Brad Warner - Tell Me Your Thing (Buddha Nature) - a podcast by Angel City Zen Center

“Putting a nice label like ‘Buddha Nature’ on it makes you feel a different way towards it. You don't feel like it's something you need to fight against. I don't know how you felt all your life, but all my life I'd felt like circumstances are something I need to fight against, circumstances were always my enemy. And then I meet Nishijima Roshi who said, ‘Just follow circumstances,’ and I'm like, ‘I don't want to follow circumstances, circumstances suck!’ But I was following this teacher who said, ‘Circumstances are you. You are the circumstances.’

So to think of circumstances in a nice way is also to think of yourself in a nice way and not to pit yourself against it. Instead of following the illusion that I'm something apart from the circumstances, I say, okay, I am the circumstances in which I find myself. Then to make the further move of calling it ‘Buddha nature’ is a way of seeing it as something that's not bad and not even indifferent. It's something better than indifferent.” - Brad Warner

Brad Warner brings us deep discussions and choice readings from Kobun Chino and Dogen on Buddha Nature, that elusive concept beyond concepts where everything and everyone is already enlightened just like you. Is it just pretty words? Is it as empty as they say? And/or is there something ultimately there we can count on and connect to? Find out here!

Further episodes of Angel City Zen Center - Beginners Only Podcast

Further podcasts by Angel City Zen Center

Website of Angel City Zen Center