Our basic nature—our basic being—is absolutely perfect. It is identical to the basic being or basic nature of buddhas. No distinction whatsoever can be made between the Buddha nature of a sentient being and the buddha nature of a buddha. It is not the case that the buddha nature of buddhas is greater or more than the buddha nature of sentient beings, nor that the buddha nature of buddhas is somehow better or purer that the buddha nature of beings. The only distinction between buddhas and sentient beings is that in the case of a buddha this nature is unconcealed or unveiled, and in the case of sentient beings like ourselves it is temporarily veiled or obscured. Therefore it is said that although all beings possess buddha nature, it is however veiled by temporary obscurations. These obscurations are called temporary because they are not intrinsic to the nature itself, they can therefore be removed, but they will only be removed under the conditions that remove them. What do these obscurations fundamentally consist of? They consist of our persistent belief in a self. There is no such thing, has never been such a thing, and could never be such a thing as a self. It is actually impossible, yet we continue to believe in a self.

In the Uttaratantra Shastra Maitreya said, “Because the buddhakaya is all-pervasive, because there is no difference within that, and because all beings demonstrate the potential, it is said that all beings possess buddha nature.” Here Matireya sets forth three arguments for the existence of buddha nature. The first argument is that the buddhakaya is all-pervasive. Kaya means body, in this case buddhakaya or buddha body refers to the dharmakaya, the actual state of buddhahood itself. His argument is that since the actual nature of buddhahood is the dharmakaya, and since the dharmakaya is emptiness, and since emptiness is the nature of each and every being, it is therefore certain that each and every being possesses buddha nature.

If it were possible for a being to exist and have a mind that did not have the nature of the dharmakaya, then it would be possible that that being could not achieve buddhahood, but this is not the case. Emptiness is the nature of all of samsara and all of nirvana. There is nothing outside or beyond this nature. Therefore the dharmakaya is the nature of the mind of any being, and therefore all beings are naturally capable of awakening.

His second argument is that there is no difference or distinction within that. By “that” he means the nature of all things, the dharmakaya itself. There is no difference within buddha nature in the sense that the buddha nature of anyone being or buddha is in all ways equal to the buddha nature of any other being or buddha. Buddhas’ buddha nature is not greater than or better than the buddha nature of sentient beings. So his second argument is that the basic nature of each and every being is equally the dharmakaya. Not only is the dharmakaya the nature of every being but it is equally the nature of every being.

His third argument is that beings demonstrate potential. All beings demonstrate, in one way or another, the potential for awakening. Because of the specific karmic history and varied obscurations that beings have picked up, we demonstrate various potentials. Matireya speaks of five. He calls them the shravaka potential, the pratyeka potential, the mahayana or bodhisattva potential, the uncertain potential, and the isolated potential. But each and every being, even the worst of us, has one of these. The shravaka potential is possessed by a being who is naturally disposed to the shravakayana path, the pratyekayana buddha potential is that which is exhibited by a being who is naturally disposed toward that path, the mahayana or bodhisattva potential is exhibited by a being who is naturally disposed to that path, the uncertain potential is what is exhibited by a being who is easily influenced and will adopt the type of spirituality that they are primarily exposed to, and the isolated potential is what is exhibited by those beings we normally think of as irreparably bad. We can all think of people who, when we say everyone has buddha nature, we think might be exceptions to it; famous people such as Adolph HItler or Mao Tse Tung, or the various devils or demons who are set up as embodiments of pure evil in the various world religions. But according to the Buddha, even the worst of us possesses full buddha nature. In the case of the worst of us, what has happened is that because of our lack of merit, which is temporary, we are engaged in extensive wrongdoing and we have isolated ourselves from our own buddha nature. But even when someone is isolated from their own buddha nature, this is temporary. It simply means that you are very obscured, but this isolation is not permanent because it is not intrinsic to buddha nature itself. Even while one is in the worst possible state, one still possesses buddha nature, one always does, and this means therefore that as soon as one changes one’s course of action, one will move in a different direction, and definitely become capable of achieving buddhahood. So the only difference between these five potentials, or within them, is how close or far the individual is to access their own buddha nature. But the buddha nature within them is equally present. Therefore Maitreya’s third argument is that because all beings exhibit one or another of these potentials, they are all capable of buddhahood.

We inhabit bodies that include the ten resources and eight types of freedoms, and especially because of our previous accumulations of merit, not only do we have these types of bodies, these types of lives, but we have the special type which includes access to dharma. Now, one aspect of this access is access to great masters who bestow liberation simply through being seen, or simply through being heard. For example, many of you have met His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa,, but even those of you who have not actually met either the Sixteenth or the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa have at least either seen a photograph of him or have at least heard his name. Whether you have actually met him or not, you have in some way been touched by his activity. This means that the seed of your future liberation has been definitely planted.

