If we have never met our Buddha-nature or true essence face to face, the only thing we perceive are phenomena, including our mental world, so that if a sage talks about a Buddha-nature or essence, we scratch our heads, puzzled. It is the same with the unconditioned. If we have never realized the unconditioned, i.e., nirvana, we only perceive the conditioned world of dependent originations having to follow the path of samsara.
Nevertheless, people try to conceive of their Buddha-nature as if it were something determinate failing to understand that they placed it into the category of conditioned things. This doesn’t work—not in the slightest. It may suffice for a metaphysical discussion but this is certainly not the same as seeing our Buddha nature.
There is much we have to do to prepare ourself for seeing something we have never seen before such as our Buddha-nature. The first thing is to stop trying to conceive of it. It can’t be done. Imagine if all the Knights of the Round Table just sat around and drew pictures of what they imagined the Grail might look like. Sir Galahad might never see the Grail and have the angels take him to heaven!
In all Buddhist traditions the biggest hindrance is our habit of automatically conceiving of our Buddha-nature as if we had seen it. The only thing we have managed to see is the workings of the mind of false thinking, not the Buddha’s Mind which lies beyond the sphere of phenomena and concepts.
The means to at least getting us to the threshold of where we might leave the conditioned and enter the unconditioned or Buddha-nature is one of exhausting our tendency to conceive of Buddha-nature while still accepting an experience that will shatter our former understanding of what Buddha-nature is.
It’s somewhat like a koan in which a teacher asks the student, “What is beyond existence and non-existence?” Then after a year or so of working on this koan, one afternoon a gust of wind slams the front door shut and the student awakens. At that point the student was at the threshold, the door slamming was the push. Subject and object perfectly merged. The Buddha-nature was revealed.
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