“O Nobly Born, O you of glorious origins, remember your radiant true nature, the essence of mind. Trust it. Return to it. It is home.”- The Tibetan Book of the Dead
The concept of “basic goodness” is a thread through many of the spiritual traditions of the world, but until recently, I only understood it on a very superficial, intellectual level. Yes, I comprehended the idea that everyone is supposed to be basically good – that at the core of our being, regardless of all of the terrible and neurotic things we do, we have a good centre. For someone who adopted at a very early age the idea that my core identity was that of a sinner, it's refreshing to explore a contrary view. Basic goodness, as opposed to the old concepts of original sin staining us – wicked at a deep level – is an idea that is becoming more popular even in the Christian tradition: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for example, has written extensively on how we are basically good creatures and made in God's image.
And yet, we do some really awful things, to ourselves and to each other. We kill each other, we wage war, we rape, we molest and abuse each other. We are addicts, seeking out temporary relief from shame through any number of behaviours which have long-term negative consequences - and yet we continue to pursue them, overeating, overshopping, overusing in a ravenous attempt to find transient comfort. It's easy on some level to understand why the Christian tradition has understood and in many cases continues to see human beings as totally depraved and in need of external salvation.
Humans really suck sometimes.
Still, there is another vision of human nature. For example, in the Buddhist tradition, a central notion is the inherent nobility of each person – we are all “nobly born,” as the Tibetan Book of the Dead puts it - and heirs to the Buddha within. What opened the door for me to understand this concept at a heart level was this quotation by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a nondual Hindu teacher:
“You are perfect, only you don’t know it.
Learn to know yourself and you will discover wonders.
All you need is already within you, only you must approach yourself with reverence and love.
Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.
Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of the love you bear for yourself;
all I plead with you is this: make love of yourself perfect.
Deny yourself nothing – give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that
you do not need them; you are beyond.”
What I took from this was a sense of the simple purity that lies at the core of our being. We want what is best for ourselves – we are constantly shying away from pain and seeking out pleasure. Even a hurtful or addictive behaviour originates from a place of love for the self, which gets contorted so that we seek out comfort in harmful ways. Perhaps even the cruelest forms of self-hatred come from a twisted sort of desire to be better – the irrational logic of punishing ourselves until we become good.
When we start to understand our own basic goodness, it causes a shift in how we see everyone around us. Every other person is acting out of this same, simple, pure impulse to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. Overtop of that impulse is a thick layer of conditioning which torques our inner love towards trying to find satisfaction in all the things which can't ever truly satisfy. We will never find true peace when we cling to the temporary things of the world.
At the heart of each person is the same essence of wanting to be happy – a wish that is so simple and profound that it can be understood as divine. As Thomas Merton said, if we really truly understood who we are, we would “fall down and worship each other.” At the core of who we are – who we all are – is a profound holiness, a spark, a flame, and a goodness that connects us and is shared with all of life.
