
Traditional attribution · Essential works
The Wake-up Sermon (Wuxing lun)
達磨大師悟性論

A short treatise on awakening to one's own nature: enlightenment is reached not by accumulating merit or by study but by seeing that the mind itself is empty and free. Included in the Shaoshi liumen, it is among the texts most widely read in the West as 'words of Bodhidharma', thanks to Red Pine's translation.
amazon.com · Link to the store.
Authorship note
A late attribution: the text does not appear in the sixth- and seventh-century sources, and scholarship (Faure, McRae, Broughton) regards it as the work of later Chan authors who used the patriarch's name to lend it authority.
Editions and translations
Editions in your language first, without hiding the others. Each with its cover and its store.
English

The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma («Wake-up Sermon»)
North Point Press, 1989
Translation: Red Pine (Bill Porter)
ISBN 9780865473997
Other works by Bodhidharma
- Treatise on the Two Entrances and the Four Practices
- The 'Long Scroll': Dunhuang Compilation around the Two Entrances · 700
- The Bloodstream Sermon (Xuemai lun) · 1100
- The Breakthrough Sermon (Poxiang lun) · 700
- The Dharma Gate of Pacifying the Mind (Anxin famen)
- Verses on the Heart Sūtra (Xinjing song)
- The Six Gates of Shaoshi (Shaoshi liumen)
- Sinew-Changing Classic (Yijin jing) · 1624
- Marrow-Washing Classic (Xisui jing) · 1650
Sources
- Red Pine (Bill Porter), trad. The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989 (1.ª ed. Empty Bowl, 1987). ISBN 9780865473997.
Affiliate link: if you buy through it, the library may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. When an edition's real cover is not available, we show an illustrative library cover.