{"id":114,"date":"2006-01-10T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-10T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/chatteringmind\/2006\/01\/what-i-meant-by-inner-buddha.html"},"modified":"2006-01-10T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-10T12:00:00","slug":"what-i-meant-by-inner-buddha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/chatteringmind\/2006\/01\/what-i-meant-by-inner-buddha.html","title":{"rendered":"What I Meant by ‘Inner Buddha’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When groping to describe Howard Stern’s innate innocence as a youth, especially when his feelings were hurt by his father, I said yesterday that within that period of suffering, you could see Stern’s “inner Buddha.” And last night, a reader wrote: “What’s an Inner Buddha? I think she’s seriously making up terms here.”<\/p>\n

True, I was swiftly combining “inner child,” “Buddha nature,” with a smattering of “natural perfection.” Breezy, but I don’t see the crime. I am also clearly under the influence of Lama Surya Das’s book “Awakening the Buddha Within,”<\/a> a great introductory text to Buddhism. I recently attended a Tibet House lecture where Lama Surya Das himself, one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, encouraged us all to find a Buddha inside everyone on the street (even Howard Stern), or more accurately, acknowledge the Bodhisattva<\/a> (the committed seeker, or Buddha-in-the-making) in ordinary people who may not so obviously be on the spiritual path.<\/p>\n

Seeing any person’s source of suffering is a wonderful way to stimulate your compassion when you’re feeling judgemental and annoyed. For instance, as I studied the Sirius website last night and read the biographies of Stern’s staff people,<\/a> I noticed that his female sidekick Robin Quivers, who often laughs at Stern’s raunchy antics, was abused as a child by her father. Is she healing herself, or violating listeners? If her natural perfection once seemed lost to her, has she, or can she, relocate it?<\/p>\n

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When groping to describe Howard Stern’s innate innocence as a youth, especially when his feelings were hurt by his father, I said yesterday that within that period of suffering, you could see Stern’s “inner Buddha.” And last night, a reader wrote: “What’s an Inner Buddha? I think she’s seriously making up terms here.” True, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":374,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat I Meant by 'Inner Buddha' - Chattering Mind<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/chatteringmind\/2006\/01\/what-i-meant-by-inner-buddha.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What I Meant by 'Inner Buddha' - Chattering Mind\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When groping to describe Howard Stern’s innate innocence as a youth, especially when his feelings were hurt by his father, I said yesterday that within that period of suffering, you could see Stern’s “inner Buddha.” And last night, a reader wrote: “What’s an Inner Buddha? 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