Buddha Nature: The Key to Genuine Confidence

I'd like to discuss the concept and work of confidence, especially the idea of genuine confidence from the Buddhist perspective. For me, this is a rather complex topic in the modern world, as many of us struggle not only with lack of confidence but also with lack of aim, direction, or purpose. I'm not entirely certain if confidence needs to come from purpose, and as a side note, we face this whole other question: Is confidence about bolstering our ego clinging, or is there an underlying confidence that's more reliable than the confidence we get stuck in through self and ego clinging?

For those of you familiar with the Dharma, you understand what I mean by this distinction. For those who aren't, we can hopefully explore this in more depth. I'd like to start with the idea of Tathāgatagarbha, a Sanskrit word in Buddhism that translates as "Buddha nature." The word "Buddha" more or less means "to be awake," though what that implies can be quite complex. I'll try not to go too deep into the technical aspects, but we'll see where our exploration takes us.

Being awake in Buddhism generally means being awake from, or awake to, the causes of suffering. A Buddha is someone who has completely remedied the causes of suffering for themselves and has the wherewithal, efficacy, and agency to benefit others in a very full way. It's similar to imagining a prison where one of the prisoners manages to free themselves from their chains and cell. At that point, they're not only free but also have the ability, power, and skill to help free others.

For those not familiar with Buddhist teachings, it's important to note that "Buddha" doesn't refer to a god or someone who needs to be worshipped. While Buddhas are quite special, they're not special in the way that makes them uniquely capable. Actually, Buddhism points to the fact that we all have this ability, hence the term "Buddha nature." Nature here means something innate, natural, uncreated, and unborn.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddha described this in many sutras as being like a jewel or an essence. While "essence" isn't a perfect description, it refers to a core or basis of everything that is sentient, everything that has mind and awareness. That quality is the awake nature itself. We're capable of becoming awake because we have that nature - it's natural to mind, natural to what and who we are. While in Buddhism we wouldn't talk about that as a solid core or soul, we can understand it as a quality that is already there, inborn. It's not something, but it's also not nothing, and therefore we have the possibility to be awake.

The reason I bring this up is that when thinking about confidence, especially genuine confidence from a Buddhist approach, we have to start there. We have to start with the understanding that fundamentally, we're not missing anything, nor do we have anything to gain fundamentally. However, our mind is under the illusion or delusion that we aren't enough, that we need to do more, that we need to change. We have these habit patterns - what we call afflictive emotions - and Buddhism goes further into describing karmic patterns that influence our behavior, mind, and perception.

The teachings on Buddha nature often address this discrepancy: if we have this Buddha nature, why do we feel so troubled, and why does the world feel so troubled? The Buddha used several analogies to explain this. One is like gold hidden within its dross - the other minerals and rock content that obscure the gold. Another traditional analogy is of a beautiful gold Buddha statue covered in a dirty rag, like finding a Buddha statue in the corner of a crowded storeroom, hidden beneath a dirty cloth.

An example I particularly appreciate is that of oil penetrating a cloth. It might seem inseparable from the cloth - oil really stains things, so it might appear that the cloth is permanently ruined. But actually, the oil isn't the cloth, and the cloth isn't the oil. The oil can be removed, even though it might be quite difficult. Similarly, our delusions or afflictive emotions, who and what we think we are, our thought patterns - these aren't what we are. They're extraneous to the Buddha nature. The good news is that all these things that cause suffering are cleanable, washable, removable. That's really what the Buddha nature teachings are pointing to.

Returning to confidence, this has to be the base where we trust from or build genuine confidence upon. Sometimes I phrase it this way: we are not fundamentally screwed up. Of course, initially, this is just another belief, an idea - a nice idea - but that doesn't mean it's not true. We have to explore it. Once we have this premise - the Buddha said this, and since the Buddha didn't lie about other things, why would he lie or stretch the truth about this - we can investigate it. We first need to trust the Dharma, trust the teachings of the Buddha, and then we can explore this teaching on Buddha nature.

I'm not suggesting blind belief - it's something we can approach with curiosity: "That's interesting. I like that. Let me explore if that's true." We explore through meditation and through studying the Dharma, especially the teachings on non-duality or emptiness in Buddhism. Emptiness doesn't mean nothingness; it means everything is interdependent, everything is changeable because it's empty of true existence. Awakening is possible because of that - we can remove the oil from the cloth, or the delusions and afflictive emotions from the mind, because it's empty of true existence. It's a positive quality, not a voidness or nothingness.

