SOMETIME IN THE 1990s, I attended a Zen retreat with Harada Sekkei Roshi at the Mahabodhi Society in Bangalore. It was a rare, perhaps even unique, event at that time where Buddhists from all three main traditions of East Asian, Tibetan, and Theravada Buddhism came together for a Zen retreat. As we sat around the Roshi to begin the first session, he stated in a loud and solemn voice: “You are all buddhas.” The statement, telling from the manner it was delivered, was meant to be rousing in a Zen sort of way, and it did stir some thoughts in the audience. Most participants in the retreat were Theravada members of the Mahabodhi Society, and they clearly appeared bemused. During the break, one member privately protested, saying that such a claim is a Mahayana aberration and that all ordinary beings cannot surely be Buddhas. Being a follower of orthodox Theravada, he found the claim preposterous and provocative.
I was at that time a young monk engaged in studies on Buddhist hilosophy, particularly the course on the Ultimate Continuum, the main book on buddhanature in Tibetan Buddhism, at Ngagyur Nyingma Institute, Mysore. The concept of a universal buddhanature is central to Tibetan Buddhist theory and practice and a very common topic in monastic education. I was familiar with the idea of buddhanature as a capacity for enlightenment and freedom present in all beings; the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions in which I received most of my training likened buddhanature to the bright sun that is temporarily obscured by clouds of samsara. When the clouds are fully cleared, the magnificence of the sun would become manifest in its full form. All Buddhist endeavors—from study, debates, rituals, art, yoga, chanting, and visualization to quiet meditation—are seen as paths to remove adventitious obscurations and reveal our true nature. Thus, the statement did not surprise me or have the intended effect of shock therapy that the Zen master perhaps hoped to achieve.
A UNIVERSAL TOPIC
Many years after this Zen retreat, while studying at Oxford, I came across the well-known passage in the Pali canon in which the Buddha declares: “Luminous, bhikkhus, is this mind, but it is defiled by adventitious defilements.” This sentence and the passage in which it appears is today considered by scholars to be the earliest statement in a Buddhist scripture to discuss the pure and luminous nature of the mind. Since then, I have learned about presentations and practices of the luminous or radiant nature of the mind in the Theravada tradition, the most recent and notable one being the use of luminosity in the Samma Arahan or Dhammakaya tradition in Thai Buddhism.
