The Strikingly Optimistic Agency of the Doctrine of Buddha Nature

A modern koan -- Question:  Do you have Buddha Nature?  Answer:  Well, duh.

The concept of "Buddha Nature" is often difficult to understand, but it is a radically optimistic doctrine.  It says that not only are we responsible for our lives, but that we already have everything we need to liberate ourselves from suffering.  If we compare it to many other religions, it is surprising how much agency this doctrine grants each of us individually. 

For example, consider the doctrine of original sin in Christianity – we somehow personally are separated from Grace because of something we didn’t do (eating the “apple” in the Garden of Eden).  Unfortunately we are also unable to heal this separation by ourselves.  We need an intermediary (Jesus) or two (and a priest) to bridge the gap for us.  That is, we had no agency over our own fall, nor do we have it over our salvation.  In contrast, Buddhism agrees that we fall from grace, but it’s because of something we did. In fact, we fall from grace regularly every time we do something harmful.  More importantly, however, we have the agency to fix the problems we create.  Indeed, we are really the only ones who can.

The great poet Ann Onymous once said, “A lot of growing up takes place between ‘it fell’ and ‘I broke it.’”  I personally believe that a mark of spiritual maturity is taking responsibility for one’s mind and actions.  The Buddhist project to me, therefore, is one of growing up – learning to see clearly the connected causes and conditions and to take responsibility for what we can when we can.  If “enlightenment” is some mystical state, then we are not granted agency over our own lives.  The Pali texts do not describe enlightenment as paranormal or external, but that enlightenment rises up in the individual, “as though he recognized it – had always known it” (Armstrong, 2001, p. 104).  That is, our own natures are sufficient, and we have full agency over our own salvation. 

Perhaps even more strikingly positive is the reason for the fall from grace/awakening/Nirvana/union with God.  In Christianity the reason is the inherent sinfulness of man (actually, since the Biblical texts were written by men, most of the blame is shifted to women).  In Buddhism, the reason for our bad behaviors is because of ignorance and confusion covering over our inherently good nature (Buddha Nature or Basic Goodness).  Thus we do not need an external agent or savior – we just need to see through the confusion and uncover our basic nature.  This is a powerfully optimistic doctrine.  We already have everything we need to awaken.  As noted by Thich Thien-An (p. 146), “Zen holds that reality is to be gotten hold of, not externally, but inwardly.  The truth is to be found in our own nature and nowhere else.  Every living being has within himself the Buddha nature, the principle of enlightenment.”

References:

                Armstrong, K. (2001).  Buddha. New York: Penguin Group.

           Thien-An, T. (1975). Zen philosophy, Zen practice. Berkeley, CA: Dharma Publishing.

Painting: Adam and Eve by Tintoretto; Originally published on the Interdependence Project blog

Were you free to make a choice you didn't know you had? Where free will begins.

In a previous post, I asked you to consider the example of someone insulting or offending us, we get angry and immediately think of things we would like to say or do in response.  What would our motivation be for saying or doing any of them? Although you could spin it in several directions, such as to clarify the others’ mistake, to defend yourself, to get back at him/her, to put the other in his place, to just hit him, etc., they actually have one thing in common – they are motivated by the feeling that they will make you happier if you do it. 

Now here’s the funny thing – if you were to examine the motivation behind why the other person said or did whatever it was that he did, it’s exactly the same reason.  He thought it would make him happier.  In this respect, you two are always on the same wavelength. So one way to work with the negative feelings is to recognize that there is no fundamental difference between either of your perspectives. The problem is that our perspective usually does not include the other’s perspective. 

Humans suck at seeing another’s perspective.  There are many reasons for it, but a lot of it is just how the human brain works.  There is a cognitive bias that is so basic to all human thought that it is called the Fundamental Attribution Error.  When someone does something, especially something annoying, we tend to attribute the causes to something internal and/or essential about that person - he is just a jerk. In contrast, when we do something that could be annoying, however, we tend to attribute the causes to external situations.  We had no other choice, or we're in a hurry.

It's interesting to note that to ourselves, we always have a “good” reason for why we are doing whatever selfish thing it is we’re doing.

The corollary to the fundamental attribution error is what might be called the fundamental self error – that we relate everything to ourselves as if everything is a personal affront or benefit. The other part of a fundamental self error is that we believe there is a fundamental self – something unchanging at the core that things happen to. If we’re a stable permanent thing, then any changes that occur are from the outside happening TO us. We get to pretend constantly that we’re the victim, even of our own feelings. For example, how often have you said, “That thing you did MADE me mad,” or “I fell in love with you because you’re so sweet?" We interpret even our own feelings as something that happened to us because of external circumstances.

The irony is that we take no responsibility for our own actions and reactions, but we call this freedom.

Wouldn’t true freedom be the ability to not feel controlled by the situations and our emotional reactions? Wouldn’t true freedom be the ability to see all the perspectives?  If we believe that free will is the ability to make our own choices, when our perspective is so narrow that we can’t even understand the choices available to us, how can we have any free will? Were you free to make a choice that you didn’t even know you had?

Psychologist Roy Baumeister said, “Self-control counts as a kind of freedom because it begins with not acting on every impulse. The simple brain acts whenever something triggers a response: A hungry creature sees food and eats it. The most recently evolved parts of the human brain have an extensive mechanism for overriding those impulses, which enables us to reject food when we’re hungry, whether it’s because we’re dieting, vegetarian, keeping kosher, or mistrustful of the food.” 

So freedom begins when we STOP acting, or at least slow down the reacting. This is also the first step to being open to seeing other perspectives.  As long as we continue to act in our habitual ways, getting into the same arguments over and over again, continuing to believe that we're right, we will never be free.

This is where meditation can be such valuable training. One technique that can help us begin to slow the automatic processes of reacting down is called Urge Surfing, which can be read about here and there is a nice short guided example available here.

Image sources: Here and here.