Ancient Chinese Wisdom: Thoughts of Bodhidharma, Lao Tzu , Confucius, Sun Tzu, Zhuang Zhou, Mencius, Han Fei and many more

By Liu Liang Ji

Philosophy is the system that makes you think, do reasoning and activate the brain cells which aids you excel in all areas. When we look back to the core of philosophy, three main nations stand as the basal threads. It all started in Ancient India which was later exported to west.
When Indus valley civilization was booming, there bloomed another counterpart in the very valleys of the Yellow river. There flourished the ancient Chinese culture which produced many schools of thoughts like Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Mohism, Yangism, Legalism, School of Yin-yang, Logicians, Neo-Confucianism, etc which shaped China as a distinct nation. These schools of thoughts are the core of Chinese philosophical wisdom and without which is there is no Chinese identity.

This book, ‘Ancient Chinese Wisdom’ contains the collective wisdom of fifteen Chinese philosophical intellectuals like Lao Tzu, Confucius, Bodhidharma, Zhuang Zhou, Mencius, Han Fei, Xun Kuang, Guo Xing, Wu Cheng’en, Zeng Zi, Cheng Yi, and other notable personalities.

You may be in line of philosophy or sinology, cultural lover, enthusiast, or anything; this book should be added as a precious entity to your valuable collection. This extract is thousands of years of combined accumulated wisdom of one of the earliest human civilization which is still alive and progressing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: UB Tech
• Release date: Sep 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463663783

Book preview

ANCIENT CHINESE WISDOM

ANCIENT CHINESE WISDOM

~ Thoughts of Bodhidharma, Lao Tzu , Confucius, Sun Tzu, Zhuang Zhou, Mencius, Han Fei and many more ~

Composer: Liu Liang Ji

Cover Image: Public Domain

DEDICATION

This book, "Ancient Chinese Wisdom: Thoughts of Bodhidharma, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Sun Tzu, Zhuang Zhou, Mencius, Han Fei, Cao Cao and many more" is dedicated in the feet of Almighty.

"Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment."

Lao Tzu

TABLE OF Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

BODHIDHARMA QUOTES

LAO-TZU QUOTES

MENCIUS QUOTES

CONFUCIUS QUOTES

HANFEI QUOTES

WUCHENGEN QUOTES

SUNTZU QUOTES

CAO CAO QUOTES

XUN KUANG QUOTES

CHENG YI QUOTES

ZENGZI QUOTES

WANG YANGMING QUOTES

ZHANG ZAI QUOTES

GUO XIANG QUOTES

ZHUANG ZHOU QUOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sincerely showing thankfulness to all those who participated and supported directly and indirectly in the release of this book.

INTRODUCTION

Human life was said to be started in Africa, but India is the primal land where the seed of civilization blossomed and shed light to the entire humanity and acted as building blocks for the human progress.

When Indus valley civilization was booming, there bloomed another counterpart in the very valleys of the Yellow river. There flourished the ancient Chinese culture which produced many schools of thoughts like Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Mohism, Yangism, Legalism, School of Yin-yang, Logicians, Neo-Confucianism, etc which shaped China as a distinct nation. These schools of thoughts are the core of Chinese philosophical wisdom and without which is there is no Chinese identity.

This book, Ancient Chinese Wisdom contains the collective wisdom of Chinese philosophical intellectuals like Lao Tzu, Confucius, Bodhidharma, Zhuang Zhou, Mencius, Han Fei, Xun Kuang, Guo Xing, Wu Cheng’en, Zeng Zi, Cheng Yi, and other notable personalities.

You may be in line of philosophy or sinology, cultural lover, enthusiast, or anything; this book should be added as a precious entity to your valuable collection. This extract is thousands of years of combined accumulated wisdom of one of the earliest human civilization which is still alive and progressing. I believe you shouldn’t miss this book.

BODHIDHARMA QUOTES

You can't know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.

Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom.

Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.

Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity.

The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.

When mortals are alive, they worry about death. When they're full, they worry about hunger. Theirs is the Great Uncertainty. But sages don't consider the past. And they don't worry about the future. Nor do they cling to the present. And from moment to moment they follow the Way.

But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes.

Buddha’s don't practice nonsense.

The essence of the Way is detachment. And the goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances.

The awareness of mortals falls short. As long as they're attached to appearances, they're unaware that their minds are empty. And by mistakenly clinging to the appearance of things they lose the Way.

And as long as you're subject to birth and death, you'll never attain enlightenment.

The Way is basically perfect. It doesn't require perfecting. The Way has no form or sound. It's subtle and hard to perceive. It's like when you drink water: you know how hot or cold it is, but you can't tell others.

If you know that everything comes from the mind, don't become attached. Once attached, you're unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. It's thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in midsentence. What good are doctrines? The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions... Don't cling to appearances, and you'll break through all barriers...

Whoever realizes that the six senses aren't real, that the five aggregates are fictions, that no such things can be located anywhere in the body, understands the language of Buddha’s.

