[secondmortgagek]

'Buddha Nature'.

This a concept in Buddhism that I cannot accept as true. To begin with, I assume by "all sentient beings" is meant man, since, as far as we can tell, insects and most of the animal kingdom (?all) are not able to reason and hence can't make the volitional choices that one must make on the path to enlightenment (I'm assuming here that enlightenment doesn't just occur suddenly without cause).

I also do not believe that all humans are born with the same capacity to reason and hence to make choices based on some very complex ideas. It is "nice" and "politically correct" to say this is true but I don't believe it - I'm sure I would be labeled an "elitest" .

I also believe there are humans - truly evil people -who do not have the mental software(instinct, "nature") to develop the sense of right and wrong required for "right view", etc; sociopaths (the previous "antisocial personality disorder")do not seem to be able to learn that stealing is wrong no matter what the circumstance (except perhaps for survival as in stealing food to keep from starving) but these folks (and I've had to deal with two such individuals over my career) see no contradiction or problem with stealing or harming other people in various ways - the person who recurrently breaks the law in the same way would seem to be a likely member of this group.

I obviously don't believe that each of us is born with a "clean slate" and that "all" behavior is learned - "most" of the animal kingdom's behavior is instinctual and not "learned" and , if evolution is true, some of man's behavior is instinctual as well and not learned, and I include more than pure survival instinct here.

So, I'm not sure what is meant by "Buddha nature" unless it means being able to use one's intellect to decide what choices in life to make to persue the path.



edited to create spaces in block of text to avoid getting vis. migraine