Bodhidharma Quotes on Mind (23 Quotes)


    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.

    ... this mind, through endless kalpas without beginning, has never varied. It has never lived or died, appeared or disappeared, increased or decreased. It's not pure or impure, good or evil, past or future. It's not true or false. It's not male or female.

    If you know that everything comes from the mind, don't become attached. Once attached, you're unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. It's thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in midsentence. What good are doctrines The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions.... Don't cling to appearances, and you'll break through all barriers....

    The Buddha is your real body, your original mind.

    Disciple But the Bathhouse Sutra says, 'By contributing to the bathing of monks, people receive limitless blessings.' This would appear to be an instance of external practice achieving merit. How does this relate to beholding the mind Bodhidharma ... Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form. How can people use ordinary water to wash an intangible body It won't work.... To clean such a body you have to behold it. Once impurities and filth arise from desire, they multiply until they cover you inside and out. But if you try to wash this body of yours, you'll have to scrub until it's nearly gone before it's clean.


    If, as in a dream, you see a light brighter than the sun, your remaining attachments will suddenly come to an end and the nature of reality will be revealed. Such an occurrence serves as the basis for enlightenment. But this is something only you know. You can't explain it to others. Or if, while you're walking, standing, sitting, or lying in a quiet grove, you see a light, regardless of whether it's bright or dim, don't tell others and don't focus on it. It's the light of your own nature. Of if, while you're walking, standing, sitting, or lying in the stillness and darkness of night, everything appears as though in daylight, don't be startled. It's your own mind about to reveal itself. Or if, while you're dreaming at night, you see the moon and stars in all their clarity, it means the workings of your mind are about to end. But don't tell others.


    To invoke the Buddha's name you have to understand the dharma of invoking. If it's not present in your mind, your mouth chants an empty name. As long as you're troubled by the three poisons or by thoughts of yourself, your deluded mind will keep you form seeing the Buddha and you'll only waste your effort. Chanting and invoking are worlds apart. Chanting is done with the mouth. Invoking is done with the mind. And because invoking comes from the mind, it's called the door to awareness. Chanting is centered in the mouth and appears as sound. If you cling to appearances while searching for meaning, you won't find a thing....

    But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes.

    Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

    The mind is always present. You just don't see it.

    Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.

    ... the fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don't believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage ... the sutras say, 'Mind is the teaching.' But people of no understanding don't believe in their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha-images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity.

    The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind.

    The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.

    But deluded people don't realize that their own mind is the Buddha. They keep searching outside.

    As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the Buddha.

    If your mind is pure, all buddha-lands are pure.

    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.

    The mind is the root from which all things grow if you can understand the mind, everything else is included.

    When delusions are absent, the mind is the land of buddhas. When delusions are present, the mind is hell. Mortals create delusions. And by using the mind to give birth to mind they always find themselves in hell. Bodhisattvas see through delusions. And by not using the mind to give birth to mind they always find themselves in the land of buddhas. If you don't use your mind to create mind, every state of mind is empty and every thought is still. You go from one buddha-land to another. If you use your mind to create mind, every state of mind is disturbed and every thought is in motion. You go from one hell to the next.

    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.

    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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