Abstract

A plain-English commentary on Vasubandhu's classic "Treatise on the Three Natures" that shows us how we can bring wisdom from fourth-century India into our day-to-day lives and activities. The three natures provide an empowering model for understanding how we can practice freedom from harmful personal and family patterns, addiction, trauma, and systems of oppression; they show a path to personal and communal healing. They affirm agency, experience, and interdependence while relentlessly challenging tendencies to become fixated, prejudiced, or stagnant. By radically affirming experience, constantly challenging our fixations, and emphasizing that each moment contributes to the well-being or suffering of the whole, each one of us can find our own role in the path of liberation. They remind us of the root of Buddhist teachings: there is suffering in the world and we can do something about it.