The Buddha

Lama Surya Das discusses what the Buddha is in a brief essay at HuffPost. He cites Karen Armstrong on the Buddha as achetype:

As an archetype, Buddha represents what is actually possible for each of us -- our full flowering. It's helpful to think of the message of this archetype on three different levels. On the external level of form, Buddha is the historical teacher. On the internal level, Buddha is innate and ever-present awareness -- which is typically obscured by discursive and repetitive thoughts. On the innermost or secret level, Buddha is our deepest nature: radiant Being or Nowness-awareness, beyond gender, nationality, religious affiliation, or other local distinctions. This is what the historical Buddha meant when he said, "I am awake": awake to the radiant Buddhaness within himself and every sentient being.

Buddha means the "enlightened one" or Awakened Wise One -

For Buddhists, wisdom is not merely a form of belief or a particular truth or historical attribute but a living, breathing, functioning quality inherent in the mind of each of us, waiting to be explored, exploited and developed and in the pursuit of liberation, healing, and happiness. Anyone can become a Buddha...Anyone can develop oneself through practicing the two Buddhist wings of wisdom and compassion and be transformed by mindfulness and other loving practices, regardless of religious persuasion -- even agnostics and atheists.

Enlightenment means to awaken out of illusion's dream and the snares of conceptual thought, and into a directly lived moment-by-moment experience. 

And how do we do this? "Practice makes perfect" -

Who then is Buddha for us here and now? He/she/it is the one who practices resting in, as, and eventually realizes that all is luminous awareness and nothing else. This can be called meditation practice, and includes the cultivation of mindfulness, a lucid moment-to-moment vigilant state of intentional attention. What is mindfulness, really? It is simply an alert presence of mind, the opposite of and antidote to mindlessness. Mindfulness is the key ingredient in Buddha's recipe for wisdom's development and conscious evolution.

With properly practiced mindfulness, we can practice such virtues as non-attachment, compassion, personal integrity, patience, loving-kindness, respect for others, and living according to our deepest principles. By such a practice we are called not to just be Buddhists, but to be Buddhas!