Guided Exploration: Finding Your Own Buddha-Nature. Dharma Himalaya Session 02 with Delson Armstrong

Hello and welcome to another episode of Dharma Himalaya. I am your host, Dor, and with me today is the lovely Delson. That's right. Acharya Delson. Acharya Delson. Oh goodness. You also have Sopana? Yes. Sopana's teacher? No, Sopana means the - The illustrious one. - The illustrious one? And what does that mean? - Illustrated. - Illustrated. - Well, Acharya is teacher. - Yeah, that's right. I've been enjoying a sense of expanded awareness, spacious, timeless, and really enjoying the... I don't know exactly how you put it, but catching each, whatever catches the senses or the mind, and like you said, it does bring a great deal of freshness, instead of staying with the train of whatever off of any of them, because you've caught it, leaves you ready to catch the next one. Yes, that's it. It's a great exercise. I had this thought... It's just, before I came down, when I sit long enough, my eyes just want to close, and that's... it's so peaceful.

But when I have them open, this wind was blowing the trees. It's like, oh, when the eyes are closed, it's peaceful. But when the eyes are open, I get to see the winds of karma blowing everything around, and still you're within this sphere of awareness. So the only question I have was what's next, because I'm really enjoying this and I'm happy to have more. Is there another peel of the onion that comes up, or is this just where to work? Well, I guess that's it for our show tonight before we move into the practice. Lots of questions she's dying to ask. We have one discussion last two days. Yeah, we talk about the Buddha. As far as we understand, Buddha is always in the Nibbana element. When he got enlightenment, he always drilled in the Nibbana element, always, 24 hours. Yes.

What do you think? Yeah, that's why he became a Buddha, he completely enlightened, so his mind is always drilled in the Nibbana element. So how he responds to the perceptions and feelings, is it always in the signless, it's always in the signless, on direct and the emptiness? What do you think? What I think, yes. But with the perceptions and feeling, then I don't know how we can do the same as the Buddha, like staying in the Nirvana element, but the perceptions and feelings are always in response to the sign-ness. It's like we spoke about a couple of days ago. Sometimes we use Nibbana to mean the absolute, or the thing that you come into contact with only upon cessation.

There's also a way that we use Nibbana, more like I use fundamental consciousness, and then our task is not to continually have cessation of awareness, rather to continually recognize all phenomena as the expression of Nibbana or fundamental consciousness. So the Buddha always being in Nibbana, so to speak, means two things: one, he is effortlessly continuously recognizing everything as an expression of Nibbana. And there's a way that his mind tends towards dissolving all of perception, cognition, feelings and awareness as a whole into Nibbana by default. So the unenlightened mind tends towards papancha, like building more and more things, and there's an effort that needs to be made to go towards cessation, more and more subtle as we get closer to it. It's still effort. Buddha, no more effort. He's continually poked by the existing karma to create mental structures, but the default is to rest into complete cessation. But you could still say that he's always in contact with the Nibbana element, because whether he is in cessation or not, whether awareness has stopped or not.

There's a recognition that even the structures arising, right, when he's not in cessation, there are manifestations of fundamental consciousness and manifestations of Nibbana. In some sense he's always immersed in Nibbana, whether there's cessation or not, in the sense that he always drilled the mental state into... yeah, and the emptiness and signless and the red line... yeah, he always... so this is the fee characteristic: he always drew in the mental state. So those characteristics are models or ideas, and they help someone who needs to make effort go towards cessation or go towards liberation. The Buddha doesn't have to think, is this directed or not, is the signless or not? He's operating from below the level of needing this model. So to ask, is he in the directed, the signless, the emptiness, it's sort of like asking, in the suttas, where does the flame go when it's extinguished? It's not necessary. So while Buddha is still in the Buddhist Sava, he hasn't completely removed the 10 fetters.

