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'Your sense of who you are is a fabrication, regardless
of whether you see the mind as separate or interconnected, finite or infinite,
good or bad. The path is also a fabrication: very subtle and sometimes seemingly
effortless, but fabricated nonetheless. If these layers of inner fabrication aren't
seen for what they are—if you regard them as innate or inevitable—they
can't be deconstructed, and full Awakening can't occur.
This is why the Buddha never advocated attributing an innate nature of any sort
to the mind—good, bad, or Buddha. The idea of innate natures crept into the
Buddhist tradition in later centuries, when the principle of freedom was forgotten.
Past bad kamma was seen as so deterministic that there seemed no way
around it unless you assumed either an innate Buddha in the mind that could overpower
it, or an external Buddha who would save you from it. But when you understand
the principle of freedom—that past kamma doesn't totally shape the
present, and that present kamma can always be free to choose the skillful
alternative—you realize that the idea of innate natures is unnecessary: excess
baggage on the path.'
– Ajaan Thanissaro, 'Freedom from buddha nature'
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