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there is you and your cunning mind and there are others who are more cunning.
To safeguard his pint while he left the bar for a moment a man left a note, "I have spat in this beer."
When he returned he found another note, "So have I."
Remember, the world is full of cunning people. These cunning people become politicians, priests; they can even pretend to be prophets. You can avoid them only by asking the right question. They can't answer the right question because to answer the right question they will have had to experience something. It cannot be done by borrowed knowledge; it can be done only if they have authentically experienced truth.
This is a beautiful question, the right question:
WHAT IS BUDDHA-MIND?
Bodhidharma answers:
YOUR MIND IS IT.
The first thing he says is: Don't be bothered about Gautama the Buddha. YOUR MIND IS IT.
It is not a question about the historical person called Gautama the Buddha. He gives a new turn to the question. He immediately makes it more existential, more personal. The question is no more philosophical, it has become a question about you. You may have asked about Buddha, but in the hands of a Bodhidharma the question is immediately transformed, changed. It becomes an arrow moving towards your heart.
He says:
YOUR MIND IS IT.
Buddhahood is not something that happens to somebody else, buddhahood is your potential; it is something that is waiting to happen within you. So the first thing he says: It is your mind. Buddha-mind is not something foreign to you, it is your innermost core, it is your very nature. You are buddhas -- maybe unaware of the fact, maybe fast asleep, but that makes no difference. A buddha asleep is still a buddha. A buddha unaware of his own buddhahood is still a buddha.
YOUR MIND IS IT.
It is not somebody else's mind -- because how can you understand somebody else's mind? In the hands of masters like Bodhidharma everything is changed into the concrete, into the personal. It is taken out from its abstraction and made concrete and real.
People enjoy abstract questions because they are safer; they don't touch
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