Most of us spend much of our lives trying to fix ourselves. We tell ourselves that if we were a little more patient, less anxious, healthier, wiser, calmer, or even more spiritual, then we would finally be enough. There is nothing wrong with learning and growing. The Buddha encouraged us to cultivate generosity, ethical living, meditation, wisdom, and compassion. The difficulty begins when our efforts are driven by a much deeper belief: that something is fundamentally wrong with us. Even our spiritual life can quietly become another self-improvement project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contemporary Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron reminds us that awakening begins when we stop running from ourselves and honestly meet the life we already have. The spirit of the Buddha’s invitation is not, “Come back after you have fixed yourself.” It is simply, “Come as you are.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Buddha summarized his teaching by inviting us to know suffering, understand its causes, realize its cessation, and walk the path leading beyond it: “Knowing suffering, knowing the origin of suffering, knowing the cessation of suffering, and knowing the path leading to the cessation of suffering…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Notice where the path begins: not after suffering has disappeared, but in the middle of it. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to awakening is not that we suffer, but believing our suffering means something is fundamentally wrong with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The journey of awakening begins when self-rejection slowly gives way to self-recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imagine placing a warm apple pie on the table. We can easily distinguish the flaky crust from the sweet apple filling. Each has its own flavor and purpose, yet no one would say the crust alone is the pie, nor the filling by itself. The pie is the whole. If we reject the crust because we only want the apples, we no longer have the pie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the problem is not that we have forgotten how to improve ourselves, but how to see ourselves. We welcome the parts of ourselves that seem kind, confident, successful, or loving, while rejecting our fear, grief, uncertainty, impatience, and the countless imperfections that come with being human. Mahayana Buddhism invites us to look more deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It teaches that beneath our habits, attachments, karmic conditioning, fears, and confusion lies our deepest nature, our Buddha Nature: the unborn and ever-present ground of awakening from which wisdom, compassion, luminosity, emptiness, peace, and loving activity naturally arise. Like the sun hidden behind clouds, it is never absent. It is only temporarily obscured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This does not mean we ignore our ordinary human life. We still experience joy and sorrow, patience and impatience, confidence and uncertainty. Karma continues to shape our lives through causes and conditions. Buddhism does not ask us to reject our humanity in order to awaken. Our ordinary life and our deepest awakened nature are not two different lives, but two ways of seeing the same Reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Shin Buddhist teacher, Taitetsu Unno, often taught that awakening begins by accepting ourselves exactly as we are. This is not resignation, nor is it merely psychological, changing how we think or feel about ourselves. It is also ontological, concerning the deepest reality of who we truly are. We begin to accept ourselves because we gradually discover that we have always been embraced by Boundless Wisdom and Compassion, beautifully personified in Mahayana Buddhism as Amida Buddha, the living expression of Dharmakaya, ultimate Reality itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Long before we begin seeking awakening, awakening has already been quietly seeking us. This invitation is the call to discover the wholeness that has always been there. Awakening begins with the discovery that what is deepest within us has always been whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we are not trying to fix ourselves, what are we really running from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Often, we are not simply running from uncomfortable emotions. We are running from Reality itself. We resist growing older, illness, uncertainty, loss, and even our own human nature and biology. We resist our karmic conditioning, wishing we were someone different from who we are in this moment. Beneath all of this lies the quiet hope that life should somehow be other than it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Buddha’s first teaching offers another way of seeing. Birth, aging, illness, loss, and death are not mistakes in the universe. They are part of the human condition. This is not a pessimistic view of life but a compassionate one. We cannot awaken by denying Reality. We awaken by meeting it with wisdom, compassion, and courage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Buddha said, “One who sees suffering sees the Dharma.” Suffering becomes a doorway rather than a dead end. It reveals where we cling, where we resist, and where we have mistaken the changing circumstances of life for the deepest truth of who we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contemporary Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron reminds us that we do not awaken by becoming someone else. We awaken by becoming deeply intimate with this very life. As this awakening deepens, it naturally expresses itself as wisdom in our understanding, compassion in our relationships, generosity in our actions, and loving service for the benefit of others. This is what Mahayana Buddhism calls the Great Activity: awakening expressing itself naturally for the benefit of all beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The journey is not about escaping the human condition. It is about awakening within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think of one of those hot, humid summer afternoons in southern New England. Dark clouds gather, lightning flashes, thunder rolls, rain falls in torrents, and streams overflow their banks. Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm passes, the air grows cool and fresh, and the sun quietly returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet throughout the entire storm, the sky has never been harmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our lives are much the same. There are seasons of joy and sorrow, health and illness, confidence and uncertainty. These changing conditions deserve to be honored, felt, and understood, but they do not define the deepest truth of who we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mahayana Buddhism teaches that beneath this changing weather lies our deepest nature, our Buddha Nature: the unborn and ever present ground of awakening from which wisdom, compassion, luminosity, emptiness, peace, and loving activity naturally arise. Like the open sky, it has never been stained by the passing clouds. It has never been broken, diminished, or abandoned. It has simply gone unrecognized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps we have spent so much of our lives trying to fix ourselves because we have mistaken the weather for the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Dharma does not ask us to become someone else. It invites us to stop running, stop fixing, and awaken to the wholeness that has always been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What if your deepest nature has never been absent, only unrecognized?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several times each day, pause and gently ask yourself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What am I trying to fix right now?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then ask:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What would it feel like to meet this moment just as it is?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spend five minutes each day sitting comfortably with your back naturally upright. Let your eyes remain gently open with a soft, unfocused gaze. Allow your breathing to settle into its own natural rhythm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As thoughts, emotions, and sensations arise, imagine them as clouds moving across the open sky. There is no need to chase them, judge them, or push them away. Simply notice that, like the sky itself, awareness remains open and undisturbed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the meditation ends, carry this same openness into your conversations, your work, and your relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Written by Rev. G.R. Lewis, M.A. \u00a9 G.R. Lewis,<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Buddhist Faith Fellowship, August 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most of us spend much of our lives trying to fix ourselves. We tell ourselves that if we were a little more patient, less anxious, healthier, wiser, calmer, or even more spiritual, then we would finally be enough. There is nothing wrong with learning and growing. The Buddha encouraged us to cultivate generosity, ethical living,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[266,237,265,262,263,249,594,595,238,252,241,658,649,651,648,660,659,260,444],"class_list":["post-16283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dharma","tag-american-buddhism","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhism-in-connecticut","tag-buddhism-middletown-connecticut","tag-buddhist-faith-fellowship","tag-ct-buddhists","tag-dzogchen-connecticut","tag-mahamudra-connecticut","tag-meditation","tag-middletown-connecticut","tag-mindfulness","tag-sky-medtation","tag-stop-fixing-yourself","tag-taitetsu-unno","tag-the-buddha","tag-tibetan-buddhism-connecticut","tag-vispassana","tag-zen-buddhism","tag-zen-buddhism-connecticut","ctfw-has-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16288,"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16283\/revisions\/16288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bffct.org\/bff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}