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.
BODHIDHARMABut 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.
BODHIDHARMAOnce you see your nature, sex is basically immaterial.
BODHIDHARMAThe ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way.
BODHIDHARMAWhoever 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.
BODHIDHARMAThe Way is basically perfect. It doesn’t require perfecting.
BODHIDHARMAAs long as you’re enthralled by a lifeless form, you’re not free.
BODHIDHARMAIf you use your mind to look for a Buddha, you won’t see the Buddha.
BODHIDHARMANot thinking about anything is zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the buddha…. Using the mind to reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation.
BODHIDHARMAUnless you see your nature, all this talk about cause & effect is nonsense. Buddhas don’t practice nonsense.
BODHIDHARMAWhen you don’t understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.
BODHIDHARMAWhen 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.
BODHIDHARMAExternally keep yourself away from all relationships, and internally have no pantings in your heart; when your mind is like unto a straight-standing wall, you may enter into the Path.
BODHIDHARMAAs mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves.
BODHIDHARMABut while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes.
BODHIDHARMAOnly one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help.
BODHIDHARMAPeople who don’t see their own nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools.
BODHIDHARMA