The Practice You Culitivate Doesn't Exist Apart from Your Mind

I had wanted to share about Bodhidharma, first the man and now briefly some of his message.    

These quotes I have taken from different talks Bodhidharma gave to his disciples.  They are not given to you in the order he said them.  I have chosen to place them in a certain order to concentrate the point I wished to share:

 The Practice You Cultivate Doesn't Exist Apart from Your Mind

Quotes of Bodhidharma:

"Everything good and bad comes from your own mind."  "All karma, painful or otherwise, comes from your own mind.  If you can just concentrate your mind and transcend its falsehood, the suffering of existence will automatically disappear.  And once free from suffering, you're truly free."  "Don't cling to appearances.  Wherever you find delight, you find bondage." "If you seek direct understanding, don't hold on to any appearance whatsoever, and you'll succeed.  I have no other advice." "No advantage in fooling yourself.  Good and bad are distinct. Cause and effect are clear to see." 

What Bodhidharma is telling us is that thinking gives you a limit.  Whatsoever you think, this becomes your reality, your experience.   Thoughts come from your mind, every thought you have is a by-product of your mind.  It is your attitude, your speculation, your reaction, your prejudice, but it is not existence itself.  It is not reality with the big "R".  It is your limited reality.  And you cannot experience anything beyond your own thoughts.  You are trapped by your own thinking.  When you have a certain thought, that thought becomes your barrier between you and reality.  People believe that they can simply rearrange the furniture, rearrange their thought system and be free, and this is not true.  Any thought system that you hold becomes a limit, becomes an entrapment.  Sooner or later one wishes to be totally free.

To become religious means that now you are going to give up your limited thinking, your limited view.  Becoming religious means that you are not satisfied with the reality you are projecting, that you are ready now to know the truth of your being, to see reality as it truly is. Being religious means that now you are ready to face your eternal body, to face eternal reality.  Everybody says they want the truth, but nobody really wants it.  To become religious means you are now going to live without 'your' mind.  You will surrender and become empty.   You will not cling to any appears that you have produced from your thinking.  

Bodhidharma says:  (and again I have taken these quotes and placed them in a certain order) "To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss."  "People are deluded.  They are unaware that their own mind is the buddha.  Otherwise they wouldn't look for a buddha outside the mind."  "If people weren't deluded why would they ask about something right in front of them?"  "Awareness is not hidden. But you can only find it right here and now." "You should realize that the practice you cultivate does not exist apart from your mind." "Whoever talks about leaving the mind doesn't get very far." "People who don't see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools."  "Using your mind to look for reality is delusion.  Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness."  "The buddha is your real body - your original mind."

The body is not only the body, a deeper body is the mind.  Body consists of matter, mind also consists of matter - subtle, more refined, but still matter.  We can detach from the body easier because of its gross form, but the mind is more difficult to detach from because of its subtle nature.  Bodhidharma says "Mind is subtle and hard to see."  Mind is your inner layer.  It is very near to you.  Please remember both body and mind are not you.  The body will die, but the eternal you will not die.  In death your outer body drops, but you carry the inner, subtle layer with you.  You are so attached to it that even at death you are not separated from your mind, from the subtle body.  And not only is the mind of this life contained within your body, but your past lives also. Layers and layers of subtle mind within you. You are so attached to them that you never lose the grip.  In death the outer dissolves, but the vibration of your mind, your thought vibrations carry with you and you create and enter a new body according to the thought pattern.

That's why meditation is considered an even deeper death than the physical death.  And there is a deep fear to transcend mind, even deeper fear than losing the body.  People can easily become detached from body, but not so easily from their mind.  Great courage is needed to be empty, without any support.  You must die to your mind, allow it to dissolve and melt.  You must have courage to die.  And once you die to your mind, you are born anew, you are resurrected, a new person.  You cannot even find a trace of the old.  Now you will never again be identified with the old mind.  You will use the mind, but you will never again become identified with it.  It will become an instrument.  Right now you are the instrument and the mind is the master.  You believe and do whatever it says.

"To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity."

So if you are truly interested in Reality, in knowing the truth of your existence there is no other place to seek outside of your mind.  So many people say they are interested in meditation, but that interest is not very deep because no one is being transformed by it.  No one wants to let go of themselves.  That means we are deceiving ourselves, hoping we can find some way to rearrange the mind and feel blissful, liberated.  "Not to be subject to affliction is what is meant by liberation." 

The new mind cannot be a continuity with the old mind.  The old must discontinue, must go.  Only then can you experience the new come into being.  But we are afraid.  We want to be transformed but at the same time, we want to remain the old, we want to cling to mind and what we know as true.  This is the deception.  This is why so few become transformed by meditation, by practice. 

Sometimes mind is so cunning that it will create superficial interests so we can say to ourselves, Look!.  I am changing, I am transforming...meditating, doing whatever I can do.  And we remain the same.

"You cannot know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.  As long as you are enthralled by a lifeless form, you're not free." "Once you stop clinging and let things be, you'll be free, even of birth and death.  You'll transform everything.  You'll possess spiritual powers that can't be obstructed.  And you'll be at peace wherever you are."

"...the practice you cultivate doesn't exist apart from your mind." "If you have not awakened to this great truth you'd better look for a teacher on earth or in the heavens.  Don't compound your own deficiency."

May every being be at peace wherever they are!

The practice you cultivate does not exist apart from your mind. 

Thank you, Bodhidharma.