All know the way, but few actually walk it.
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.
More Bodhidharma Quotes
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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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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.
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You can’t know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.
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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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Not 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.
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Buddhas move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will.
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The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included.
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Life and death are important. Don’t suffer them in vain.
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The Buddha is your real body, your original mind.
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The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind.
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Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.
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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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This one life has no form and is empty by nature. If you become attached by any form, you should reject it. If you see an ego, a soul, a birth, or a death, reject them all.
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To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings.
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Worship means reverence and humility it means revering your real self and humbling delusions.
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I do not need any writing, since I transmit teaching beyond words and ideas.
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If your mind is pure, all buddha-lands are pure.
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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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Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path.
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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.
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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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At every moment where language can’t go, that’s your mind.
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Delusion means mortality. And awareness means Buddhahood.
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The mind is always present. You just don’t see it.
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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.
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All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.
BODHIDHARMA