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Friday, February 21, 2025

No Merit

There were more questions and answers. The Emperor asked Bodhidharma, “I helped build temples and patronized many teachers. What is the virtue of my deed?” 

And Bodhidharma said, “No merit” [laughs]. That was his answer. In this way, Bodhidharma started his teaching in China in the first part of the sixth century.

Dhamek Stupa, Sarnath

cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 68-07-23 as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version. We are continually working on improving the quality of transcriptions of Suzuki's lectures. After a new "verbatim transcript" is made, we create a minimally edited version which is more readable. See the most recently completed transcripts at shunryusuzuki.com/n.