Daily Inspiration Quote by Bodhidharma

The line lands like a paradox designed to short-circuit hierarchy. Bodhidharma, the semi-mythic patriarch of Chan/Zen, is speaking from a tradition suspicious of spiritual rank: the Buddha is not a distant monarch of enlightenment and the mortal is not merely a failed applicant. Liberation runs both ways, which quietly rejects the comforting idea that awakening is a private possession held by perfected beings and dispensed downward.

The intent is corrective and provocative. If “mortals liberate Buddhas,” it implies Buddhas are not eternally fixed statues; they require enactment. A Buddha without living beings is a title without a scene. Compassion is not optional ornamentation but the condition that makes Buddhahood real in the world. The liberated person is “liberated” only insofar as liberation is exercised in relationship - teaching, serving, disrupting delusion in others, even being vulnerable enough to be needed. In that sense, mortals “free” the Buddha from becoming an inert icon.

“Buddhas liberate mortals” keeps the other half of the circuit intact: the path is still transmitted. But the subtext warns against dependency. The Buddha doesn’t rescue you so you can remain a spectator; the point is to become the kind of person whose awakening has consequences.

In context, Bodhidharma’s Zen rhetoric often attacks attachment to scriptures, rituals, and sanctified images. This aphorism turns the master-disciple dynamic into mutual obligation: enlightenment isn’t a trophy, it’s a feedback loop.