Trying to find a Buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space.

Leaving behind the false, return to the true: make no discriminations between self and others. In contemplation, one's mind should be stable and unmoving, like a wall.

Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn't exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn't wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception.

To see nothing is to perceive the Way, and to understand nothing is to know the Dharma, because seeing is neither seeing nor not seeing, and because understanding is neither understanding nor not understanding.

Once you see your nature, sex is basically immaterial.

And the Buddha is the person who's free: free of plans, free of cares.

Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path.

People of this world are deluded. They're always longing for something - always, in a word, seeking.

People of this world are deluded. They're always longing for something, always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons.

Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.

Those who worship don't know, and those who know don't worship.

Unless you see your nature, you shouldn't go around criticizing the goodness of others. There's no advantage in deceiving yourself. Good and bad are distinct. Cause and effect are clear. But fools don't believe and fall straight into a hell of endless darkness without even knowing it. What keeps them from believing is the heaviness of their karma. They're like blind people who don't believe there's such a thing as light. Even if you explain it to them, they still don't believe, because they're blind. How can they possibly distinguish light?

An Awakened person is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.

One clings to life although there is nothing to be called life; another clings to death although there is nothing to be called death. In reality, there is nothing to be born; consequently, there is nothing to perish.

Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us.

Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher's help.

I do not need any writing, since I transmit teaching beyond words and ideas.

The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included.

Don't hate life and death or love life and death. Keep your every thought free of delusion, and in life you'll witness the beginning of nirvana, and in death you'll experience the assurance of no rebirth.

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the Buddha.... Using the mind to reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

According to the Sutras, evil deeds result in hardships and good deeds result in blessings.

Worship means reverence and humility it means revering your real self and humbling delusions.

Our true Buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form.

If your mind is pure, all Buddha-lands are pure.

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.

To have a body is to suffer.

Buddha’s move freely through birth and death, appearing and disappearing at will.

This one life has no form and is empty by nature. If you become attached by any form, you should reject it. If you see an ego, a soul, a birth, or a death, rejects them all.

At every moment where language can't go, that's your mind.

Externally keep yourself away from all relationships, and internally have no paintings in your heart; when your mind is like unto a straight-standing wall, you may enter into the Path.

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... The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.

The Buddha is your real body, your original mind. This mind has no form or characteristics, no cause or effect, no tendons or bones. It's like space. You can't hold it. It's not the mind of materialists or nihilists. If you don't see your own miraculously aware nature, you'll never find a Buddha, even if you break your body into atoms.

If you use your mind to look for a Buddha, you won't see the Buddha.

As mortals, we're ruled by conditions, not by ourselves.

To enter by reason means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn't apparent because it's shrouded by sensation and delusion.

Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way.

When we're deluded there's a world to escape. When we're aware, there's nothing to escape.

All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.

The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind.

To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings.

But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.

The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way.

All know the way, but few actually walk it.

To find Buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha. If you don't see your nature, invoking Buddha’s, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking Buddha’s results in good karma, reciting sutras results in a good memory, keeping precepts results in good rebirth, and making offerings results in future blessings-but no Buddha.

Delusion means mortality. And awareness means Buddha hood.

Someone who seeks the Way doesn't look beyond himself.

The Way is basically perfect. It doesn't require perfecting.

To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss. When you seek nothing, you're on the Path.

A Buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad. Such is his power that karma can't hold him. No matter what kind of karma, a Buddha transforms it. Heaven and hell are nothing to him. But the awareness of a mortal is dim compared to that of a Buddha, who penetrates everything, inside and out.

Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit.

The essence of the Way is detachment.

Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist.

Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice.

To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.

When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.

The Buddha is your real body, your original mind.

Worship means reverence and humility. It means revering your real self and humbling delusions. If you can wipe out evil desires and harbor good thoughts, even if nothing shows, its worship. Such form is its real form.

But when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won't be focused. You're likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn't doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else.

But this mind isn't somewhere outside the material body of the four elements. Without this mind we can't move. The body has no awareness. Like a plant or a stone, the body has no nature. So how does it move? It's the mind that moves.

As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the Buddha

To find a Buddha all you have to do is see your nature.

…the fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don't believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage . . . the sutras say, Mind is the teaching. But people of no understanding don't believe in their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, Buddha-images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity.

Once you stop clinging and let things be, you'll be free, even of birth and death. You'll transform everything.

The mind's capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind.

The true Way is sublime. It can't be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his own nature finds the Way, even if he can't read a word.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

Reality has no inside, outside, or middle part.

Mortals liberate Buddha’s and Buddha’s liberate mortals.

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.

Everything sacred, nothing sacred.

If you see your nature, you don't need to read sutras or invoke Buddha’s. Erudition and knowledge are not only useless but also cloud your awareness. Doctrines are only for pointing to the mind. Once you see your mind, why pay attention to doctrines?

