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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.

Bodhidharma

The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.
BODHIDHARMA

All Dharma Nature Pure Truth
Without the mind there is no Buddha. Without the Buddha there’s no mind.
BODHIDHARMA

Buddha Mind No Without
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.
BODHIDHARMA

Death Decisions Every Free Hate Keep Life
In order to see a fish you must watch the water
BODHIDHARMA

Fish Nothing Order See Seek
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.
BODHIDHARMA

Deepest Distract Nothing People Understanding
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.
BODHIDHARMA

Believe Enter Instruction Live Mean Reason
Worship means reverence and humility. It means revering your real self and humbling delusions. If you can wipe out evil desires and harbor good thoughts, even if nothing shows, it’s worship. Such form is its real form.
BODHIDHARMA

Delusion Humanity Humbling Mean Real Reverence Self Worship
Leaving behind the false, return to the true: make no discriminations between self and others. In contemplation, one’s mind should be stable and unmoving, like a wall.
BODHIDHARMA

Behind Discrimination False Leave Make Other Return Self True
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.
BODHIDHARMA

Capacity Inexhasisible Limitless Manifestation Mind
To have a body is to suffer.
BODHIDHARMA

Body Suffer
Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
BODHIDHARMA

Create Delusion Enlightenment
Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help.
BODHIDHARMA

Enlight Million One Only Person Teacher
I do not need any writing, since I transmit teaching beyond words and ideas.
BODHIDHARMA

Beyond Idea Ned Since Teach Transmit Word Write
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.
BODHIDHARMA

Body Element Four Mind Move Outside Somewhere
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

Always Dilute Long People Something Up Wake Wise World
An Awakened person is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.
BODHIDHARMA

Awake Bad Find Fortune Freedom Person Someone

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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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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Popular Authors

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