Success Quote by Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma, the austere figure often credited with bringing Chan (Zen) to China, cuts straight through our fixation on outcomes. Success and failure, he says, ride on conditions: timing, resources, health, moods, other people, the weather of circumstance. They arise from countless causes interlocking in ways we rarely control. Because they depend on conditions, they shift as easily as a wind direction and do not define anything ultimate.

The mind he points to is not the flicker of thoughts and emotions that surge and sink. It is the clear capacity to know, the open awareness within which gain and loss appear. That awareness does not improve when praised or deteriorate when blamed; it does not grow fuller on a good day or thinner on a bad one. Clouds gather and part, but the sky does not wax or wane.

This is not a call to passivity. Action still matters, and conditions can be shaped skillfully. The point is to act without the anxiety of self-importance, without staking identity on results. When we measure ourselves by outcomes, we ride a roller coaster that never stops. When we rest in awareness, we meet outcomes with steadiness, learn from them, and move on.

Chan practice makes this practical. Sit still, watch the stream of sensation and thought, and see how every experience comes and goes. Notice that the knowing of it remains. In that recognition, the mind is no longer a hostage to success or failure. Effort becomes cleaner, free of the grasping that breeds exhaustion and resentment.

Bodhidharma’s stark simplicity resists metaphysical ornament. He names a distinction most of us blur: conditioned fluctuations versus the unconditioned nature of mind. Remembering that difference loosens fear in defeat and pride in triumph. It is a way to inhabit life fully while not being pulled apart by it.