Our True Nature

Whatever our lives are like, our buddha nature is always there. And it is always perfect. We say that not even the buddhas can improve it in their infinite wisdom, nor can sentient beings spoil it in their seemingly infinite confusion.

Our true nature could be compared to the sky, and the confusion of the ordinary mind to clouds. Some days the sky is completely obscured by clouds. When we are down on the ground, looking up, it is very difficult to believe that there is anything else there but clouds. Yet we have only to fly in a plane to discover above the clouds a limitless expanse of clear blue sky. From up there, the clouds we assumed were everything seem so small and so far away down below.

We should always try to remember: The clouds are not the sky and do not “belong” to it. They only hang there and pass by in their slightly ridiculous and nondependent fashion. And they can never stain or mark the sky in any way.

(From the blog The Masculine Heart.)

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Self-protective clinging

Shedding Self-Protective Clinging

Too often Buddhist 'nonattachment' is misconstrued as 'non-loving.' The purpose of Buddhist practice is not to 'renounce' our families or community, but to shed habits of self-protective clinging that prevent us from loving them more unconditionally, powerfully, enjoyably.

- Lama John Makransky, "Family Practice"

In my own life I can certainly attest to the very negative effects of clinging to certain ideas thus inevitably inviting  considerable suffering. Letting go of these ideas, though they have a negative overall influence in one's life, can feel a bit like jumping out of the ship into the unknown depths. Such abandoning of familiar surroundings can seem quite counter intuitive almost like committing a kind of personal suicide. The truth is, it is a kind of personal suicide; a suicide of ego. The ego has a certain set of expectations concerning reality and how one fits into that reality. In fact though, the reality we cling to sometimes so desperately is only a construct of our minds seeking to make sense of such an impermanent situation. The ego is doomed to utterly disappear and this creates clinging, though of course we know the clinging is pointless in the end. There is no way to claw ourselves back on to solid ground. 

I have recently had to jump ship in certain areas of my life because the ideas I had were causing me to suffer terribly. It became obvious that holding on to these ideas was going to bring about even more suffering and I felt that I needed to act in a way that might reverse that direction. It feels at times that I went about it in a very unskillful way. It feels at times that I made this decision to "jump ship" out of fear rather than courage. Certainly such actions do not bring about an immediate resolution to the emotional turmoil, but my hope is that new possibilities will manifest themselves where space has been created.