Your Own Mind Is Buddha

If your own nature is enlightened, ordinary being is buddhahood; if your own nature is confused, buddhahood is ordinary being. If your own nature is impartial, ordinary being is buddhahood; if your own nature is perverse, buddhahood is ordinary being. If your own minds are biased and crooked, then buddhahood is submerged in ordinary being; a single moment of fairness and honesty, and ordinary being becomes buddhahood.

Our minds inherently have buddha in them; your own inner buddha is the real buddha. If there were no buddha-mind, where would we look for the real buddha? Your own mind is buddha. Do not doubt any more. There is nothing external that can establish anything—it is all the original mind conceiving all sorts of things. That is why scripture says, “When the mind is aroused, all sorts of phenomena arise; when the mind is quiescent, all sorts of phenomena pass away.

---The Sutra of Hui-neng---