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Book Name: Bodhidharma The Greatest Zen MasterPrevious     Next
 

is the path of practice. That means it should be based on belief and you have to practice and discipline yourself according to it. You will become an imitator, but you will not be able to come to your original face.

No practice is needed. You are really where you need to be. It is just that you go on and on, round and round, but never settle down into your own being. That settling down into your being has neither many paths nor two paths.

TO ENTER BY REASON, MEANS TO REALIZE THE ESSENCE THROUGH INSTRUCTION...

That means the information comes from somebody else.

...AND TO BELIEVE THAT ALL LIVING THINGS SHARE THE SAME TRUE NATURE ...

Bodhidharma cannot use the word `believe.' He is the last person to use the word believe, because belief only creates blind people. Belief never becomes your eyes; it never brings light to you but only prejudices, opinions, ideologies. But they are not the experience and Bodhidharma is fundamentally interested only in experience.

...WHICH IS NOT APPARENT BECAUSE IT IS SHROUDED BY SENSATION AND DELUSION.

These are ordinary statements, far below the outlandish caliber of Bodhidharma.

THOSE WHO TURN FROM DELUSION BACK TO REALITY, WHO MEDITATE ON WALLS... perhaps this small fragment... THOSE WHO TURN FROM DELUSION BACK TO REALITY, WHO MEDITATE ON WALLS, THE ABSENCE OF SELF AND OTHER, THE ONENESS OF MORTAL AND SAGE, AND WHO REMAIN UNMOVED, EVEN BY SCRIPTURES, ARE IN COMPLETE AND UNSPOKEN AGREEMENT WITH REASON.

Just the last part of the statement has to be changed. Instead of "with reason" it should be "with existence."

This piece I can say with absolute guarantee, comes from Bodhidharma. Try to understand it. THOSE WHO MEDITATE ON WALLS means those who start dropping thoughts, dropping mind, whose screen of the mind becomes just like a wall -- no movement, pure stillness. They come to understand the absence of self, that there is no ego within you, that there is nobody who can say, "I am."

"Existence is, I am not."

No-selfness is one of the fundamentals of Gautam Buddha. And Bodhidharma will certainly agree with it because it is the very foundation of the whole

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