The text, sometimes referred to simply as The Two Entrances, was first used in 6th century CE by a group of wandering monks in Northern China specializing in meditation who looked to Bodhidharma as their spiritual forebear.
The work, along with T'an Lun's biography of Bodhidharma and other newly discovered manuscripts, was recompiled into a larger text called the Long Scroll by a renowned Japanese Zen practitioner, Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, in 1935.
[1][note 1] To enter by principle means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn’t apparent because it’s shrouded by sensation and delusion.
Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who "meditate on walls," the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures, are in complete and unspoken agreement with principle.
The Two Entrances and Four Practices makes up one part of a larger text known as the Long Scroll, dubbed the "Bodhidharma Anthology" by Jeffrey Broughton, considered to contain the earliest records of Chan.