Bodhidharma's wake-Up Sermon
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
From the First Patriarch, Bodhidharma, in his Wake-Up Sermon (translated by Red Pine) Bodhidharma, founder of Zen, was born in the year 440. He came to China late in the fifth century of the common era.
"Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming that it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it doesn't exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. This is what is meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn't exist. The mind that neither exists nor doesn't exist is called the Middle Way." (p. 53)
This is a profoundly deep teaching. It at once delineates between an awakened person and a non awakened person, but goes beyond that to suggest that an awakened person must go past awakening to become a bodhisattva and a buddha. By a "mortal" Bodhidharma is referring to a ordinary person living in an ordinary life, unaware of his original nature. This is a sleeping person, a person on auto-pilot, going through the motions of living, but completely not present.
An awakened person, an arhat, is one who has attained awakening. This person's eyes are opened to the true nature of things. Self is extinguished, impermanence understood, and emptiness attained. Yet, this is not enough. Buddha was fully awakened, but he got up from his cushion and entered the world. He taught. He healed. He sat with every sort of person from pauper to king. He made a diffeence in the world through his work.
When we realize that subject and object have relational existance, that one is and is not at the same time, and that we are able to live within the vast and eternal processes of life, then we are both buddhas and bodhisattvas. Buddhas because we have realized and attained this highest teaching, bodhisattvas because we set our "selves" aside to be inservice to the entire universe throughout time.
One who attains this understanding recognizes there is no past, present or future; no you, no me, no subject, no object; yet lives at the same moment within time, subject and object, and does so without thought as hindrance.
Be well.
"Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming that it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it doesn't exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. This is what is meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn't exist. The mind that neither exists nor doesn't exist is called the Middle Way." (p. 53)
This is a profoundly deep teaching. It at once delineates between an awakened person and a non awakened person, but goes beyond that to suggest that an awakened person must go past awakening to become a bodhisattva and a buddha. By a "mortal" Bodhidharma is referring to a ordinary person living in an ordinary life, unaware of his original nature. This is a sleeping person, a person on auto-pilot, going through the motions of living, but completely not present.
An awakened person, an arhat, is one who has attained awakening. This person's eyes are opened to the true nature of things. Self is extinguished, impermanence understood, and emptiness attained. Yet, this is not enough. Buddha was fully awakened, but he got up from his cushion and entered the world. He taught. He healed. He sat with every sort of person from pauper to king. He made a diffeence in the world through his work.
When we realize that subject and object have relational existance, that one is and is not at the same time, and that we are able to live within the vast and eternal processes of life, then we are both buddhas and bodhisattvas. Buddhas because we have realized and attained this highest teaching, bodhisattvas because we set our "selves" aside to be inservice to the entire universe throughout time.
One who attains this understanding recognizes there is no past, present or future; no you, no me, no subject, no object; yet lives at the same moment within time, subject and object, and does so without thought as hindrance.
Be well.