According to the Sutras, evil deeds result in hardships and good deeds result in blessings.
BODHIDHARMAAs long as you’re enthralled by a lifeless form, you’re not free.
More Bodhidharma Quotes
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Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
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The essence of the Way is detachment.
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If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both.
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To enter by reason means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn’t apparent because it’s shrouded by sensation and delusion.
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But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.
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Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.
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Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space.
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Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help.
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To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings.
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But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes.
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Life and death are important. Don’t suffer them in vain.
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But when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won’t be focused. You’re likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn’t doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else.
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The mind’s capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind.
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Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn’t exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn’t wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception.
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Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way.
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Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us.
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All know the way, but few actually walk it.
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At every moment where language can’t go, that’s your mind.
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Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path.
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An Awakened person is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.
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Buddhas move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will.
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When mortals are alive, they worry about death. When they’re full, they worry about hunger. Theirs is the Great Uncertainty. But sages don’t consider the past. And they don’t worry about the future. Nor do they cling to the present. And from moment to moment they follow the Way.
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The mind is always present. You just don’t see it.
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Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.
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Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.
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If your mind is pure, all buddha-lands are pure.
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