First of all, in Buddhism were not that interested in talking
about the Buddha himself. Nor was he; he wasnt interested in
people believing in him, so to this day Buddhism has never
encouraged its followers simply to believe in the Buddha. We have
always been more interested in understanding human psychology, the
nature of the mind. Thus, Buddhist practitioners always try to
understand their own mental attitudes, concepts, perceptions and
consciousness. Those are the things that really matter.
Otherwise, if you forget about yourself and your delusions and
focus instead on some lofty idealike What is Buddha?your
spiritual journey becomes a dream-like hallucination. Thats
possible; be careful. In your mind theres no connection between
Buddha, or God, and yourself. Theyre completely separate things:
youre completely down here; Buddha, or God, is completely up
there. Theres no connection whatsoever. Its not realistic to
think that way. Its too extreme. Youre putting one thing down at
the lower extreme and the other way up at the upper. In Buddhism,
we call that kind of mind dualistic.
Furthermore, if humans are completely negative by nature, what is
the point of seeking a higher idea? Anyway, ideas are not
realizations. People always want to know all about the highest
attainments or the nature of God, but such intellectual knowledge
has nothing to do with their lives or their minds. True religion
should be the pursuit of self-realization, not an exercise in the
accumulation of facts.
In Buddhism, we are not particularly interested in the quest for
intellectual knowledge alone. We are much more interested in
understanding whats happening here and now, in comprehending our
present experiences, what we are at this very moment, our
fundamental nature. We want to know how to find satisfaction, how
to find happiness and joy instead of depression and misery, how to
overcome the feeling that our nature is totally negative.
Lord Buddha himself taught that basically, human nature is pure,
egoless, just as the sky is by nature clear, not cloudy. Clouds
come and go, but the blue sky is always there; clouds dont alter
the fundamental nature of the sky. Similarly, the human mind is
fundamentally pure, not one with the ego. Anyway, whether you are a
religious person or not, if you cant separate yourself from your
ego, youre completely misguided; youve created for yourself a
totally unrealistic philosophy of life that has nothing whatsoever
to do with reality.
