The Only Real Refuge

In the age of Hypermodernity where colonization is hypercolonization (where not just space but time and even attention itself is being colonized), the only real refuge is our own Buddha-nature — our innate core potential as the inseparable, amorous union of wisdom and compassion.

Our real, true nature — our Buddha-nature — exceeds colonization and commodification because it is imperceptible, unfathomable, unbelievable and unacceptable; it exceeds all conceptual containment and can never, in-itself, be an object of experience because it is the very condition that makes experience and conception (and hence even colonization and commodification itself) possible.

This assertion that our own Buddha-nature is the only genuine refuge from all that is wrong in the world might come across as a hyper-individualistic notion that acquiesces to the capitalist-realist ideology that there is no “outside” to capital and that escape is impossible. In a sense, this is true: Buddha-nature is not some common object we can collectively possess or share in common, thus it is one’s own and one’s own alone, and in the age of hypermodernity there is no outside to capital and even anti-capitalist modes of thinking and being are conditioned by the reality of ubiquitous capitalization.

Yet Buddha-nature is nothing if not realized in and through community, since it is most fully expressed as wise compassionate relatedness with others, since, being nowhere to be found, it is empty of any being of its own. And because it is nowhere to be found, it has never been, is not being and never will be touched or defiled by anything that can cause suffering for oneself or another. It is utterly free of any and all obstructions, without a foundation of its own, all-encompassing and all-penetrating — like space itself. And like space itself, it cannot be grasped nor can it be denied.

Even the best of communities and movements motivated by the good and the just are capable of being thwarted and corrupted. That is the awe-inducing, creatively-destructive power of hypercolonization, where capital is not just an external process imposing itself on us from the outside but turns us all into personifications of itself from the inside out. But since our Buddha-nature totally exceeds all grasp, it is incapable of this sort of corruption or corruption of any kind, and for this reason it is the basis of real community and the basis of true autonomy.

Buddha-nature’s inexorable unfolding is the basis, path and result of any and every movement of liberation. She is the soil, nutriment, and blossoming of who we really are, in all of our resplendent glory, destined to be brought to complete and perfect fruition.

Without Buddha-nature, nothing is possible;
With our Buddha-nature, nothing is impossible!