He's not like an arahant yet. He's just a normal person before he becomes the Buddha, yeah? Well, he had the previous attainments, maybe. I forgot, someone told me. And then there's Pandey saying that when you become like an arahant, you don't laugh. Yeah, you told us later, you make a terrible thing to do then, if you can't laugh? Yeah, that's what he said. I know, I didn't laugh, that's what he said. I still, I don't want that. I definitely don't want the Buddhism if I can't laugh. Wait till we break it to his holiness. To hell with the dollar man. That's the case, Jesus, I accept Jesus instead. Anyway, I have no questions, please continue. Any idea of what an enlightened person is not supposed to do is a way that you are

delaying, preventing your own enlightenment. Suppose they are not to do anything. You think an enlightened person is not supposed to be doing, or will not ever do, is a way that you are preventing your own enlightenment. Of course, the enlightened one completely. He got the wisdom. They're not going to do anything, because the kamma effect to carry on, and they know so much about the cause and consequence, everything. Whatever action, whatever process you're making, the life experience, they're all wholesome and bring the

the fruition of the bodhisattva. They won't do anything for themselves, they're doing only beneficial for the rest of the beings. So all of those things, only doing awesome wholesome action, not creating more karma, and doing something for themselves, are all matters of perspective and ways of conceptualizing activity. Yes. And so a Buddha can do something that from one perspective can look wholesome, from another can look unwholesome, because that's in the eye of the beholder. It's a matter of perspective, how you frame the action. But he did have the question, the sutta saying that why you become respected by others, they have five qualities. And I remember Chan will talk about this sutta. There are five qualities, mean high ritual, and then he understands vulnerable truth, and he has a lot of psychic abilities. Yeah. So he did specify their qualities to become a brutal and quite specific list, staying that. So

it's not about how he eats less and how he puts on the robe, and what kind of material or living under the tree. Yeah, so this is how people look at the Buddha. The Buddha saying that it is different. He is safe, he has different qualities. Mm-hmm. So that quality is not something normal people can do. He can divide the body, you know, he can... Yes. He has more abilities. Yeah, super, super, super human ability. Yes. But there are no things that he's now incapable of doing as a human. He did answer the question from the people. He's not the human, he's the wiccan. He never said that he is not human. Don't say that he's not. He never said he's not human. I remember this one guy asked him, he said, I'm the wiccan, that doesn't mean that he's not human. What does Tathagata mean?

Tathagata is the one to become the water. No. Tathagata means one who has gone to that place. Or one from where one has come to that place. What is that place? Nibbana. That's it. Nothing about superhuman, human and all that. There is no such thing as the Buddha as a person. Don't make the Buddha something in your mind as a concept of a superhuman, and all of these things that people are looking for, because they create these models so that they can emulate them and be pretend Buddhas and false arahants and false awakened beings and all of this nonsense that's happening, and it has happened for the last 2500 years. Let go of all of that and just remain in your true nature.

I had to sit through teachings on the marks of the Buddha at one point. The wheels on the hands and the feet, and the turtle bellies for the feet. My favorite was, he's hung like a horse. Really? He can retract. It was like, oh, that means he's hung. And then this one, you could pull it and it would go out for miles. Oh, why? So I was like, why? Why am I sitting here listening to this? The human condition of looking for an ideal can never be quenched.

And so the sutras that talk about the 32 marks of a great man, and, you know, he can put his tongue all the way up to here and then do this and that, and they can be in many places at the same time, all of that. If somebody were there who could do that, would you then believe he's the Buddha? No. Then why do you keep asking these kinds of questions? Because it's playing in my mind. Exactly. You've got to let it go, drop it. And even they said when Buddha was born, arising in the world, when you step, you can walk seven steps with the lotus. Physiologically, do you think a baby can actually do that? And then finding one, and then physiologically, let me ask you, physiologically, you think that a baby can do that? We have a doctor with us right here. Captain zolotai barb was a midwife, and she often had to catch him as they were walking out there leaving with her lotus foot figures who teach the dharma back here. Kid, where do you think you're

going, because they said when Buddha arrived to the world, he already present as a god. Is by the way nowhere in the suttas does it say anything about that. Oh, really? Nowhere in the suttas does it say that when he came out into this world as a baby he got up and stepped seven steps to the tree? Nowhere in the suttas does it say that. Find me one reference in the sutta and I will retract my statement. We have some sutta mentioned but not in Nikaya, which in what coming in Chinese... uh, sutta... ah, yeah. And then night dragon is pulling the water and then help. You have to decide whether you want to believe the Theravadans, or you want to believe the Mahayanas, or you want to believe the Tibetans, or do you want to think for yourself? I just... I just recall my memory from those things. Think for yourself. We were trained to think this way: is higher than god, the Buddha is supreme. Yes, of course it's really because then that's how you get people to worship.

