Zen Masters Of China. Richard Bryan McDaniel
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Название: Zen Masters Of China
Автор: Richard Bryan McDaniel
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Здоровье
isbn: 9781462910502
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“Your teaching,” Ji told him.
“The teaching of the Buddha is subtle and difficult. Understanding can only be acquired through strenuous effort, doing what is hard to do and enduring what is hard to endure, continuing the practice for even countless eons of time. How can a man of scant virtue and great vanity, such as yourself, achieve it? Your puny efforts will only end in failure.”
Ji drew his sword and cut off his left arm, which he presented to Bodhidharma as evidence of the sincerity of his intention.
“What you seek,” Bodhidharma told him, “can’t be sought through another.”
“My mind isn’t at peace,” Ji lamented. “Please, master, pacify it.”
“Very well. Bring your mind here, and I’ll pacify it.”
“I’ve sought it for these many years, even practicing sitting mediation as you do, but still I’m not able to get hold of it.”
“There! Now it’s pacified!”
And at these words—as when Mahakasyapa saw the Buddha twirling the flower between his fingers—Ji came to awakening. He came to the same experiential understanding that the Buddha, Mahakasyapa, and all the patriarchs before Bodhidharma had attained—that his basic nature, his “Buddha-nature,” was no different from that of all existence. In acknowledgment of this attainment, Bodhidharma told him that henceforth his name would be Huike, which means “his understanding will do.”
Bodhidharma remained at Shaolin for nine years, during which time only a few aspirants sought him out. His teaching was based on the practice of meditation and the attainment of awakening, but (in spite of his emphasis that Zen was a tradition “outside the scriptures and not dependent on words and letters”) he also introduced his students to the Lankavatara Sutra. It would be his followers and descendents who would mold the old Brahmin’s teaching into something thoroughly grounded in Chinese practicality.
In spite of the fact that he had only a handful of disciples, his teaching angered members of other Buddhist sects, and it is said that six attempts were made to poison him, all of which he thwarted.
Eventually Bodhidharma decided to return to India, and, in preparation for his departure, he called his chief disciples together and asked each of them to give him their understanding of the teaching of the meditation school.
The first to reply was a monk named Dao Fu, who said, “Reality is beyond yes and no, beyond all duality.”
Bodhidharma told him, “You have my skin.”
The second to speak was a nun, Zong Chi. “To my mind, truth is like the vision Ananda had of the Buddha-lands, glimpsed once and forever.”
Bodhidharma told her, “You have my flesh.”
Next came Dao Yu: “All things are empty. The elements of fire, air, earth, and water are empty. Form, sensation, perception, ideation, and consciousness—all of these also are empty.”
Bodhidharma told him, “You have my bones.”
Finally, there was only Huike. When Bodhidharma turned to him, Huike bowed and remained silent.
“Ah,” Bodhidharma exclaimed in admiration. “You have my marrow.”
Some accounts put Bodhidharma’s age at 150 by the time he decided to return to India. In one account, he died en route and was buried by Huike in a cave on the banks of the Luo River.
One more story, however, is told of him.
A government official named Song Yun claimed that as he was returning to China from a visit to Central Asia he met Bodhidharma proceeding in the opposite direction, barefoot and carrying one sandal in his hands. When Bodhidharma’s disciples heard this account, they opened the patriarch’s tomb and found it empty except for a single sandal.
CHAPTER TWO
FOUR PATRIARCHS
Bodhidharma was Indian, but his disciples were not, and they began the process that resulted in the development of a Zen tradition that was uniquely Chinese. Earlier Buddhists in China had noted similarities between their teachings and native Daoism—which sought to bring its adherents into harmony with the Way (Dao or Tao) of nature and all being. Bodhidharma’s disciples recognized that realizing the Dao was essentially the same thing as achieving Awakening or realizing one’s Buddha-nature. As they adapted the Zen tradition to the Chinese temperament, they naturally assimilated Daoist terms and concepts.
HUIKE
Huike had been forty years old when he met Bodhidharma, and he remained with the first patriarch for six years. When Bodhidharma decided to return to India, he formally acknowledged Huike as his successor by presenting him with his robe and begging bowl.
Huike accompanied his master as he set out on his return journey and may have buried Bodhidharma when he died before reaching India. After that, Huike became a wandering monk. He did not profess to be a teacher and contented himself with living among ordinary people. Over time, however, he was recognized as a man of deep spiritual awakening and began to acquire his own disciples.
Conditions had changed in China since Bodhidharma first landed on its shores. The emperor Wu had been removed from his throne and starved to death while under house arrest in 549. Wu’s successors were traditional Confucianists who considered both Daoism (which had originated in China) and Buddhism (which they dismissed as something foreign) to be disruptive elements in society. Emperor Wu’s vegetarian offerings to the ancestors may have contributed to that feeling, but in particular the celibate life of monks and nuns in Buddhist monasteries was repugnant to Confucianists, who put great value on family life and social responsibility. They argued that the monks and nuns living in temples such as Shaolin were parasites who contributed nothing to society.
An edict was passed that banned the practices of Buddhism and Daoism. Religious texts and artwork were destroyed. Monks and nuns, such as those formerly supported by the Emperor Wu, were ordered to return to lay life. During the height of this persecution, Huike, with the aid of another monk named Tanlin, concealed sutras and images of the Buddha from the authorities. Tanlin had also been a disciple of Bodhidharma and had written a biography of his teacher. For a while, Tanlin was a dedicated Zen practitioner.
While the persecution was raging, Huike and Tanlin retired together to the mountains by the Yangtze River. There it happened that Tanlin lost his arm during an encounter with brigands. Huike (who had sacrificed his own arm to gain the dharma) nursed Tanlin, cauterizing the wound with fire, and СКАЧАТЬ