The Way is basically perfect. It doesn’t require perfecting.
BODHIDHARMABuddhas move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will.
More Bodhidharma Quotes
-
-
Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.
BODHIDHARMA -
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.
BODHIDHARMA -
Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space.
BODHIDHARMA -
Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form.
BODHIDHARMA -
To see nothing is to perceive the Way, and to understand nothing is to know the Dharma, because seeing is neither seeing nor not seeing, and because understanding is neither understanding nor not understanding.
BODHIDHARMA -
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 -
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 -
The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.
BODHIDHARMA -
The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.
BODHIDHARMA -
The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind.
BODHIDHARMA -
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.
BODHIDHARMA -
Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit.
BODHIDHARMA -
You can’t know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.
BODHIDHARMA -
Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything.
BODHIDHARMA -
Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
BODHIDHARMA -
The Buddha is your real body, your original mind.
BODHIDHARMA -
And as long as you’re subject to birth and death, you’ll never attain enlightenment.
BODHIDHARMA -
Externally 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.
BODHIDHARMA -
One clings to life although there is nothing to be called life; another clings to death although there is nothing to be called death. In reality, there is nothing to be born; consequently, there is nothing to perish.
BODHIDHARMA -
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 -
All Buddhas preach emptiness. Why? Because they wish to crush the concrete ideas of the students. If a student even clings to an idea of emptiness, he betrays all Buddhas.
BODHIDHARMA -
I do not need any writing, since I transmit teaching beyond words and ideas.
BODHIDHARMA -
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 -
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 -
As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you’ll never see that your own mind is the Buddha
BODHIDHARMA -
The essence of the Way is detachment. And the goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances.
BODHIDHARMA