Zen Masters Of China. Richard Bryan McDaniel

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СКАЧАТЬ of a historical basis to the story of Bodhidharma is found in a document written by an official named Yang Xuanzhi in 547. He recorded that when he visited the temple of Yongning in Luoyang, he came upon an elderly Indian monk named Bodhidharma who claimed to be over a hundred years old. Yang noted that the monk expressed great admiration for the beauties of the shrines and other buildings he found in China.

      The story of the legendary Bodhidharma does not include the visit to Luoyang but does say that eventually the Indian monk’s pilgrimage brought him to the capital city of the emperor Wu, founder of the Liang dynasty.

      This emperor had been the third son of a noble family and as a young man pursued a career in military and government service, distinguishing himself as a general in the army of the emperor Ming of the Han dynasty. After Ming’s death, however, Wu led a rebellion against Ming’s son and successor. Following a prolonged siege, during which the young emperor died, Wu successfully occupied the royal palace. He had potential rivals to the throne executed, then declared himself emperor.

      Although the new emperor had come to his throne by means of contrivance and violence, he proved to be a competent ruler, commended by his contemporaries for the modesty of his personal lifestyle. Around 517 he became a Buddhist, although he continued to respect the native Confucian rites as well. As a Buddhist, he adopted vegetarianism and went so far as to substitute vegetable offerings in place of the usual animal sacrifices that were ritually presented to the ancestors. In 527 he formally dedicated himself to the service of the Buddha, a commitment he renewed three more times. He even authored a repentance ritual still in use by Chinese Buddhists.

      When the emperor learned that a monk from the land of the Buddha’s birth was in his kingdom, he had Bodhidharma brought to his court. The monk, however, was probably not what the emperor had expected. The naturalist, writer, and Zen practitioner Peter Matthiessen imagines Bodhidharma presenting an uncouth appearance in the court:

      Cowled, round-shouldered, big-headed, bearded, broken-toothed, with prominent and piercing eyes, sometimes said to be blue—one can all but smell his hard-patched robes, stained with ghee butter from India, the wafting reek of cooking smoke and old human leather. One imagines him slouched there scratching and belching, or perhaps demanding, What time do we eat?²

      The emperor was concerned about the misdeeds of his younger years and had tried to compensate for them through a variety of devotional acts. He had sponsored the translation of Buddhist texts, supported large numbers of monks and nuns, and assumed the cost of building temples. Like many devotional Buddhists, the emperor believed in karma, the concept that one’s actions bore consequences both in this life and in future lives. Eager to know if his religious activities balanced the crimes of his past, he described to Bodhidharma all he had done to promote Buddhism in his country, then asked, “What is your opinion? What merit have I accumulated as a result of these deeds?”

      Bodhidharma, rejecting this simplistic understanding of Buddhism, replied bluntly and tactlessly: “No merit whatsoever.”

      It was a courageous statement, because the emperor, for all his good qualities, was also known to have a temper and had the power of life and death over his subjects. A story is told that once Wu was engaged in a board game with a courtier when a monk paid him a visit. The emperor, preoccupied with his play, did not notice the monk. Making a strong move in the game, he exclaimed, “Kill!” His bodyguard misunderstood what he was saying and executed the unoffending monk before the emperor could prevent them from doing so.

      On this occasion the emperor controlled himself, although he must have been angered by the old and shabbily dressed Indian’s reply. He limited himself to inquiring, “Why no merit?”

      “Motives for such actions are impure,” Bodhidharma told him. “They are undertaken solely for the purposes of attaining future rebirth. They are like shadows cast by bodies, following those bodies but having no reality of their own.”

      “Then what is true merit?” the emperor asked.

      “It is clear seeing, pure knowing, beyond the discriminating intelligence. Its essence is emptiness. Such merit cannot be gained by worldly means.”

      This was unlike any exposition of the Buddhist faith the emperor had heard before, and he asked, “According to your understanding, then, what is the first principle of Buddhism?”

      “Vast emptiness and not a thing that can be called holy,” Bodhidharma replied at once.

      Wu spluttered: “What does that mean? And who are you who now stands before me?”

      To which Bodhidharma replied: “I don’t know.” Then he left the court.

      The courtiers were outraged by the barbarian’s behavior, and it is even possible his life may have been in danger after this encounter. He traveled south, crossing the Yangtze River, some claim by floating on a reed.

      After Bodhidharma had left, the emperor discussed the Indian with a local Buddhist monk named Chih Kung. Chih Kung expressed the opinion that Bodhidharma may have been the reincarnation of a bodhisattva (roughly the equivalent of a Buddhist saint), perhaps even the reincarnation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Guanyin.

      The emperor, abashed that he had not recognized this possibility himself, wanted to send soldiers to retrieve Bodhidharma and bring him back to the court. But Chih Kung dissuaded him, remarking, “It will be of no use, your majesty. Were all the people of your kingdom to appeal to him, he still won’t retrace his steps.”

      After crossing the Yangtzi, Bodhidharma proceeded to the Shaolin Temple located in the Songshan mountain range, which would later become famous for its affiliation with the martial arts. Bodhidharma built a hermitage on the peak of Mount Shaoshi and there practiced silent meditation while facing the wall of the cliff that rose in front of his hut. He came to be known locally as Biguan, the wall-gazing Brahmin, and the hut was known as the Wall-Gazing Hermitage.

      Popular legends, not taken seriously in the Zen tradition, recount that he sat so long in meditation that his legs withered and fell off (for which reason the round-bottomed dolls weighted so that they always return upright when pushed over are known as Bodhidharma—or Daruma—dolls in Japan). Another story asserts that he became so angered after falling asleep during meditation one day that he cut off his eyelids, which then fell to the earth and grew to become the first tea plants.

      Word of Bodhidharma’s audience with the emperor spread throughout the kingdom, and most members of the Buddhist community avoided the barbarian monk, leaving him in isolation. There was, however, a Confucian scholar named Ji who was searching for a teacher to help him resolve the concerns that weighed heavily on his mind—the same type of concerns that had driven the young Siddhartha Gautama to abandon his princely state in order to become a monk. Ji had visited many teachers, Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist. He studied all three traditions and was well versed not only in the Confucian classics but also in the doctrines of both the Theravada and Mahayana schools of Buddhism. Nothing, however, had brought him peace of mind. In desperation he sought out the old barbarian monk who had come from the land of the Buddha.

      When Ji presented himself at Mount Shaoshi, Bodhidharma suspected his visitor was another who came seeking an intellectual explanation of Buddhist doctrine rather than the experiential insight that comes from the practice of meditation. So, for a long while he ignored Ji. The Confucian, however, remained patiently outside the hut, waiting several days for Bodhidharma to acknowledge him.

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