Daily Inspiration Quote by Bodhidharma

Freedom, here, is not a mood but a kind of untouchability. Bodhidharma’s line refuses the usual bargain we make with life: that we will stay steady only if the conditions stay kind. By defining a Buddha as someone who is free in both “good fortune and bad,” he shifts the spiritual goal from acquiring better outcomes to breaking the nervous dependence on outcomes altogether.

The phrasing matters. “Good fortune” isn’t presented as a reward; it’s a test. Pleasure can be as adhesive as pain, and Bodhidharma’s Zen-inflected edge is to treat comfort as another chain. The subtext is almost confrontational: if you can’t remain unowned by success, you’re not liberated; you’re merely satisfied. That’s a bracing corrective to any soft-focus spirituality that equates enlightenment with serenity as long as the world cooperates.

Context sharpens the intent. Bodhidharma, the semi-legendary transmitter of Zen to China, preached a direct, unornamented path: seeing one’s nature, not polishing one’s image. In a culture where merit, hierarchy, and external signs of attainment mattered, his teaching demotes status and circumstance. “Freedom” becomes internal sovereignty, a refusal to be drafted by either fear or flattery.

It’s also a political statement in miniature. A person who can’t be bought by fortune or broken by misfortune is difficult to govern through reward and punishment. The Buddha, in this formulation, is the ultimate noncompliant subject: calm, not because life is gentle, but because the self that panics has been seen through.