Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom.
BODHIDHARMAOur nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.
More Bodhidharma Quotes
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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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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 Buddha is your real body, your original mind.
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Whoever realizes that the six senses aren’t real, that the five aggregates are fictions, that no such things can be located anywhere in the body, understands the language of Buddhas.
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All know the way, but few actually walk it.
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Buddhas move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will.
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The mind is always present. You just don’t see it.
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But this mind isn’t somewhere outside the material body of the four elements. Without this mind we can’t move. The body has no awareness. Like a plant or a stone, the body has no nature. So how does it move? It’s the mind that moves.
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When we’re deluded there’s a world to escape. When we’re aware, there’s nothing to escape.
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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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At every moment where language can’t go, that’s your mind.
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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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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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Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything.
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Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.
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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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Everything sacred, nothing sacred.
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If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it’s the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past.
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As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you’ll never see that your own mind is the Buddha
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Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part.
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To have a body is to suffer.
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When your mind doesn’t stir inside, the world doesn’t arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.
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If you use your mind to look for a Buddha, you won’t see the Buddha.
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Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form.
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According to the Sutras, evil deeds result in hardships and good deeds result in blessings.
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People of this world are deluded. They’re always longing for something, always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons.
BODHIDHARMA