QuoteProject
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.
Bodhidharma
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

True understanding arises from direct experience rather than intellectual analysis.

Bodhidharma's quote highlights the limitations of the mind in grasping the essence of reality. It suggests that purely intellectual study of reality does not lead to real understanding; rather, true comprehension comes from engaging with reality through direct experience, which allows one to see beyond the confines of thought and the mind's limitations.

Themes

MindRealityUnderstandingExperiencePhilosophy

In practice

Example use cases

In a meditation class, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of direct experience over conceptual thinking.

More from Bodhidharma

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
BodhidharmaRead
The Way is basically perfect. It doesn't require perfecting.
BodhidharmaRead
Buddhas move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will.
BodhidharmaRead
If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it's the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past.
BodhidharmaRead
Freeing oneself from words is liberation.
BodhidharmaRead
The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.
BodhidharmaRead

Similar quotes

You'll see that the strong, the affirmative, the positive voice in any of the plays I've written is that of a woman. My men are, well, not quite worthless, but they are certainly weak, and that reflects the reality I grew up with and what I think has in a sense shaped me.
Athol FugardRead
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.
Neil GaimanRead
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
Carlos FuentesRead
It is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known.
George WashingtonRead
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.
Baron De MontesquieuRead
This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
John SteinbeckRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.