When we approach those meditations on emptiness and study it more deeply, we begin to understand Buddha nature more fully, and the confidence starts to grow. This differs from the limited confidence we often think about in the modern self-help world - confidence in myself, being good at this or that, or other changeable, flimsy things. I should clarify here: I'm not saying don't feel good about yourself for creating a beautiful painting or similar achievements. We should take joy in these beautiful things. However, when we build the ego around them, that's when they become another source of suffering.

This is what I'm distinguishing here - what genuine confidence means in Buddhism versus changeable or unreliable confidence. This is something we each have to explore for ourselves. Every day, I'm recognizing where I'm placing my trust in something that eventually disappoints me because it changes. I'm always exploring personally what I can trust, because essentially, I think confidence comes down to trust - what can we trust, who can we trust, how can we trust ourselves?

In Buddhism, this becomes a significant issue because initially, when we study the mind, we see how confused it is. Then, when we meditate, we discover our mind is far more chaotic and crazy than we even thought it was. This can lead to forms of self-loathing - this happened to me many years ago - and mistrust. Initially, when we're meditating and this happens, it's not necessarily a bad thing because we're shaking things up. We're shaking up what we thought we could trust in, we're opening questions, and this can be unnerving and confrontational. While that's not inherently bad, we want to make sure we don't completely lose our ground.

I meet many practitioners who, like myself, have struggled with this question: how do we have genuine confidence in our meditation when the mind is always changing? Even when we get some nice, tasty meditation experiences, those change and leave too. There's a lot of challenge in where we place our confidence, what to have confidence in, and even what genuine confidence is. From a Buddhist perspective, it's not about building a huge ego around something - we can even have a huge spiritual ego if we put energy into that.

This hasn't been a simple thing in my spiritual work and personal path. However, I always come back to these Buddha nature teachings, and they always point me to the teachings on Buddha's nonduality or emptiness - sometimes we call it prajna paramita. They always direct me to do more digging, more study, more contemplation. Of course, we have practices for trying to see that directly. We work on that slowly, slowly, slowly, and then something starts to shift where the confidence begins to transform. In a way, there's a confidence in the fact that things are impermanent and changing - we start to trust the natural flow of things.

Often, I find myself reflecting on my own life and how much I'm trying to swim upstream. Sometimes I just sit down and think, "Wait, how can I stop swimming upstream here?" When we fight impermanence, we're essentially trying to swim upstream. When we fight the reality that everything is malleable and interdependent, when we try to make things independent, we suffer because we're going against nature itself. So when we're approaching what genuine confidence might look like for us, this becomes another tool - perhaps a more straightforward and simple one - to look at how we can enter the natural flow of things.

I should add one caveat here: sometimes our negative habit patterns do feel natural, so we have to be careful. It might feel really natural to just get angry and scream at someone, but obviously that's not a healthy response. Even our afflictive patterns and afflictive emotions can feel natural. When we study the Dharma, it becomes clearer that there's something more natural underneath that, because "natural" doesn't just mean what we want to do or what we feel like doing. Those impulses can come from very strong, entrenched ego clinging, which will cause suffering for ourselves and others.

There's also a teaching from my teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche about something called "Essence love." While Essence Love isn’t exactly our underlying Buddha nature, it does arise from it. It's a separate teaching for our healthy human beingness, and this love is also a very beautiful teaching about finding genuine contentment or okayness. Of course, that doesn't mean suffering stops - it just means we can find contentment through shifting our behaviors from constantly trying to feed ego with conditioned things (meaning needing this or that to feel good) to just being with what’s arising in our feeling world of emotions and habit patterns.

This is something we find internally - it's not an idea we impose upon ourselves. For genuine confidence, it's something that comes through practice, through not manipulating our emotional content anymore, but also not being hijacked by it all the time. 

I hope some of these perspectives and approaches can be helpful for you in your meditation practice and life. I see many of us struggling with genuine confidence in the world right now. It's connected to identity, to the roles we play, to feeling purpose - all of those kinds of things. To me, the confidence issue is crucial: what do we trust, what do we have confidence in? These foundations are being undermined for many of us in various areas - politically, socially, in modern education, etc.. We do have to work with this - if we just say "screw it" and go sit in a hole, well, that most likely will not work. Compassionate and consistent effort is the key.