But deluded people don't realize that their own mind is the Buddha. They keep searching outside.

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

People who don't see their own nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools.

In order to see a fish you must watch the water

When you don't understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.

The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.

As long as you're enthralled by a lifeless form, you're not free.

All Buddha’s preach emptiness. Why? Because they wish to crush the concrete ideas of the students. If a student even clings to an idea of emptiness, he betrays all Buddha’s.

The mind is always present. You just don't see it.

Unless you see your nature, all this talk about cause & effect is nonsense. Buddha’s don't practice nonsense.

Without the mind there is no Buddha. Without the Buddha there's no mind.

Life and death are important. Don't suffer them in vain.

LAO TZU QUOTES

If you attach yourself to gross energies - loving this person, hating that clan, rejecting one experience or habitually indulging in another - then you will lead a series of heavy, attached lives. This can go on for a very long and tedious time.

Man, when living, is soft and tender; when dead, he is hard and tough. All animals and plants when living are tender and delicate; when dead they become withered and dry. Therefore it is said: the hard and tough are parts of death; the soft and tender are parts of life.

True words aren't eloquent; eloquent words aren't true. Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise. The Master has no possessions. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is. The Tao nourishes by not forcing. By not dominating, the Master leads.

Do not look only at yourself, and you will see much. Do not justify yourself, and you will be distinguished. Do not brag, and you will have merit. Do not be prideful, and your work will endure.

The wise does not think that only he is right -thus he knows the truth.

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

Life and death are one thread...

The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be. The more subsidies you have, the less self reliant people will be.

He who regards the world as he does the fortune of his own body can govern the world. He who loves the world as he does his own body can be entrusted with the world.

Bend and you will be straight.

Understand this if nothing else: spiritual freedom and oneness with the Tao are not randomly bestowed gifts, but the rewards of conscious self-transformation and self-evolution.

In lightness the root is lost. In haste the ruler is lost.

Spokes unite in the hub of a wheel.

Don't impose your will through manipulation of aggressive emotions and actions.

Your name or your body, what is dearer? Your body or your wealth, what is worthier?

Treat the large as the small and the few as the many.

The most able seems clumsy.

Of all things, none does not revere the Way and honor virtue. Reverence of the Way and honoring virtue were not demanded of them, but it is in their nature.

Not valuing wealth prevents theft.

All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.

Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

The natural laws of the universe are inviolable... what you say and do determines what happens in your life... You are the master of your life and death. What you do is what you are.

Have patience. Wait until the mud settles and the water is clear. Remain unmoving until right action arises by itself.

The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of all things.

People who have to fight for their living and are not afraid to die for it are higher persons than those who, stationed high, are too fat to dare to die.

Those who would take over the earth and shape it to their will, never, I notice succeed.

The people starve because those above them eat too much tax-grain. That is the only reason why they starve.

A good wanderer leaves no trace.

If you can find true contentment, it will last forever.

I am wearied, as if I lacked a home to go to.

Knowing honor, but clinging to disgrace, you become the valley of the world.

The master does his job and then stops. He understands that the universe is forever out of control, and that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao.

Standing on tip toe, one stands not firmly. Straining in stride, one cannot walk far. Flaunting of deeds, one is unfavorably noticed. Being self-righteous, one is not respected. Boasting of self, one's merit is unrecognized. Glorifying of self, one loses the opportunity for greatness. From the viewpoint of Tao these represent imperfect Te, Valued as are filth or disease.

The farther you go, the less you know.

A good traveler leaves no tracks. Good speech lacks fault-finding.

. . . the mind is desperate to fix the river {of events} in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment.

The Sage expects no recognition for what he does; he achieves merit but does not take it to himself; he does not wish to display his worth.

If you see what is small as it sees itself, and accept what is weak for what strength it has, and use what is dim for the light it gives then all will go well. This is called Acting Naturally.

My words are easy to understand and easy to perform, yet no man under heaven knows them or practices them.

Between yea and nay, how much difference is there?

Eliminate mental muddiness and obscurity; keep your mind crystal clear. Allow your pure original insight to emerge. Quiet your emotions and abide in serenity. Don't go crazy with the worship of idols, images, and ideas; this is like putting a new head on top of the head you already have. Remember: if you can cease all restless activity, your integral nature will appear.

Wary, as if surrounded by strangers.

The Master keeps her mind always at one with the Tao; that is what gives her her radiance. The Tao is ungraspable. How can her mind be at one with it? Because she doesn't cling to ideas. The Tao is dark and unfathomable. How can it make her radiant? Because she lets it. Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond is and is not. How do I know this is true? I look inside myself and see.

The sage does not attempt anything very big, and thus achieves greatness.

The weak overcomes the strong. The soft overcomes the hard. Everybody in the world knows this; still nobody makes use of it.

Speaking with kindness creates confidence, thinking with kindness creates profoundness, giving with kindness creates love.

Moderation means prevention. Prevention means achieving much virtue.

"So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind; Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it