Buddha Nature

…The mind’s capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odours with your nose, tasting flavours with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind. At every moment, where language can’t go, that’s your mind.

The sutras say, “A Tathagata’s forms are endless. And so is his awareness.” The endless variety of forms is due to the mind. Its ability to distinguish things, whatever their movement or state, is the mind’s awareness. But the mind has no form and its awareness no limit. Hence it’s said, “A Tathagata’s forms are endless. And so is his awareness.”

A material body of the four elements is trouble. A material body is subject to birth and death. But the real body exists without existing; because a Tathagata’s real body never changes. The sutras say, “People should realize that the Buddha-nature is something that they have always had.” Kashyapa only realized his own nature.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature. This nature is the same as the mind of all Buddhas. Buddhas of the past and future only transmit this mind. Beyond this mind there’s no Buddha anywhere. But deluded people don’t realize that their own mind is the Buddha. They keep searching outside. They never stop invoking Buddhas or worshiping Buddhas and wondering Where is the Buddha? Don’t indulge in such illusions. Just know your mind. Beyond your mind there’s no other Buddha. The sutras say, “Everything that has a form is an illusion.” They also say, “Wherever you are, there’s a Buddha.” Your mind is the Buddha. Don’t use a Buddha to worship a Buddha!