Buddha Nature

Home, our True Nature, our Buddha-Nature is a strange place.
We are already there, we are already it.
But we cannot experience nor see it yet
It is like our back – our backbone.
We cannot see it, but it is the base for our entire body.
In order to see it, we need to turn 180 degrees, to change our perspective.
If we grow from being an embryo to a foetus and subsequently a human being, all the parts of our body grow from this place.
It is the central part that supports all our actions.
Being the central nerve-system, it is the source of all our actions.
But usually we cannot see that.
We see merely that which we can perceive what lies in front of us: the effects from our actions.

When we for example move our hand, we believe that we are moving.
But it is not the hand that initiates the action, it is the nerve system.
We, the nerve system, initiate the action and the hand responds.
The Buddha-Nature works the same way.
When the Buddha-Nature expresses itself, it manifests itself through the Self.
The Buddha-Nature is the source.
The Self is the action, the reflection of it.

But we identify ourselves with the actions.
We believe the actions to be real, to be defining us.
This is why we get attached to our actions, our expressions.
Without such expressions, we do not exist.
By perceiving our actions to be ourselves we forgot where those actions originate from.
We have forgotten that we are the Source of our own expressions.
We can go back to the place where all the actions originate, where we come from.
The Prajna Paramita.
and even beyond that.
To the place that holds all the possibilities.

But there is something between our current state and that place, our illuminated state.
There are obstacles, realities that prevent us from waking up and returning to the Source.
They fix ourselves upon our manifestation as the ‘Self’.
We call them preferences, convictions, conditionings, expectations, pains and fears.

It is like a frightened child holding its mothers leg convulsively.
If we push it away, it will cling onto it the harder.
If we heal the fear, create trust, then the child lets go and the mother can move freely and guide the child in life.

When we are so convulsively stuck in life, we refer to it as Dukkha.
It is like a wheel that can no longer spin.
We need to release the wheel, let it spin.
It then becomes Sukha, spinning, fluent.
We are not the imprints the wheel makes in the soil.
We are the wheel itself.
And more than that, we are the vehicle itself.
The Mahayana.
When we are free, when we spin, when we no longer identify with our effects, with our Self, then life takes us to places we never expected.
We will find the endless space, the freedom and the all-embracing compassion so as to act justly at the right time.

We will then realize that our backbone, our Buddha-Nature, is our True Nature.