Taking Your True Nature As The Path

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:03]Okay. So this is the official welcome to the uh what is winter school session number I think six or seven something like that and I am uh the original uh title for this was start with your own heart for this session and as sometimes happens um [clears throat] I had prepared something I don't always prepare something I sometimes just go with the flow I had prepared something but then at the last minute I decided that [clears throat] doesn't feel right.

[00:00:43]So I'm going to do something a little bit similar but a little bit different.

[00:00:51][clears throat] Excuse me. I had a little bit of a cold.

[00:00:54]So I want to talk about who you are.

[00:00:59]who we are in the ultimate sense, not in the sense of our [clears throat] personal identities.

[00:01:09]Uh you know, who we think we are, the names we have, the labels we ascribe to ourselves, male, female, non-binary, trans, whatever. Straight, gay, bisexual, poly, whatever. Australian, American, British, Irish, European, whatever.

[00:01:29]uh our thoughts, feelings, emotions, the sensations we have, [clears throat] the bodily history we have, the history of being in the in this body. Not talking about that. Those things are temporary, fleeting, and beautiful, definitely [clears throat] valuable, but they're not at all who you are or who we are truly in the absolute [clears throat] sense.

[00:02:03]So, I want to talk a bit about or Buddha nature. Um, this talk initially was meant to be about our true worth and I mean I could do this talk in a sentence. Our true worth, our true value is over to nature.

[00:02:27]That's the talk done.

[00:02:30]But to convince you, I'll go over a little bit [clears throat] and I will draw also on some actual masters rather than just little only sitting here. So I'll talk so so I'll share some um great teachings with you from from actual real masters. So, but I want to start out by saying in our nature, we are no different to the Buddha.

[00:03:03]So, the phrase in our nature and we all probably have heard this so many times, but if we have any um negative feeling about ourselves of any kind, we haven't taken that to heart.

[00:03:20]If we have any judgment about oursel or others in any way, we haven't taken that to heart. It's impossible to have jud have any kind of like positive uh negative sorry feeling about others if we've accepted that in their nature they are the Buddha.

[00:03:41]It's impossible to have any sort of negative feeling about ourselves if we have accepted in our nature we are the same as the Buddha.

[00:03:52]There's no room for anything other than joy, love, compassion and evenness or equinimity [clears throat] if we've accepted that.

[00:04:04][snorts] If we haven't accepted that we judge ourselves and we judge others.

[00:04:13]We feel separate from others.

[00:04:17]We [clears throat] feel either superior or inferior or or neutral towards others.

[00:04:23]And all of the things that torment us and and ruin our lives rise from that lack of recognition.

[00:04:33]So all all the nasty things, greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, uh misery, sadness, anxiety, panic, all of those rise from that misrecognition, from that uh failure to look to our true value, to look to what is actually real rather than constructive. fabricated and illusory.

[00:05:06]All of our misery comes from not having accepted that. Step one, step two, encountered that in our practice.

[00:05:23]There's no other cause of misery.

[00:05:26]It's that that is it. grasping, self-cleing, all of that which causes misery and suffering arises from that lack of recognition.

[00:05:41]In the Tibetan tradition, I'm not sure if you're all what sorts of traditions we're in here. I think it's a mix. In the Tibetan tradition, we have a meditational deity or yidden that represents the part of ourselves that's always been in a state of recognition.

[00:05:57]There is a part of ourselves that's always been in a state of recognition.

[00:06:01]Has never departed from that state of recognition of our true nature. Never will cannot. And the the yidam or representation of that we call that samadra and samantadri together actually union of santadra and santabadri that I just talk about that y or meditation daily for a little bit [clears throat] that we don't need to do yum practice necessarily just want to talk about it to give you some sense of what that means that yiddam deity samabadra and in union They've never been confused. They have never experienced suffering. That's what those idoms represent. If we meditate on them, we use them in our meditation.

[00:06:48]We're entering, we're entering into that part of our selves that's always been there but is currently obscured that recognizes our true value.

[00:07:01]Using all these words, we, our, etc., Of course, they're nonsense on a certain sort of a level because they point to what is fleeting, what is passing, what is fabricated, what is an imagining.

[00:07:18]It's a mirage on the horizon.

[00:07:21]It's no more substantial than that. But that true nature that Buddha nature that's unconditioned which means it was never created. It's was never born and therefore cannot be diminished, cannot be stained, cannot pass away, is undying.

