya, India. Produced by Tsurphu Labrang Media. Video, 1:04:37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_uccsZNg5g.

Karmapa, 17th. "The Nature of Mind: A Teaching at the Root Institute." Filmed January 3, 2013 in Bodhgaya, India. Produced by Tsurphu Labrang Media. Video, 1:04:37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_uccsZNg5g.;Karmapa on the Nature of Mind;sems nyid;dharmakāya;The 17th Karmapa, Orgyen Trinley Dorje;རྒྱལ་བ་ཀརྨ་པ་ཨོ་རྒྱན་འཕྲིན་ལས་རྡོ་རྗེ།;rgyal ba karma pa o rgyan 'phrin las rdo rje;The Nature of Mind: a Teaching at the Root Institute, January 3, 2013, Bodhgaya

Video

We Are Frozen

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If you remove the cold from the ice, it becomes what it has always been - water. Our buddha nature is like water under the influence of the cold, the poisons of the mind.

Everest, Tsering. "We Are Frozen." Pt. 1 of 2. Filmed April 28, 2019 at Chagdud Gonpa Odsal Ling, Brazil. Video, 8:39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcsNP5fumks.

Everest, Tsering. "We Are Frozen." Pt. 1 of 2. Filmed April 28, 2019 at Chagdud Gonpa Odsal Ling, Brazil. Video, 8:39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcsNP5fumks.;Lama Tsering: We Are Frozen;Contemporary American Buddhist;Metaphors for buddha-nature;Two Truths;Tsering Everest;Lama Tsering: We Are Frozen, Part 1

Audio

The Mind: Intrinsically Empty, Naturally Radiant: Teaching by Joseph Goldstein

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Excerpt from a Dhamma talk by meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein where he discusses the Buddhist teachings of shunyata and bodhichitta, the unity of wisdom and compassion, and how it is grounded in an experiential understanding of the emptiness of our fixed self nature that we develop through mindfulness practice and meditation. Only by recognizing the intrinsic emptiness of our ego-centric patterns and identity can we come into alignment with our deeper buddha nature, which is naturally radiant and ceaselessly responsive.

"The mind's nature is vivid as a flawless piece of crystal. Intrinsically empty, naturally radiant, ceaselessly responsive." –Shabkar (Source Accessed July 17, 2020)

Goldstein, Joseph. “The Mind: Intrinsically Empty, Naturally Radiant.” Recorded March 25, 2006 at Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge, Barre, MA. Audio, 13:06. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PctzOkbGu0A

Goldstein, Joseph. “The Mind: Intrinsically Empty, Naturally Radiant.” Recorded March 25, 2006 at Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge, Barre, MA. Audio, 13:06. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PctzOkbGu0A;The Mind: Intrinsically Empty, Naturally Radiant: Teaching by Joseph Goldstein;Contemporary American Buddhist;Defining buddha-nature;śūnyatā;Joseph Goldstein;The Mind: Intrinsically Empty, Naturally Radiant

Video

Just Seeing Is Buddha-Nature: Talk by Bon Soeng at Empty Gate Zen Center

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Zen Master Bon Soeng teaches on a verse from the Compass of Zen by Zen Master Seung Sahn (Shambhala Dragon Editions, 1997).

Soeng, Bon. "Just Seeing Is Buddha-Nature." Filmed March 13, 2013 in Berkeley, CA. Video, 33:05, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN9vZjMh65A.

Soeng, Bon. "Just Seeing Is Buddha-Nature." Filmed March 13, 2013 in Berkeley, CA. Video, 33:05, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN9vZjMh65A.;Just Seeing Is Buddha-Nature: Talk by Bon Soeng at Empty Gate Zen Center;Zen - Chan;Jeff Kitzes;Just Seeing Is Buddha-Nature: Talk by Bon Soeng at Empty Gate Zen Center, March 13, 2013

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