There’s this nice saying in Buddhism that “everybody possesses buddha nature.” We hear this lovely term, “buddha nature,” it sounds very nice, vaguely, but we have all these weird ideas of what it means.
It’s very, very logical you know? I like to use the analogy of an acorn. It’s a good analogy, a really nice analogy.
If you look at an acorn on the ground, and you’re a little girl, you wouldn’t know what it was, you’d have no idea – you’d have to be told. It might be right underneath a great big oak tree, and you look at that big fat thing, the oak tree, and you look on the ground, and you see a little thing, and you say, “What’s that, Mummy?” and she says, “Oh, darling, that’s an acorn.” And you’ll say, “Well, what’s an acorn?” Because you can’t see by looking at it – it just looks like a little round thing.
I remember once using this analogy, and a person who was a mathematician gave me the proper name for that shape – a very complicated Latin name. I can’t remember it. It’s not quite a cylinder, not quite a cone. Let’s just call it an oval or something, even though it’s not. It’s this little oval thing, and it looks like it’s even got a little hat on it, doesn’t it, so it looks very cute.
But you don’t know what it is. You can look at that little thing, and you can look at an oak tree for ten million years, it will never occur to you that what you do with an acorn is put it in the ground, and then you give it time and space and water and air and lots of nourishment, and it’ll turn into an oak tree. Nobody in the universe can see that: it’s not evident to us.
If your mother was speaking like a Buddhist, her answer to your question, “What’s an acorn?” would be, “Oh, darling, that’s a potential oak tree.”
We know the word for that in English is called a “seed,” and we know a seed, by definition, is the thing you put in the ground that is the main cause of the fruit at the end, like with an apple tree, or whatever it might be, you know? The seed is the main cause.
This is the analogy the Buddha uses all the time for our own potential.
Buddha says we’ve all got this potential to be a buddha, and, like I often say, and I’ll say it again here, the etymology of that word is so tasty, it tells us so much. “Budh” implies the eradication from our mind of all the rubbish: all the delusions, all the ego, all the fears and the nonsense and the anger and the jealousy, which we, in our culture, assume are normal parts of a normal person, so normal that you think you’d be weird if you didn’t have them.
I remember recently, in a course, one woman who’d never heard that. She said, “That’s absurd, nobody can become that way.”
And this is understandable. We’re probably really nice people, you know, but still look how the negative stuff in our head looms large. The voices are so loud we can be forgiven for thinking that is our true nature; we can be forgiven for thinking that’s what a human being is.
The Buddha’s view is, yeah, we are that now – an acorn is just a little baby thing with a hat on it now – but look what it can become, look what its real nature is. This is very empowering, very encouraging.
We can’t even imagine a person who’s got no fear, no depression, no anxiety, no panic, no jealousy, no low self-esteem – we just can’t even imagine. That sounds hysterical because normally our view in the world – and our own view, our own instinctive view – is that this is very real stuff. It’s very real, and it’s definitely part of who I am, and, in fact, we think it even defines us. This is why we get so miserable. The Buddha’s view is “No, you can get rid of it.” This is an outrageous idea.
But not only can we rid our mind of all the rubbish, utterly. The syllable “dha” implies we can develop to perfection all the other stuff in our mind: love and compassion and wisdom. This is even more amazing; we don’t have views like this.
It’s easy to hear the words, it sounds kind of cute, but that’s the meaning of “buddha.” Buddha’s telling us – from his own experience, from his own observation, from his own hard work on his own mind, his own investigation of the universe and his own mind – that we’ve all got this potential: in fact, by definition, a mind – a mind – is a potential buddha.
An acorn is, by definition, a potential oak tree. Oak tree-ness is what defines an acorn.
A squirrel doesn’t know that. A squirrel sees breakfast. We might see a weapon and throw it at somebody’s head. This is an interesting point: an acorn can be breakfast. Or we could use it as jewelry. No one says it can’t be breakfast; no one says you can’t use it as a weapon – although it’s not cool to do that, it can function as that.
But what is it in its bones? It’s a potential oak tree. And what are we in our bones? What are we actually? A potential buddha.
The actual meaning of every living being possessing buddha nature, remember, is that that potential defines us, tells us our purpose. Acorns are, by definition, potential oak trees. It’s a powerful meaning. You could use an acorn as jewelry, it could be a squirrel’s breakfast– no problem. But that’s too limited, isn’t it? Allow it to become what it really is, an oak tree!
We could become musicians or cooks or social workers, but that’s limited, isn’t it? Our actual potential is to be free from all delusions and full of all wisdom and goodness. Wow.
So, yes, we are limited right now, but the limitations, the delusions, the neuroses, don’t define us – nor does our being a cook or a musician define us, either; they too are limited.
Identifying with our goodness, our wisdom, our potential for infinite wisdom, infinite compassion, infinite joy and aiming to develop it– that’s the job to be done.