And that's how you get people to give donations. That's how you get people to listen to what you have to say, because people are always looking for a concept of this is higher, therefore I have to worship it, I have to bow down to it, and so on. In Nibbana none of that is there. Nibbana doesn't differentiate between Buddha, non-Buddha, arahant, non-arahant. These are all designations. Yeah, that's true. Nibbana is not about higher. It is that it's all equal. You've gone with a smooth future. Equal is still even. No, equal. How can you inflect your mind such that nothing in experience is even equal? Nothing is better, nothing is worse. Nothing is equal.

They said the ego, actually it doesn't mean really the ego, it means they're never separate. The Buddha nature never separate from all beings. He's saying that all beings have that good nature, means that everyone can attain Nibbana, maybe, some sutta. These are all words. The suttas are just words, whether it's Theravada, Mahayana, they're just words, concepts, just to cause the mind more and more mental proliferation. This means, if you go back to Majjhima Nikaya 21, the simile of the snake. The wrong grasping of the Dhamma. How do you grasp a snake? If you grasp it from the tail, it will spin around and bite you. But the right grasping is for the purpose of letting go.

Not to build up castles in the air. Not to build up gods and devas and maras and brahmas. And this is better and this is not. And this is equal. And this is Nibbana and this is not Nibbana. This is the Buddha. This is not the Buddha. This is lay people, this is monastics, and all of these things. All of that is for the purpose of the so-called lower mind, which seeks control, which seeks to have some level of control over their lives. That's it. Everything anybody has ever said has always had some kind of motive behind it. Every teacher is attached to their teaching. There's no such thing as a teacher. We give that role to somebody when we don't realize that we are our own teacher. Our mind teaches us everything, shows us everything, and yet we externalize it in the form of some teacher who has their own drawbacks as a personality. The decades of study of suttas, the decades of study of academia, the decades of study of is it Theravada better, is Mahayana better, is it Buddha nature, is it Tathagata, is it this or that.

Just look for yourself. All that's done is caused you more suffering. The mind is constantly seeking, seeking, seeking, seeking. *Bell sound* And it's nobody's fault. It's just the way things are in this structure. And because the mind has been conditioned to keep seeking, keep seeking, keep seeking, when it stops and has a moment of peace, and then it seeks: is this really true, is this really it? Yes, it does, because of its conditions. You want to continue. You want to continue with... Do you have to have more questions? Just be angry if you don't have more questions. You're our old teacher. I said no more questions. You don't give me two jobs now. I cannot ask anymore.

Are you sure? Are you sure? I have thousands of questions. Try one more. But somehow it's nice to have someone you really like, to put a lot of faith in, a kind of faith that it is good. Like for me, it's good to have a Buddha like that, not only for you, for many people. What's good about it? Because it's like a model for you to really work on. Then you say, oh, this is Buddha, he has the path, so we have to know how to continue his life to become a lighter. So where's the path? And then we look for the path, and then we try to move a little bit here and there, and then get some teachers, and then... And what would you have to feel if you do not have that? Then I don't know how to practice. Then yeah, if I have not met Buddhism, have not met teachers in my life, then maybe right now. Now.

Yes, now of course. Yeah, no more Buddha to look up to. No, I still like to have a Buddha in my life. If you didn't have a Buddha, there was no Buddha to look to. Right now, right now, with no Buddha, keep feeling. Then I feel sad. If there's no Buddha in my mind, I feel... I feel yeah, I like the Buddha. It's always like that. So I would say, if you stay with what you feel, that is the path for you to become a Buddha. It's not I have to really become a Buddha, but it seems like there's a path, and then I follow his path. I follow his footsteps, walking to it. It is a kind of ah, confidence. Have more confidence. But you're having confidence in the person of the Buddha. When we take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, what does it actually mean? We actually have to really work on the Dharma. No, when I'm asking, when you take refuge in the Buddha, what does it mean?

For me, it means that we have Buddha as the model, and then we follow whatever he practices, whatever Dharma he's giving. So we put it as our light practice, so that's why we put reference on the Buddha and Dharma. But the Buddha as a person, higher than that, it's not just version. No, it's a being. The Buddha as a being. Yeah, it's a b... in the very highest. Yeah, you have to look into that conditioning, because that is what has been the failure of Buddhism the last 2400 years. It's a big failure. They're not talking about Buddha as a person. When we mention the Buddha, we have the names for the Buddha. It's a other heart. So there are nine names that represent him, and those names are not really equal to just a person. It doesn't equal to any person, doesn't equal to any kind of being. You look at those nine qualities, it's not referring to a person at all.

