Original Goodness

In a large temple north of Thailand's ancient capital, Sukotai, there once stood an enormous and ancient clay Buddha. Though not the most handsome or refined work of Thai Buddhist art, it had been cared for over a period of five hundred years and had become revered for its sheer longevity. Violent storms, changes of government, and invading armies had come and gone, but the Buddha endured.

At one point, however, the monks who tended the temple noticed that the statue had begun to crack and would soon be in need of repair and repainting. After a stretch of particularly hot, dry weather, one of the cracks became so wide that a curious monk took his flashlight and peered inside. What shone back at him was a flash of brilliant gold! Inside this plain old statue, the temple residents discovered one of the largest and most luminous gold images of Buddha ever created in Southeast Asia. Now uncovered, the golden Buddha draws throngs of devoted pilgrims from all over Thailand.

The monks believe that this shining work of art had been covered in plaster and clay to protect it during times of conflict and unrest. In much the same way, each of us has encountered threatening situations that lead us to cover our innate nobility. Just as the people of Sukotai had forgotten about the golden Buddha, we too have forgotten our essential nature. Much of the time we operate from the protective layer. The primary aim of Buddhist psychology is to help us see beneath this armoring and bring out our original goodness, called our buddhanature.

This is a first principle of Buddhist psychology: see the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings.

- from Discovering Our Nobility: A Psychology of Original Goodness by Jack Kornfield

When he achieved enlightenment, Shykyamuni Buddha said, "How wonderful, how wonderful! How truly miraculous! All sentient beings have the wisdom and virtue of Tathagata."

That is, everything, just as it is, is fully enlightened. We just can't see it, just can't accept it. And why not? Because we're deluded. And what are these delusions? How can it be that at the very same time that we are completely enlightened, that we are the Buddha, we are also deluded? In this room there are thirty or forty people, and there are at least thirty or forty different types of delusions, and thirty or forty Buddhas.

- from The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment by Taizan Maezumi and Bernie Glassman

When someone disagrees strongly with something to which we are strongly attached, it's easy to dismiss them as people, even see them as somehow less than human. In 1994, there was a shooting at a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts that killed two people and wounded five. Not long after, a group of six people gathered together to meet in dialogue, three pro-life advocates and three pro-choice advocates. They met, in secret, over a period of five years. Their goal was not to convince each other of their respective points of view, but to come to understand each other, and to discover together how they could help prevent future killings. About this dialogue, Krista Tippett, of the Civil Conversations Project, says: By the end, they said that "None of us at the end of it had changed our position on abortion." In some ways "we were all more articulate at the end of these five years about where we are on the position." But they also said that they could never demonize the other side, now that they had come to love and treasure these people.

- from Tricycle Buddhist Review, Spring 2013

Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, "You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind?" But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: "Are you hurt? Can I help you up?"

Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion. Then we are in a position to heal ourselves and others.

- from Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up by B. Alan Wallace

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God... It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see those billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

- Thomas Merton