Bodhidharma Quotes & Sayings

#1. In order to see a fish you must watch the water

Bodhidharma

#2. The Buddha is your real body, your original mind.

Bodhidharma

#3. Your mind is nirvana.

Bodhidharma

#4. The farther away you are from the truth, the more the hateful and pleasurable states will arise. There is also self - deception.

Bodhidharma

#5. Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom.

Bodhidharma

#6. To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.

Bodhidharma

#7. A Buddha doesn't observe precepts. A Buddha doesn't do good or evil. A Buddha isn't energetic or lazy. A Buddha is someone who does nothing, someone who can't even focus his mind on a Buddha. A Buddha isn't a Buddha. Don't think about Buddhas.

Bodhidharma

#8. Your nature is the Buddha.

Bodhidharma

#9. People who don't see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are lairs and fools.

Bodhidharma

#10. 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.

Bodhidharma

#11. When we're deluded there's a world to escape. When we're aware, there's nothing to escape.

Bodhidharma

#12. Words are illusions.

Bodhidharma

#13. All know the way, but few actually walk it.

Bodhidharma

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

Bodhidharma

#15. A buddha is an idle person. He doesn't run around after fortune and fame.

Bodhidharma

#16. 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

#17. To find a Buddha all you have to do is see your nature.

Bodhidharma

#18. Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.

Bodhidharma

#19. As long as you're enthralled by a lifeless form, you're not free.

Bodhidharma

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

Bodhidharma

#21. 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

#22. All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.

Bodhidharma

#23. Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us.

Bodhidharma

#24. Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form.

Bodhidharma

#25. Someone who seeks the Way doesn't look beyond himself.

Bodhidharma

#26. 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

#27. People who don't see their own nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools.

Bodhidharma

#28. Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part.

Bodhidharma

#29. The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure. By this truth, all appearances are empty.

Bodhidharma

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

Bodhidharma

#31. Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist.

Bodhidharma

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

Bodhidharma

#33. When you don't understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.

Bodhidharma

#34. At every moment where language can't go, that's your mind.

Bodhidharma

#35. Everything sacred, nothing sacred.

Bodhidharma

#36. All phenomena are empty.

Bodhidharma

#37. Buddhas move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will.

Bodhidharma

#38. 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

#39. According to the Sutras, evil deeds result in hardships and good deeds result in blessings.

Bodhidharma

#40. Without the mind there is no Buddha. Without the Buddha there's no mind.

Bodhidharma

#41. Once you stop clinging and let things be, you'll be free, even of birth and death. You'll transform everything.

Bodhidharma

#42. If you use your mind to look for a Buddha, you won't see the Buddha.

Bodhidharma

#43. Delusion means mortality. And awareness means Buddhahood.

Bodhidharma

#44. A Buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.

Bodhidharma

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

Bodhidharma

#46. As mortals, we're ruled by conditions, not by ourselves.

Bodhidharma

#47. Worship means reverence and humility it means revering your real self and humbling delusions.

Bodhidharma

#48. Once you see your nature, sex is basically immaterial.

Bodhidharma

#49. Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way.

Bodhidharma

#50. Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

Bodhidharma

#51. Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space.

Bodhidharma

#52. 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.

Bodhidharma

#53. The mind's capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind.

Bodhidharma

#54. The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way.

Bodhidharma

#55. Every suffering is a buddha-seed, because suffering impels mortals to seek wisdom. But you can only say that suffering gives rise to buddhahood. You can't say that suffering is buddhahood. Your body and mind are the field. Suffering is the seed, wisdom the sprout, and buddhahood the grain.

Bodhidharma

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit.

Bodhidharma

#59. Mortals liberate Buddhas and Buddhas liberate mortals.

Bodhidharma

#60. When 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.

Bodhidharma

#61. I do not need any writing, since I transmit teaching beyond words and ideas.

Bodhidharma

#62. 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

#63. Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path.

Bodhidharma

#64. And as long as you're subject to birth and death, you'll never attain enlightenment.

Bodhidharma

#65. 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.

Bodhidharma

#66. Life and death are important. Don't suffer them in vain.

Bodhidharma

#67. Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn't exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn't wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception.

Bodhidharma

#68. 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.

Bodhidharma

#69. The awareness of mortals falls short. As long as they're attached to appearances, they're unaware that their minds are empty. And by mistakenly clinging to the appearance of things they lose the Way.

Bodhidharma

#70. Vast emptiness, nothing holy.

Bodhidharma

#71. Poverty and hardship are created by false thinking.

Bodhidharma

#72. 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

#73. The essence of the Way is detachment.

Bodhidharma

#74. 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

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

Bodhidharma

#76. The Way is basically perfect. It doesn't require perfecting.

Bodhidharma

#77. To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings.

Bodhidharma

#78. 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

#79. All know the way of prosperity only few walk it.

Bodhidharma

#80. To have a body is to suffer.

Bodhidharma

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

Bodhidharma

#82. 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

#83. Those who worship don't know, and those who know don't worship.

Bodhidharma

#84. 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. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring.

Bodhidharma

#85. 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

#86. 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