And it's not referring to a super person or super human either. It's not referring to a god or super god. It's not referring to any kind of being. Is the Buddha one thing and Buddha nature another? No. I think Buddha has only one, no? No, no, I mean to say there's Buddha and there's Buddha nature. Is that same or not? I'm asking you, is it the same or is it different? Buddha has the Buddha nature, but Buddha is an enlightened one. The Buddha nature means that we all have the potential to have that Buddha nature, but we are not enlightened. It's not the potential, it's already there, right now. The Buddha nature, the potential, but not... Not the potential.

Just potential. It's already there, and it's obscured. I forgot the word in Pali, in the Theravada notion, of obscured. Oh, the foundation, right? No, that was a word like obscuration. Anyway, it's obscured by the obsessive proliferating activities of mind. One of them being: there is a Buddha, and then an idea of, I will be more like the Buddha, an idea of the future. All of those movements are taking you farther and farther away from the Buddha nature that's already there. And the thing that I was pointing to earlier, and we can continue doing that if you want: the sadness that's there when you relax the concept, even a little bit, is much closer to your own Buddha nature than any concept of Buddha will ever be.

And once you allow yourself to fully come into contact with the sadness, with all the sensations underneath, before even the thing you call sadness, you will less and less need an external concept of a Buddha and something to look through. Because going towards the concept as an escape from your own Buddha nature, that is samsara by definition. That is an idea of some way that I have to respond to my own nature arising right now, through chasing something else, through some concept, some mental construct, some sankhara that's continually moving away from yourself. So it's always a skillful question, if you're, of course, sitting in a place that has safety and resource: what is actually here? What do I have to feel if there's no Buddha, no religion, no ideology, no concept to go out to? How do you have to feel if there's no Buddha? How do you have to feel? This is extreme.

If everything you were ever taught is meaningless, empty, no inherent meaning. All were attempts at pointing you to yourself. But unskillful teachings and teachers re-fire it and make the teaching about the thing. Right? Delson was mentioning the teacher falls in love with the teaching, right? It has attachment with the teaching, and then you inherit that. Instead of the wisdom, you get the attachment. So what if all of the teachings were false? - And how can we... - And before the next thought, before the next question, really fully feel all of your body, everything that you're feeling, all the sensations as deep as possible inside of you, all the way into your bones. Six sense doors, every moment, deepest contact, right here, right now, nothing else.

And feel that, there's an emotion there. And we're here with you in it. It's not something you ever need to escape from. When you go inward, you have peace, but that peace is still not Buddha nature. Why? Feel your pelvis and its weight on the chair and pulled down by gravity. Thank you. If this is all the practice that you did for the next few weeks and months, your life would look very different. Less questions, less uncertainty, less chasing. Every time you have the desire to go after a concept, after a teaching, after a Buddha, instead of going out, you go back to yourself. That's it.

But I quite love the Buddha. I think I love the Buddha. Where is Buddha? Where is Buddha, Mabasa? Where is Buddha? I don't know if you have Buddha in your mind. I still love Buddha. Your love for the idea of the Buddha is your love for yourself. You can reclaim it from the Buddha, from the idea of the Buddha, and bring it to yourself. Whatever love you feel for the Buddha, just like in the TWIM practice, bring it to yourself, to every inch of your body, every micrometer of your body, every cell that makes you up. Each and every one of those cells is the Buddha. Love the Buddha, love the true Buddha.

That's it, you have it, that's it, now just relax into it, now I have for it, just the love and presence that are always here. Always here now. But if I say... Wait. Stay. Just like in practice, a thought comes up, another concept, another question. Go back to yourself, stay with yourself for a little while longer. Try this way. No foam. You have such power of presence already; it's just allowing yourself to trust it. It's already there. You don't have to do so much anymore.

Can I ask questions now? Yeah, being in the present, that's a quality of the awareness. However, when you talk about Buddha nature, should we put the Buddha, the night quality as the Buddha nature, or just the quality, the what quality, with the quality, the night quality, the nine qualities, nine quality as the Buddha nature? It's all pointers. What you are feeling right now, already Buddha nature. So that's it, that's it, and you're coming to deeper and deeper and all-pervasive contact with all of your being, every part of you, until everyone gets the message. It's not true at every stage of practice; there are preliminary practices, there's need to collect the mind sometimes, but for you... See if you can find Buddha nature even in your highly active mind trying to figure it out. Inside the brain, between the ears, the eyes, temples.