The object of this course is to enter into the apparently simple practices which are used daily as part of larger practices which have been reduced to mere ritual dogma and ceremony. These are not explained as a profound teaching and as such, actually generate a subtle virus of intellectual indifference towards the practices themselves.
THE TRIPLE JEWEL
Part 2
What do we really mean when we recite the Triple Jewel?
I go for Guidance to the Buddha (which is the Buddha within me)!
I go for Guidance to the Dharma (which is the content of the Buddha within me)!
I go for Guidance to (Buddha and Dharma, which is identical to that of) the Sangha within me!
Now that is all very well, but it all becomes poppycock if one does not really believe deeply and sincerely that we have a Buddha Nature. Is that Buddha Nature so difficult to understand that we refuse to acknowledge it? In part it is because we make it mysterious when there is no need for mystery.
When one perceives a tree, what does one capture apart from its normal characteristics received by the senses? It is a quality of “tree-ness.” It has a nature quite unlike flowers, shrubs and other plants. It has a nature quite unlike a cockroach or a horse. If it is a pine then it has a pine nature, does it not, and a tomato has a tomato nature and an elephant has an elephant nature.
Is it so surprising and difficult to accept and understand that we have a human nature…? When we see that things are bad around us we often excuse it saying that it is “human nature.” We say that it “is human nature to suffer.”
Is it really human nature to suffer?
What really makes a tree “a tree”? It is the totality of all the characteristics of growth and development that is present at its inception as a seed. All the information that indeed makes it a tree is in that seed. It is not unacceptable surely to see that all that makes us a human creature is also in our seed, the conceived human creature. Now it is clear that there are two forms of information in that seed. There are the programs that develop our apparent physical individuality and the programs that run the system. Both are ruled by the Life Force, which has two parts, one directed at the body and the other at the mind. In a natural human creature, these two parts are in harmony and balance.
Now that “mind nature” is in great part common to all human creatures, while the “body nature” is individualized on the base of inheritance.
When we speak of the Buddha Nature, we are speaking about the common nature of the human mind.
That is the Buddha Nature that is within us.
That Buddha Nature is masked by our Identities and as a result, since the Identities rule our Bodies with great success, there is a great division between mind and body. That is because it is generally the Visceral and Emotional Identities that rule the body, while it is the Emotional and Perceptual (and Thinking) Identity that rules the mind.
When we say “I go for Guidance to the Buddha (which is the Buddha within me)!” what we are doing is trying to open the door to that Buddha Nature despite Identity resistance. If we do not have confidence that it is really there, of course, it becomes impossible and is just a useless mental exercise.
Once we can accept the fact that the Buddha Nature is really there, the next important step is to see that it is pure and untainted. That is to say that the data within that Buddha Nature, which is to be used as a guide, are uncontaminated. That set of untainted Data we call the Dharma.
How do you personally know that it is untainted…? You don’t. That is where you must have trust and confidence in the Masters. They have seen its untainted state, but the only way you can be sure, is see it for yourself. Then you can see that it is true.
Do you remember what the Kalama Sutra declared? If you do not remember, look it up.
If you can dredge up confidence then you can declar:
I go for Guidance to the Dharma (which is the content of the Buddha within me)! Now if that Confidence is difficult then that is where the Practice of Guru Yoga comes in.
Now we come to the third part.
I go for Guidance to (Buddha and Dharma, which is identical to that of) the Sangha within me! Now that is not too difficult, for one only has to look around at the marvellous miscellany of apparent sentient creatures to see that they are essentially the same. Why should we be so different?
Now an important question arises. Does this Buddha Nature change with time, because if it does not, how did it get there? Indeed it changes with time because that is its evolutionary nature, which is not different than our own bodies or that of other living creatures. But surprisingly it has not changed substantially in ten thousand years since Identity began strangling its means of change.
Now how did that come about?
It comes about because nature requires a confirmation of the necessity of change, as a result we can consider there being a permanent Dharma base and a subsidiary evaluation process. It is rather like your dictionary in the computer. There is the base and your personal dictionary.
Now the system is fantastic really, for when information about attitude, intentions and actions is referred to our human nature for conformation of correctness in a given situation, the new accepted information is put in a special storage place. It cannot be entered into the main Buddha Nature storage until there has been a great deal of reproduction with sufficiently identical new information shared by the species from different sources. This is called the information of the Deme Pool.
Now since the Identities have controlled the world for so long, hardly anything has been accepted into the recent storage bins... The information in the deme pool is therefore practically nil and the result is an unchanging Buddha Nature.
The Identity information and incorrect comportment never reaches our Buddha Nature. We can at least be thankful for that, so our basic nature is unchanged... The Identity information is transmitted from generation to generation by the conditioning of family, friends, church, state culture and education. But none is transmitted to the next seed. Thus it is said that the “sins” of the fathers are passed on even to the sixth generation… then they fade, but new “sins” are conjured up continually by the stained human consciousness so we can expect no falling away.
Our task then is to open the door to that Buddha Nature and the Dharma within us, so that new information can be put into our subsidiary store, and hope that eventually our work in promulgating the Dharma will one day fill our deme pool with Natural Wisdom.
Start working on it… See that Buddha Nature and open your heart (the pure mind).