The principles of Buddhism allow us to have an accurate, deep,
and realistic response to uneasy situations. The word "buddha"
literally means awakened one. It's about arriving at the furthest
shore, and we talk about it in many poetic ways. We talk about our
life being like a journey across the great ocean. There's a funny
story about that, by the way. Here we know what an ocean is; in
Tibet, they don't. One of the greatest teachers in Tibet is His
Holiness Jigme Puntsok Rinpoche, who in fact visited Nova Scotia
back in the early nineties. The first place he arrived in the West
was Hawaii, which seemed appropriate--how many times has he used
the example of an ocean in his teachings? Many, many times--I'll
answer that one for you. Anyway, here's this incredibly great
meditation teacher straight out of Tibet, and he got off the plane,
and he hadn't even bathed, and people felt like they should take
him right to the ocean. They get him to the beach, along with his
entourage of many monks, and then they start walking on the sand
towards the ocean. Everybody's still wearing their heavy wool
robes, walking. Jigme Puntsok stops and looks, and everybody's just
waiting to hear what profound thing is he going to say when he
finally sees the ocean for the first time, and he says, "It's so
big!" After all those metaphors it was interesting for him to
experience directly what the ocean is. Within the Buddhist
tradition, we call that direct experience. We talk about things, we
practice, and we try to contemplate and understand, yet the direct
experience has to come, even for a great teacher. We have to see
the ocean ourselves. When that happens, it's intimate, it's
nonfabricated, and it's direct.
What does it mean to be fully awakened, what does it mean to be
truly liberated? What does it mean to be a Buddha? On the one hand,
Buddha was this historical person who went on a profound journey
that inspires us to do this same. In him we have a historical
reference point. On the other hand, buddha is a reference point
within all of us; everybody fundamentally is buddha--awake. There
is no higher being as such. The word "buddha" literally refers to
our awakened state of mind, our true mind, our mind of
enlightenment. This mind of enlightenment has many
aspects--profundity, wisdom, compassion, awareness, mindfulness. We
train and work with all these aspects, and as we go along, we
eventually encounter our experience directly, like Jigme Puntsok
Rinpoche seeing the ocean for the first time. Through meditation
and contemplation we come to various levels of understanding and
sooner or later we're able to say, "Oh, I heard someone talk about
it, I read it in a book, I contemplated it, and now it's real." The
meaning of reality begins to influence our conduct, our action. We
begin to approach our life in a different way. This is the Buddhist
path--hearing, understanding, and experiencing what is real.
His Excellency Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
extracted from his teaching at
Turning our mind towards the Buddha section
at http://www.mipham.com