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Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice.

Bodhidharma

When you don’t understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.
BODHIDHARMA

Depend Reality Understand You
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
Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space.
BODHIDHARMA

Buddha Enlightenment Find Grasp Space Try
All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.
BODHIDHARMA

Condition Depend Experience Joy Suffer
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.
BODHIDHARMA

Aggregate Anywhere Body Fiction Five Locate Realize Sense Such Thing
If you see your nature, you don’t need to read sutras or invoke buddhas. Erudition and knowledge are not only useless but also cloud your awareness. Doctrines are only for pointing to the mind. Once you see your mind, why pay attention to doctrines?
BODHIDHARMA

Buddha Nature Need See Sutras
To find a Buddha all you have to do is see your nature.
BODHIDHARMA

Buddha Find Look Nature See
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
Mortals liberate Buddhas and Buddhas liberate mortals.
BODHIDHARMA

Buddha Liberate Mortal
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
Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
BODHIDHARMA

Create Delusion Enlightenment
Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form.
BODHIDHARMA

Affliction Buddha Dust Form Nature One Shape True
The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way.
BODHIDHARMA

Behind Truth Ultimate Way Word
As mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves.
BODHIDHARMA

Condition Morais Ourselves Rule
Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us.
BODHIDHARMA

Hold Karma Regard Us
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.
BODHIDHARMA

Ay Basic Perfect Require

Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice.

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Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice.

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