The Audacity of Enlightenment

I’ve done several posts over the last three months explaining what I know to be true about buddhadharma: that we already have buddhanature, and that enlightenment is not an extraordinary experience, but nothing other than our ordinary minds.

I wrote about this on June 30:

It got quite a response of “No way, you can’t be already enlightened. Check with your teacher.” People didn’t believe me. They laughed at me. They thought I was being grandiose and egotistical, like who am I to think that I’m awakened? How could I have the audacity to believe that I’m already enlightened? Well, let’s put it this way. I studied law, and in law, we have this method of interpretation called “plain language.” Read the words—what do they say? So just read the following words of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, which are the very last paragraph on the last page of his course book “Introduction to Buddhism”:

What we are looking for, the true nature of our mind, has been with us all the time. It is with us now, in this very moment. The teachings say that if we can penetrate the essence of our present thought, whatever it may be, if we can look at it directly and rest within it’s nature, then we can realize the wisdom of the Buddha: ordinary mind, naked awareness, luminous emptiness, the ultimate truth. The future will always be out of reach. We will never meet up with the Buddha of the future. The present Buddha is always within reach. Do you see this Buddha? Where are you looking?

The shorter version of this: “There is no difference between this moment and enlightenment.” Dzogchen Ponlop. Whatever that is. 

So there you go. I “checked with my teacher” and that’s what he said. In fact, none of this originates with me, it comes from studying with my teacher, Dzogchen Ponlop. Enlightenment is nothing other than our ordinary minds, but altered by the awareness that we have buddhanature.

You can refuse this if you want to. Or you can simply accept the truth of it. I accept the truth of it because I have no reason to refute it. I’m a scholar of social science, and I refute things every day. It’s my job to be skeptical, to challenge, to oppose, to dissect and deconstruct the statements of others. I find no reason to refute the truth of these statements. Therefore, I accept them as a “working thesis”, that is, I accept them as true until I find some reason to refute them. And I haven’t found a reason yet. So why not accept it? It’s not grandiose at all, in fact, it’s quite humbling. I did nothing to produce or achieve enlightenment. I was born with buddhanature; we all were. Buddhanature permeates all of existence. I cannot generate it, earn it, or meditate it into being. I cannot add to it or take anything away from it. It simply IS.

Sorry to spoil the punchline of DPR’s wonderful work, “Introduction to Buddhism.” But take the course yourself, it’s a great foundation for all studies in Buddhism.