Q0207

Huineng

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Bodhi originally has no tree; the bright mirror is not a stand. Fundamentally there is not a single thing — where could dust alight?
Thinker Huineng
School Zen Buddhism
Source Platform Sutra (popular Zongbao text)
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Platform Sutra (popular Zongbao text), within the tradition of Zen Buddhism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Huineng's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Huineng. (n.d.). Bodhi originally has no tree; the bright mirror is not a stand. Fundamentally there is not a single thing — where could dust alight? In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0207

MLA: Huineng. “Bodhi originally has no tree; the bright mirror….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0207.

Chicago: Huineng. “Bodhi originally has no tree; the bright mirror….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0207.

Same thinker

More from Huineng

  1. Who would have thought that self-nature is originally pure; who would have thought that self-nature is originally neither born nor destroyed.

All quotations by Huineng

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme