Zen Masters Of China. Richard Bryan McDaniel
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.
One night, it began to snow. The snow fell so heavily that by morning, it was up to Ji’s knees. Seeing this, Bodhidharma finally spoke to his visitor, asking, “What is it you seek?”
“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.