Born Enlightened

As I have been taught, we are all born enlightened and then begin the process of forgetting that this is our true nature. We experience suffering early because, as the first Noble Truth states, life is suffering. The mind interprets our suffering as indicating a failure somewhere in our universe and we start to label ourselves negatively. Thus the layers of greed, anger, frustration, delusion begin to cover our True Nature.

Our True Nature is what we see right here in this exquisite photo. I believe that somewhere, sometime during everyone's journey here on Earth School we all have moments where we reach out and become our fully enlightened Baby Buddhas and we begin to peel those layers back to our sweet, soft, innocent and divine essence. Pat your belly, laugh with pure joy, wiggle your toes in the grass. Remember....

(Photo courtesy of Great Vow Zen Monastery)