11/04/2025
From our web site's November '25 Dharma Journal: In the Buddhist path, suffering (dukkha) is often seen as an unavoidable part of life—something each of us meets again and again in different forms. Whether it appears as frustration, loss, or confusion, it often feels like a solid wall blocking our peace. Yet Buddhism teaches that this wall is not as real as it seems. It is built from misunderstanding, from not recognizing the deeper truth of who and what we are. When this misunderstanding is seen through, that same wall becomes a window—clear, open, and filled with light.
As the saying goes, “When you see that your true self was never missing, suffering shifts from a wall to a window.” This insight beautifully expresses the heart of the Buddha’s awakening. What we call the “true self” here is not the ego or personality, but what 17th century Japanese Zen Master Bankei called the Unborn. He said, “What’s unborn is imperishable; it doesn’t arise or cease. It’s the Buddha-mind, free from delusion.” In Bankei’s teaching, the Unborn is the natural, ever-present awareness that was never created and therefore cannot be destroyed. It is our original mind—clear, luminous, and unstained.
When we forget this Unborn nature, we fall into identifying with the small, limited self. We try to fix or perfect it, to make it secure. But this effort itself becomes the source of suffering. Bankei often said that ordinary people “turn their backs on the Unborn and give rise to self-centered thoughts,” and in doing so, they create endless karmic entanglements. Yet, the instant we turn back to the Unborn—to the awareness that is already free—the illusion of separation begins to dissolve. The wall of suffering becomes transparent.
This insight resonates deeply with the Mahayana teaching of tathagatagarbha, or “Buddha-nature.” In the Mahaparinirvaṇa Sūtra, the Buddha declares, “All beings possess Buddha-nature. It is eternal, blissful, the self, and pure.” While this may sound paradoxical—since Buddhism usually denies a permanent self—it actually points to the same truth that Bankei called the Unborn. It is not a separate soul or entity but the unconditioned ground of being, the ever-awake mind that gives rise to all things.
The Śrimaladevi Simhanada Sutra (Queen Śrimala Sutra) offers a similar vision. Queen Śrimala proclaims that the tathagatagarbha “is the dharmakaya (ultimate truth) of the Buddha, hidden by defilements like a jewel wrapped in rags.” This means that our true nature—the radiant mind of awakening—is never absent; it is only obscured. When ignorance falls away, we see that the Buddha was always here. Our “true self was never missing.”
Shinran Shonin, the founder of Shin Buddhism, expressed this truth from another perspective. He wrote in the Kyogyoshinsho, “Amida is Buddha-nature.” In saying this, Shinran identifies Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Life and Light, not as an external being apart from us, but as the dynamic working of awakening within all beings. The Name, the Light, and the Buddha-nature are one reality: the boundless compassion that embraces all things without exception. To awaken to Amida’s light is to realize that we have never been apart from it. Even our ignorance and delusion are contained within its immeasurable embrace.
Likewise, in Shin Buddhism, the nembutsu is not a call that arises from our limited self, but the compassionate activity of the Buddha-nature itself unfolding within us. Shinran Shōnin reminds us in the Kyogyoshinsho that “the nembutsu is the manifestation of the working of Amida’s Primal Vow.” This means that when we recite Namu Amida Butsu, it is not we who remember Amida—it is Amida who remembers us. The living light of boundless compassion calls itself through our voices. Each recitation is like the dawn breaking through the heart’s clouds, not by our effort but by the dynamic working of awakening itself. In that moment, the boundary between self and Buddha, practice and grace, dissolves. The nembutsu becomes the window through which the infinite light of Amida—the very life of awakening—shines into our ordinary existence. It is not a petition, nor a meditation technique, but the spontaneous expression of Buddha-nature realizing itself as our lives.
In Zen practice, meditation (zazen) and its cousins in theTibetan Mahamudra tradition provide different but complementary doorways into the same truth awakened by the nembutsu. In both of these paths, one is invited to rest in the open, spacious awareness in which all appearances, thoughts, and sensations simply arise and dissolve. Whether we call this the Unborn, Buddha-nature, or “the primordial clarity,” meditation does not create enlightenment; it simply uncovers the clarity that was always there, beneath the waves of effort and striving. In this way, meditation becomes a window through which the Unborn light shines. We begin to realize that the boundary between self and other, practice and non-practice, is only a mental construct. The silence of zazen and the direct seeing of Mahamudra invite us to abide in this ever-present clarity—with no goal, no next step, no achievement—only the simple recognition that the light was here all along.
At the Buddhist Faith Fellowship, we explore these Mahayana teachings together through meditation, Zen and Shin practices. Our focus is on unfolding the Unborn Buddha-mind within each of us, supporting the spontaneous expression of Buddha-nature as it realizes itself in our lives. Through our Meditation & Talk Sundays, courses, and retreats, we practice resting in the clarity, compassion, and insight of the Unborn, cultivating the awareness that suffering can transform into a doorway to awakening. In community, we witness the boundless activity of Buddha-nature and share in the living Dharma, deepening our understanding and embodying the teachings in daily life.
This is what transforms suffering. When we awaken to the truth that our essential nature—the Unborn, the Buddha-nature—is already whole, suffering no longer imprisons us. It still arises, but now it becomes a doorway to insight and compassion. The very experiences that once seemed unbearable reveal the depth of our interconnectedness with all life.
In this way, suffering shifts from a wall to a window. We begin to see through it, to glimpse the vast sky beyond. As the Mahaparinirvana Sutra says, “When delusion is removed, the Eternal, Blissful, Self, and Pure is revealed.” That eternal is not something to attain—it is what we have always been. The Unborn mind, Buddha-nature, or boundless compassion—these are different names for the same reality: the living truth that was never missing, even in our darkest moments.
When we live from that awareness, the ordinary becomes sacred. Each breath, each sorrow, each joy becomes light shining through the window of this human life.
By Dharma Teacher, G.R. Lewis
Buddhist Faith Fellowship
