Buddhist Thought | Tibetan Buddhist Altar

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By Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

An excerpt from a teaching called “How Buddhists Think”

Some years ago, His Holiness the Dalai Lama took part in an interfaith discussion at a cathedral in Washington, D.C. The Episcopalian ministers and Catholic priests repeatedly stressed the sameness at the core of all religions. His Holiness stood up and said that in some respects we are all the same: we all wish for peace on Earth, we wish for the benefit of beings, we wish for the end of suffering, we wish to attain a level of consciousness in which we are unified with our optimum goal, whatever that might be. “But,” he said, “between your religion and my religion there are fundamental differences. And that has to be okay. There has to be unity in diversity.”

Although I would certainly never speak for the Dalai Lama, I assume that the “fundamental differences” to which he referred have to do with Buddhism’s lack of an external God. This is generally not understood by Westerners. The Buddha’s teachings do not advocate the attainment of oneness with a God, with anything external. Instead, the Buddha teaches the essential sameness of all phenomena, pointing out that in the beginning there was no distinction. The Buddha tells us that such a distinction exists only in our mind, which is fixated on self-nature as being inherently real.

In truth, our Nature is all-pervasive. There is no separation. There is no distinction. When Realization is achieved, it is a non-specific awareness, a luminosity, an innate wakefulness. The process of fixation, of contrivance and distinction, is pacified. That is not the same as attaining oneness with anything external. The Buddha leads us to pacify the delusion that causes fixation on duality.

There is no optimum state one has to create, no supreme being towards whom to move. For a Buddhist, the goal is awakening. It is an awakening to the Nature that cannot be nearer, or stronger, or better than it is now. It can never be tainted, pushed away, destroyed. It remains stable and unchanging. It is simply “Suchness.”

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An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “How Buddhists Think”

When the Buddha was asked what kind of being he was, he described himself neither as a god nor as someone who has attained godhood, but simply as “awake.” He was awake to the primordial Wisdom Nature, which is free from the delusion of fixation, from the process of separation, from distinction between subject and object. In him, that process had been pacified: the Buddha was awake to the Nature.

In our Judeo-Christian culture, however, there is an underlying assumption of an external deity toward whom we move. We were brought up with the idea that we should do good things in order to end up in The Good Place, as if there were an external being chalking up marks in a big book. We think of the goal as “out there somewhere,” and we believe we need to move towards it. It’s a subconscious thing: even after hearing the Buddha’s teachings, we still walk away trying to be good little boys and girls, looking to see who is watching.

We tend to think of ourselves as solid and real, and as needing to become something more. We have it in our minds that we should be advanced beings, great beings. I know this from personal experience: when students first come to me, they often say or imply: “You’re supposed to be so wise. Look into me. Am I an advanced being? Am I close to spiritual mastery?”

According to the Buddha’s teaching, such questions are a waste of time. Mastery and failure––like chocolate and pea soup, running and stopping––are merely phenomena. They have no bearing on the truth, which is your Nature. And you don’t need me to answer these questions. You can answer them yourself. How fixated are you on the continuum? On continuing of your continuum? How fixated are you on the solidity of your own form? How much of your time do you spend reinforcing and decorating the superstructure of your ego?

It is safe to say that most people spend all their time fixated on and continuing the continuum. All aspects of our everyday lives––families, jobs, personal time, relationships––reinforce the continuum. And this results from our belief that self-nature is inherently real.