The mind is always present. You just don’t see it.
BODHIDHARMAThe 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.
More Bodhidharma Quotes
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The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.
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The essence of the Way is detachment.
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Without the mind there is no Buddha. Without the Buddha there’s no mind.
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The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way.
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Don’t hate life and death or love life and death. Keep your every thought free of delusion, and in life you’ll witness the beginning of nirvana, and in death you’ll experience the assurance of no rebirth.
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When you don’t understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.
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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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People of this world are deluded. They’re always longing for something – always, in a word, seeking.
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The Way is basically perfect. It doesn’t require perfecting. The Way has no form or sound. It’s subtle and hard to perceive. It’s like when you drink water: you know how hot or cold it is, but you can’t tell others.
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To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path.
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Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part.
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If you use your mind to look for a Buddha, you won’t see the Buddha.
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Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
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The true Way is sublime. It can’t be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his own nature finds the Way, even if he can’t read a word.
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Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn’t exist.
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Mortals liberate Buddhas and Buddhas liberate mortals.
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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 awareness of mortals falls short. As long as they’re attached to appearances, they’re unaware that their minds are empty. And by mistakenly clinging to the appearance of things they lose the Way.
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Life and death are important. Don’t suffer them in vain.
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You can’t know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.
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The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind.
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Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.
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I never lost or fail, not yet conquered. If I fall seven times, I get up eight
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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.
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To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.
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As mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves.
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