[From a teaching on Songs of Barway Dorje, Part 14, by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]
Buddhism has never accepted the notion of a permanent source of refuge that is other than the being seeking refuge him or herself.
Buddhism is based on the teachings of the historical Buddha — Shakyamuni or Siddhartha Gautama. He was a human being. Born as a crown prince of a very small and relatively short-lived kingdom in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. He meditated with great effort, great intensity, and he came to recognize something. He came to recognize that what a mind really is, any mind, buddhanature, is itself the cause of awakening. That was his recognition of how things are.
He also recognized that each and every being has this buddhanature. That is his recognition of the extent of things. (We talk about the two wisdoms: knowledge of dharmata and knowledge of its ubiquitousness or extent.) Because he saw that, he also saw how ignorance of this buddhanature causes suffering.
We could say that what the Buddha discovered was that mind is buddhanature. If you have a mind, you have buddhanature because mind is buddhanature. There is no such thing as a mind without buddhanature. If you have a mind, you have buddhanature because mind cannot be anything else. Therefore, if you work hard you can achieve, as the Buddha demonstrated, buddhahood in one life and one body.
