Great Sayings: Bodhidharma Quotes

Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom.

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

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

And the Buddha is the person who's free: free of plans, free of cares.

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

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

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

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

All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.

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

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

The essence of the Way is detachment.

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

Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

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.

Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher's help.

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

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

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

Your mind is nirvana.

You can't know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.

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.

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.

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

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

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

The Buddha is your real body, your original mind.

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

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

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.

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

To have a body is to suffer.

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.