Bodhidharma’s teaching, by traditional attribution: a separate transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words and letters, pointing directly to the human mind, seeing into one’s nature and attaining buddhahood.
The legends (spending nine years wall-gazing at Shaolin; cutting off his eyelids to stay awake) matter less than what the tradition names as his inheritance: the insistence that awakening is not found in texts or concepts but in direct seeing.