Bija Andrew Wright 2 December 2009 One Million Watts 1,061 views 2 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

EDITOR’S NOTE: In this excerpt from his book “Your Life as a Buddha: Zen Faith for the 21st Century,” Bija Andrew Wright attempts to describe the intricacies of Buddha-nature. In Buddhism, the idea of Buddha-nature is meant to be an expression of the potential in everyone for enlightenment and becoming a Buddha. Instead of trying to figure out the answers, why not begin with figuring out the questions?

You might have heard of the koan, Joshu’s Dog. A monk asked Joshu in all earnestness, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?”

Joshu answered, “Mu.”

The story points out that the monk was asking earnestly, just in case we mistake the question for a frivolous one. It makes me think of the Dharma combat ceremonies we occasionally do at Still Point, in which people can line up to ask questions of a Dharma student or teacher. Some people come with playful questions, curious to see how the Dharma teacher will react to them. Other people come up to ask more serious questions, and it’s clear they have something weighing on their minds, some struggle or dilemma. They ask with sincerity, humbly coming to a teacher for assistance with the concepts. So Joshu’s student wasn’t asking idly, as a way to pass the time; he was asking earnestly. The whole thing about the dog was weighing heavy on his mind. He really had to know: does Buddha-nature apply even to dogs?

Joshu’s answer was “mu.” Many generations of Zen teachers have written about the implications of this answer. I won’t go too deeply into that here. Translators generally agree that “mu” suggests “negative,” but not exactly the kind of “no” you give when someone asks a yes-or-no question. I sometimes speculate about the possible paraphrases for it:

Monk: Does a dog have Buddha-nature?

Joshu: Don’t.

Or maybe:

Joshu: No kidding.

But the question always makes me wonder just what the student expected as an answer. He asked the question; what kind of answer would satisfy him? He might have imagined that Joshu was going to say, “Actually, dogs don’t have Buddha-nature. However, rats have almost half as much Buddha-nature as a human has. Birds have plenty of it; goats have a lot more Buddha-nature than you might think. Cows used to have it but they lost it, and rabbits—ugh! Don’t get me started on rabbits.”

In other words, he might have expected Joshu to talk about Buddha-nature as a condition. He might have thought of it as something you could get and spend, or something that makes one being better than another. Perhaps he was about to write a paper for his philosophy class at State U, explaining that it is not unethical to kill a dog, because dogs don’t have Buddha-nature like humans do. He wanted to judge, to categorize, to explain.

When we understand that Buddha-nature is not a condition, we can free ourselves from thinking about it conditionally. Our difficulty understanding the concepts of Buddhism often comes from long-held assumptions and notions we habitually use to perceive new information. We won’t quite understand it until we change something about the process of understanding.

Buddhism is very hard to understand if we assume that our deepest nature is impure, flawed and unworthy. We hold on to this view for most of our lives. So many people work from this assumption, and it causes them to seek improvement through changing their own nature—from broken to fixed, from wretched to redeemed. To understand Buddha-nature, we have to accept an inherent goodness in ourselves and others. This is kind of a tricky proposal; we’re on a spiritual path to cultivate and improve ourselves, and we have to desire some kind of change—personal growth, spiritual maturity, whatever. But that change, in my experience, does not come from trying to be someone else. We don’t add layers to ourselves to become more impressive people than we were; we take away our limitations and unhelpful facades to become more honest people. It’s a kind of surrender. You stop struggling with the way you’re trying to be, and start being who you are.

It can be hard to wrap our brains around these three possibly contradictory propositions from the Lotus Sutra:

1. We must work to become Buddhas, and not miss our chance.

2. It’s certain that we will eventually become Buddhas.

3. We are already Buddhas.

These propositions are irreconcilable if we presume that our flawed human nature—the ego—is the base, and wisdom and compassion are something we add on top of that. Sometimes we look at wisdom and compassion as possessions, as things we can acquire and save, and then it’s confusing to say we inherently have them, and yet we must work hard to keep them.

The propositions make sense together only if we trust in our innate nature, knowing that underneath all of our stuff, there’s a pure sacred being. And we can be patient with the process of working through the stuff and baggage that obscures it—and diligent about it, as we learn to let that inner light shine.

- Bija Andrew Wright

PHOTO BY SUPERFANTASTIC