Sexual Desire – Attachment – True Love – If you saw the self nature, sexual desire would already be void and serene!
Student: The layperson has a wife and children, so he can not yet cut out sexual desire. How can he become Buddha?
Bodhidharma: I have just talked about seeing nature, not the sexual desire. If you saw the self nature, sexual desire would already be void and serene; there would be nothing to cut out; there would be nothing to attach to; even though one may still have habitual potentiality, it would not be disruptive.
Self-Nature
Self-nature is originally immaculate; although buried underneath physical body which holds the five sensations of the material body with its sense organs, the feelings, perception, mental formations and finally consciousness. The self-nature is originally pure and cannot be tainted.
Truth - Sexual Desire
Truth originally does not have sense-perception; not of hunger and thirst, nor of cold and heat; it has no diseases nor sickness; is neither blessed nor loved; is of no religious sect; undergoes neither suffering nor pleasure; is neither good nor bad, not long nor short and neither strong nor weak. Therefore, originally, there is nothing to be attained but, rather, just this physical body created those conditions of hunger and thirst, cold, heat, diseases and sickness.
If those cannot deceive you anymore, then behave however you want; for, even in the midst of life-and-death, you have already attained freedom and are able to roll the Wheel just like all the sages, without having obstacles. Then there is no place which is not comfortable.
But if mind is still lacking clarity and all kinds of outside phenomena are still barriers to you, then it means there is no way to avoid karmic results.
Eating Meat - Sexual Desire
Student: Killing is a butcher’s job; how can they attain Buddhahood?
Master: I have told you just to see the self-nature; not about the resulting karma; although one who saw self-nature is creating karma, still, he is different from the confused ones; that is, all variety of karma would not imprison him.
Beginning-less Beginning
From the beginning-less beginning, just because individuals have not seen the self-nature, they have been falling into hell. Because of this karma, they produced and are still rolling the birth-and-death wheel; but if original nature were enlightened, karmic power would, at last, no longer be manufactured.
Without seeing the self-nature, chanting and prayer will not prevent you from cause-and-effect. Killing is, compared to this, of no great concern. If one, by seeing self-nature, totally eliminated the confused doubt, even killing live creatures would not be disruptive to him.
Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th or 6th century in China. He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Zen Buddhism to China, and regarded as its first Chinese patriarch. Bodhidharma’s teachings and practice centered on meditation.