What Is the Buddha in You?

"I bow to the Buddha in you." -- this expression (and its variations) no doubt will be familiar to many Buddhists in America. It wasn't always to me. I first heard it a few years after coming to the United States from India as a student when a kindly American uttered the words as she bowed to me, her palms together. I found the verbal expression as beguiling as I found the elegant hand gesture familiar. Overcome by literalism I pictured taking an X-ray and finding the silhouette of the figure of a buddha seated in meditation in the approximate area of my chest. Whatever was intended, it is nonetheless the case that there is a special variety of seeing implied by the phrase, a notable acknowledgment of the kinds of beings we are.