There are many teachings left by Bodhidharma. And this, “Who are you in front of me?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is the first principle?” the Emperor asked.
“I don’t know,” [laughs] he said. I don’t know. There’s no holy person and no sacred teachings, that was his answer.
“Then aren’t you the teacher from India?” the Emperor asked.
Bodhidharma said, “I don’t know” [laughs]. This “I don’t know” is not the usual “I don’t know.”
—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. These posts are also on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram. 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.