[00:07:47]That's where our true value is in in that nature. It's the same nature as the Buddha.

[00:07:57]So given that that there is a part of ourselves that already recognizes that but it's buried, what can what can we do?

[00:08:11]How can we enter into that state of recognition and stay in that state of recognition?

[00:08:18]Entering into that state of recognition has a couple of stages which we give words to.

[00:08:24]First off to ru to really be confident in our Buddha nature is to be liberated from disturbing emotions. So that's what that word liberation means. To be liberated from disturbing emotions can only be done by by accepting our true nature and also the true nature of all other beings. These has this has to happen together and it does actually naturally happen together.

[00:08:56]When we see all beings, human beings, other animals, insects, birdies as the Buddha, in the nature of the Buddha, there's no negative experience with other beings. And if we see it ourselves in the same way, whatever rises in the mind, whether that be labeled good, bad, or neutral, it doesn't shake that state of knowing what we really are, what all beings really are. So, we're liberated from those things. If we are in a body, which of course we are, stuff will trigger sensations, feelings, emotions, and they will continue to rise in the mind with less frequency, but they will immediately dissolve in that state of knowing who we are.

[00:09:52]Just like it becomes just like something quite funny.

[00:09:59]This stuff just rises and it just passes and it's kind of amusing and funny.

[00:10:03]So that's the first thing. If we have confidence, this is it's felt, but it's also at that point largely intellectual.

[00:10:13]You know, we just have confidence. We've read about Buddha nature. We've we've listened to actual masters and we believe them. We have trust and confidence that they are telling us the truth. This is our ultimate nature. So we have we develop an intellectual confidence which becomes a felt confidence and then disturbing emotions are liberated. It's not that they don't rise anymore. They just li they just dissolve in in and of themselves without any intervention without any antidote being applied.

[00:10:50]That's the first thing that happens when we become confident. We gain the phrase I use is gain certainty that in our nature we are the Buddha. all sentient beings, every single one equal.

[00:11:05]Then the next step is what we call realization.

[00:11:09]It's an interesting word.

[00:11:12]And that simply means to you've gone from intellectual certainty to a real lived experience of your nature in meditation. Whatever form of meditation you do, slowly slowly slowly all these adventicious thoughts, sensations, emotions settle and already there just waiting to be found is our true nature. Make it awareness which has only a few qualities. Love, compassion, joy, equinimity. It also is said to have things like stillness, clarity, movement. But that's ultimately it's it's the four immeasurables.

[00:11:54]So then we have realized our nature right. So the emotions are already dissolving of their own accord. They just rise pop like little bubbles you know.

[00:12:08]Then when we actually have a really felt direct experience of our nature through the practice that's called realization. And for the first period of time when that happens, people can be in and out of that state of recognition.

[00:12:27]And so then the practice is to learn to stabilize that. And then the final thing that happens is when like the masters, they abide in that state all the time.

[00:12:39]They're there all the time. That's what we call enlightenment. So these three things liberation, realization, enlightenment, they're all about Buddha nature, recognizing Buddha nature, directly experiencing Buddha nature. So accepting first, accepting first that it is true, directly experiencing it in our meditation practice or whatever other practice we're doing.

[00:13:07]And thirdly, being so kind of immersed in the practice that that recognition becomes permanent, stable, and we're awakened, we're enlightened.

[00:13:18]So that's kind of an overview of if you take your nature as the path, you know what it will look like. First, come to an intellectual point of trust and confidence that this is true.

[00:13:36]Second sitting meditation doesn't need to be any kind of fancy thing and Tibetan Buddhism we have all these hierarchies of practices you know but fundamentally shamata practice is the foundation and it will naturally evolve into vipashna insight and then into other things naturally it will evolve if the heart's in the right place so just start there with shamata and then over time what becomes like glimpse of one's nature which we can all glimpse right now just by sitting quietly and looking to the gap between what's going on in the mind. You know we can all just my cat does that this is not a rarified thing. You know kitty cats look into the gap. You see them doing it. We can all do that too.

[00:14:31]Just look to the gap. It'll be very fleeting, very fast. We might not even recognize something there. If we just keep sitting, eventually that gap elongates and it becomes quite luminous.

[00:14:48]And then from there magic happens.