Now, this is very important, very significant, because although samsara, cyclic existence, will never end by itself, for you it’s end at some point in the future is certain. The seed of your eventual liberation has been planted within you, and this means that you possess a degree and a type of merit or goodness within you that is unlike that of most others. Especially since we are involved in the practice of the mahayana and the vajrayana, the seed of liberation that has been planted within you, is not merely the seed of your own liberation, although that is certain, but also the seed of your future ability to bring about the liberation of others. In part this is because in our practice of the mahayana tradition we aspire to emulate the benefiting and liberation of beings performed by all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Because of this aspiration embedded within our practice, this is certain to occur. This is something that is extraordinarily delightful and you should recognize the power of what has already occurred for you.

We have lived innumerable times. In each of those lives we’ve had some kind of body. As it is said in the Confessions to Avalokiteshvara, “if the flesh and bone of all our past bodies were accumulated they would create a mass larger than all the mountains in the world, and if all of the blood and lymph and fluids of our past bodies were gathered into one huge basin, it would be larger than all the oceans in the world.” Nevertheless, in spite of all that we have gone through and how long this has been going on, we now at least inhabit bodies in which the seeds of our own liberations and our future ability to liberate others have been definitely planted.

To understand the significance of what has already occurred for you and the type of life, the type of body that you have, and to rejoice in this is extremely important. It is important because our minds need to grow, need to develop, and the healthy growth and development of your mind requires this type of joy. Without joy, without enthusiasm, without clarity, without an understanding of the direction you want to grow in, it is very unlikely that your minds will continue to grow or develop.

There are billions of people living in this world, and most of these people have no connection with dharma. That means that for many people they think that their lives, their human bodies, are finally unimportant and valueless, that they just happened to have been born at such-and-such a time, with such-and-such a body, and that really what happens to them and what they do, in the long run, makes no difference. They think of themselves and their lives as fundamentally devoid of any value and they therefore think that their deaths are of no more significance than the snuffing out of a candle flame. This means that people who have no understanding of the way things work, have no idea whatsoever of what is going to happen to them after death, and therefore generally consider it unknowable and don’t think about it.  Lacking any kind of understanding of the reason why things happen, they necessarily accumulate the causes of further samsara, or cyclic existence, because they’ve failed to recognize these causes as what they are. In contrast to that, even having a simple understanding of dharma gives you tremendous resources. Through that understanding you know that your human body is something extremely rare, extremely precious, and that the type of resources that you enjoy—the freedom that you enjoy—is only caused by your having engaged in good deeds in past lives. Whether these deeds were ordinary or extraordinary, in any case you must have done some wonderful things in order to have the opportunity you have now.

By understanding the way things work, by understanding causality, by understanding that if you engage in misdeeds you will suffer and if you engage in good deeds you will be happy, you are already no longer fooled by the appearances of samsara, and with that understanding you can use the opportunity of this body and this life to make appropriate choices both in the mundane sense and in the spiritual sense about actions to cultivate good deeds and avoid wrongdoing.

Human life and the human body are the best environment and support for the practice of dharma and making use of your human life and your human body in this way, your human body becomes an extraordinary type of human body, what we call the precious human body. In general there are three paths (vehicles or approaches) within the Buddhist tradition. These are called the shravakayana or vehicle of the listeners; the pratyekabuddhayana, the vehicle of the solitary realized ones; and the bodhisattvayana or mahayana, the vehicle of the bodhisattvas or greater vehicle.

Human life and human body is the best support for any of these three approaches. In particular, the Tibetan Buddhist tradition emphasizes the third of these, the bodhisattva vehicle. The way that this has been practiced in Tibetan Buddhism all along is an all-inclusive way which incorporates all aspects of the Buddhist tradition. It includes the the outer discipline of individual liberation, the inner disciple of the bodhisattva, and the secret discipline of the samaya vow or vajrayana. Therefore in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition monastics, for example, are called threefold vajra holders. They have the outer monastic vow of pratimoksha or individual liberation, the inner bodhisattva vow, and the secret vow of samaya.

But even for ordinary persons with families and responsibilities, who need to function in the world, who are concerned first and foremost with daily survival, who live in this society and this country which is after all based entirely on competition, where the wealthy compete with other wealthy people, the middle class compete with everyone else in the middle class, and even poor people have to compete with other poor people for their survival; in a country like this where everyone is constantly engaged in strategizing in one way or another simply in order to survive, where we are so busy and so filled with responsibility that in fact we don’t have a huge amount of time for dharma practice, even in this society, even in this country and even as busy as we are, you should never think your life and your human body are not fit supports for the practice of dharma. Don’t think, “Well, in this life, given how many responsibilities I have and how much I have to work, I can’t practice dharma, and even if I try I won’t achieve a definitive result. This is untrue. The teachings that we practice, the vajrayana teachings, include many methods that are free of difficulty. This means that even in our lives as they are, we can walk this path, and we can traverse the path in this life and move toward the achievement of the two fold wisdom of buddhahood, the direct knowledge of the nature of things, and the variety of things. We can practice dharma in a definitive and effective way especially by making use of the samaya vow or samaya principle of the vajrayana.