My question isn't concerning Buddha-nature, not initially anyway. I agree with
you about
sentient-beings too. At least in the Pali canon though, the Buddha makes "the
human" a
special category relative to enlightenment, and my question is how is that
category to be
understood in the everyday life of practice. It maybe that there isn't
anything attained by a
human that isn't already there for/with any other kind of sentient being, but
that begs the
question of the relevance of "the human" and what that even is in light of the
varieties of
"humanness" we know in our biological species.Your suggestion of self-awareness
could be
useful, but that begs a similar question as the one before regarding what it is
that a human is
aware of. A possible response to that is that humans are unique in being aware
of their
humanness, but aside from almost getting platonic, that brings back the
question of why
that matters at all.
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