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.