Happiness Quote by Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma’s line lands like a demolition charge under the ego’s favorite story: that our feelings are permanent, personal, and owed. “Suffering and joy” covers the whole emotional ledger, not just pain. Then he refuses to treat either as a possession. They “depend,” meaning they’re contingent, assembled, and therefore negotiable. The target isn’t emotion itself; it’s the reflex to reify emotion into identity: I am miserable, I am happy, I am broken, I am blessed.

The word “conditions” does heavy lifting. In Buddhist thought, it points to dependent origination: every experience is the product of causes and supports, from bodily states to habits of attention to social circumstances. That framing quietly strips moral drama from our inner weather. If joy is conditional, it isn’t proof you’ve finally “made it.” If suffering is conditional, it isn’t evidence you’re cursed or uniquely defective. Both are events, not verdicts.

Context matters because Bodhidharma is remembered less as a system-builder than as a Zen (Chan) troublemaker: blunt, anti-theatrical, suspicious of spiritual cosplay. The sentence doubles as a training instruction. See the conditions and you loosen the grip. Change the conditions - posture, breath, interpretation, attachment - and the mind changes too.

The subtext is almost political in its way: stop bargaining with reality through craving and aversion. When your happiness depends on the world staying obedient, you’ve already outsourced your freedom. Bodhidharma is offering a harsher comfort: nothing lasts, so nothing owns you.