An excerpt from a teaching called How Buddhists Think by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
In their Nature, all sentient beings are essentially the Buddha––all humans, all animals, even all the microscopic little beings running around on the tips or our noses. We should regard that Nature as the basis or seed of the Path. The Buddha’s revelation of the Path came directly from his awareness of this Nature. Even though we ourselves are this Nature, we have a fixation on self-nature as inherently real. Any idea we have now, any conceptualization, anything that comes from us, arises from thinking of ourselves as a self.
The Buddha gave the Path after he attained Enlightenment, and it arose from his Enlightened intention, from Enlightenment itself. The Path is considered to be “the method.” All the Dharma teachings you receive, even the commentary teachings I may give, all derive from the Buddha’s teachings, or have as their basis the Buddha’s teachings. They are considered precious because they are the “method” that arises from the mind of Enlightenment.
You can only achieve the result of Enlightenment if the method you use arose from the mind of Enlightenment. And you can be certain that this is the case only if you know that the result has been proven again and again. This is because we ourselves cannot recognize the Buddha Nature––not in ourselves, not in any other being. Not yet. All we have to go on is a proven, result-bringing method.
The basis, or cause, brings forth the method, or Path, which is not separate from the goal, the fruit––which is the Awakening into our inherent primordial wisdom state. These three (the basis, the method, and the goal) are inseperable, indistinguishable one from the other. Therefore, we Buddhists never consider that we are moving towards an external goal. We never make the mistake of those involved in a more Western idea of linear development––thinking that they are building a higher self, or even making a connection to a higher self. And we never make the mistake of thinking that we are becoming great beings, or Masters, as those who are involved with linear thinking may do. From our point of view, we haven’t moved at all. Attaining Enlightenment is not gathering together a bunch of facts, as you might do in college. Nor is it the gathering of a bunch of experiences. We are indeed the total of our experiences, but only in a karmic sense.
Enlightenment is actually the “Awakening” to the naked state––the state that is free of all experience, the state that is pure luminosity. We don’t go anywhere. There is no building, no tearing down. There is nothing of the accumulation we value in our life. We have only pacified our chronic, compulsive fixation on self-nature, the fixation we have had since time out of mind. This constitutes a profound difference between Buddhist philosophy and Western metaphysical or religious thinking.
© Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo
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