We find depictions of Gods in Buddhism in some Buddhist traditions like Tibetan Buddhism, however, this does not mean that these are gods in a conventional sense. To understand what God is in Buddhism we will need to translate the nature of God into the essence of being or the fundamental level of reality.  By seeing God as the ultimate reality we do find God in Buddhism but unlike some religions that only find God without, through the concept of Enlightenment Buddhism give us direct access to God through the experience of the true nature of our mind.

   The Ground Luminosity in Buddhism is the true nature of reality expressed through the Clear Light nature of reality. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead the true nature of the mind is the true nature of reality. This absolute nature of our mind is empty and this emptiness is in fact the light: “Inseparable from emptiness is the luminosity—the presence of what is real.”

   Enlightenment is the liberation from thought identification to thought observation, and this is what it means for the brain to get out of its own way. Beyond the brain and its thoughts we experience that we are still there, and this experience is liberation—the experience of our true nature.

The true nature of the mind is like a cloudless sky where “the naked spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference or center.” This was very much like my experience, and one of the most important masters in the Tibetan tradition, Milarepa, told us that, “The Dharma-Kaya of thine own mind thou shalt see; and seeing That, thou shalt have seen the All—The Vision Infinite, the Round of Death and Birth and the State of Freedom.” 

The Tibetan Book of the Dead teaches us that to reach enlightenment by recognizing the light of our mind it must be free from darkness or obscuration. The clear light is “a state of minimum distraction,” which means that the mind must be calm and undisturbed: “The natural state is totally free from any mental constructs, whether good or bad…it is perfectly empty.”

  To explain this, a mirror is often used as a metaphor for the mind, or consciousness. Our mind is an empty mirror in which thoughts occur as reflections. We are the mirror. Our thoughts, as reflections in the mirror, are our subjective self, or ego. By observing our thoughts we can see that these reflections come and go in the mirror, but when we watch closely we find something behind these reflections that is clear and stable. This is the mirror—our true nature. 

   Knowing our true identity, we can observe the reflections as they change from pleasant to unpleasant thoughts and back again, but since we no longer identify with the reflections we have now become liberated from them. This simply means that we are no longer controlled by our thoughts.

   We now control our thoughts, and can select positive and happy thoughts, instead of negative and unhappy thoughts. This is enlightenment and freedom from our thoughts, which leads us to the essence of our nature. This was what the Buddha taught, and all his 84,000 teachings can all be condensed into one line: Recognize your essence.

To find out how to recognize your essence read the section on Spiritual Enlightenment on this website or get the book.