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Bodhidharma Quotes about Understanding

All Bodhidharma Quotes Awareness Birth Enlightenment Evil Karma Language Life Nature Reality Suffering Teaching Understanding quotes Wisdom Worship
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. . . . The mind and the world are opposites, and vision

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. . . . The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. 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
Reality, Opposites, Understanding

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
Understanding, Way, Dharma
Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.55, North Point Press

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. . . .

Bodhidharma
Truth, Break Through, Understanding
Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.31, Macmillan

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
People, Meditation, Understanding
Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.71, Macmillan

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
Understanding, Mind, Vision
Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.55, Macmillan

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