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Bodhidharma (Sanskrit: बोधिधमृ; Chinese 菩提達摩, pinyin Pútídámó or simply Dámó; Wade-Giles Tamo; Japanese ダルマ, Daruma), also known as the Tripitaka Dharma Master, was a semi-legendary Buddhist monk, who lived from approximately 440 - 528 CE. Bodhidharma is traditionally held to be the founder of the Chan school of Buddhism (known in Japan and the West as Zen), and the Shaolin school of Chinese martial arts.
Biography
The major sources about Bodhidharma's life conflict with regard to his origins, the chronology of his journey to China, his death, and other details.
Biographical details from the Record of the Buddhist Monasteries of Luoyang (547) by Yang Xuanzhi
The earliest historical record of Bodhidharma was compiled in 547 by Yang Xuanzhi, the Record of the Buddhist Monasteries of Luoyang, in which Yang identifies Bodhidharma as a Persian Central Asian (Wade-Giles: po-szu kuo hu-jen) (Broughton, 1999, p. 54, p.138).
At that time there was a monk of the Western Region named Bodhidharma, a Persian Central Asian. He traveled from the wild borderlands to China. Seeing the golden disks reflecting in the sun, the rays of light illuminating the surface of the clouds, the jewel-bells on the stupa blowing in the wind, the echoes reverberating beyond the heavens, Bodhidharma sang its praises. He exclaimed: "Truly this is the work of spirits." He said: "I am 150 years old, and I have passed through numerous countries. There is virtually no country I have not visited. But even in India there is nothing comparable to the pure beauty of this monastery. Even the distant Buddha realms lack this." He chanted homage and placed his palms together in salutation for days on end.
Yongning was built in 516 and destroyed in 526, dating Bodhidharma's exultation to these years.
Biographical details from the Biography of Bodhidharma by Tan Lin
Bodhidharma's disciple Tan Lin identifies his master as South Indian (Broughton, 1999, p. 8).
The Dharma Master was a South Indian of the Western Region. He was the third son of a great Indian King....His ambition lay in the Mahayana path, and so he put aside his white layman's robe for the black robe of a monk....Lamenting the decline of the true teaching in the outlands, he subsequently crossed distant mountains and seas, traveling about propagating the teaching in Han and Wei.
The Biography is part of the Long Scroll of the Treatise on the Two Entrances and Four Practices, which Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki found in 1935 by going through the Dunhuang collection of the Chinese National Library.
Biographical details from the Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks (645) by Dao Xuan
The entry for Bodhidharma is almost entirely drawn from the first two sections of the Long Scroll (Tan Lin's Biography and the Two Entrances, traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma himself), to which Dao Xuan added the following:
- Caste background
- Dao Xuan writes that Bodhidharma's father is Brahmin. However, as a king, he is more likely to have been from the Kshatriya caste.
- Age
- Dao Xuan takes his figure for Bodhidharma's age from the Record of the Buddhist Monasteries of Luoyang.
- The duration of Dao Yu and Hui Ke's service to Bodhidharma
- Tan Lin's original says "several" years. Dao Xuan gives a figure of "four or five".
- The route of Bodhidharma's journey
- Tan Lin's original says only that Bodhidharma "crossed distant mountains and seas" on the way to his ultimate destination, the northern Chinese kingdom of Wei. In Dao Xuan's account, Bodhidharma travels to by sea to southern China and then makes his way north, eventually crossing the Yangtze River, according to legend, on a reed.
- The date of Bodhidharma's journey
- Dao Xuan says that Bodhidharma makes landfall in the southern Chinese kingdom of Song, making his arrival in China no later than that kingdom's fall to Qi in 479.
Biographical details from the Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall (952) by students of Xuefeng Yicun
The version of the Bodhidharma legend found in the Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall follows Dao Xuan but is distinguished by the following:
- Bodhidharma's master Prajnatara, 27th Chan Patriach
- Bodhidharma's birth name Bodhitara
- Bodhidharma makes landfall not during the Song period of southern China but in 527 during the Liang Dynasty. According to the Anthology, Bodhidharma's voyage from India to China took three years.
- Before crossing the Yangtze River en route to Wei, Bodhidharma pays a visit to the Liang court in Jiankang, near present-day Nanjing, but leaves soon after his uncompromising doctrines end up insulting Emperor Wu.
His death
Bodhidharma died circa 528. Legend claims that he was buried at a Shaolin temple on Mount Xionger, west of Luoyang, and that a monk named Song Yun met him traveling "back to the west" on the following day, holding one sandal. Bodhidharma's stupa was then opened, and only one sandal was found inside.
However, Dao Xuan states that Bodhidharma died at Lo River Beach and his body concealed in a cave along the river by his disciple Hui Ke — an unusual funeral for Buddhist masters, who normally received elaborate ceremonies. An explanation for this may be found in the political climate of the time: in 528, the victors of a particular battle carried out a purge of their surviving opponents, and executed them at Lo River Beach. A later report in Taishou shinshuu daizoukyou states that a Buddhist monk was among the victims.
Spiritual approach
Tradition holds that Bodhidharma's chosen sutra was the Lankavatara Sutra, a development of the Yogacara or "Mind-only" school of Buddhism established by the Gandharan half-brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu. He is described as a "master of the Lankavatara Sutra", and an early history of Zen in China is titled "Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Lankavatara Sutra" (Chin. Leng-ch'ieh shih-tzu chi). It is also sometimes said that Bodhidharma himself was the one who brought the Lankavatara to Chinese Buddhism.
Bodhidharma's approach tended to reject devotional rituals, doctrinal debates and verbal formalizations, in favour of an intuitive grasp of the "Buddha mind" within everyone, through meditation. In contrast with other Buddhist schools such as Pure Land, Bodhidarma emphasized personal enlightenment, rather than the promise of heaven.
Bodhidharma also considered spiritual, intellectual and physical excellence as an indivisible whole necessary to attain enlightenment. He is attributed to having established a training regimen for the monks of the Shaolin Monastery as a way to reinforce the efficiency of meditation. Bodhidharma developed a system of 18 dynamic tension exercises. These exercise were formalized into the Yi Jin Jing of 550, which was incorporated into the famous style of kung fu later known as Shaolinquan, and an important influence on the subsequent practice of martial arts in East Asia generally. However, it is difficult to determine the veracity of this legend. Buddhist monks existing at the temple before the arrival of Bodhidharma have been attributed with being martial artist masters. Further, there are meditative exercise texts that have pictures within them that are strikingly similar to the exercises that Bodhidharma is credited to having created that predate his existence. Bodhidharma is also associated in legend with the use of tea to maintain wakefulness in meditation (the origin of Chado), and favoured paradoxes, conundrums and provocation as a way to break intellectual rigidity (a method which led to the development of koan).
Bodhidharma's mind-and-body approach to enlightenment ultimately proved highly attractive to the Samurai class in Japan, who made Zen their way of life, following their encounter with the martial-arts-oriented Zen Rinzai School introduced to Japan by Eisai in the 12th century.
Portrayals of Bodhidharma
Throughout Buddhist art, Bodhidharma is depicted as a rather ill-tempered, profusely bearded and wide-eyed barbarian. He is described as "The Blue-Eyed Barbarian" in Chinese texts.
Chan texts also present Bodhidharma as the 28th Chan Patriarch, in an uninterrupted line starting with the Buddha, through direct and non-verbal transmission.
Legends
Emperor Wu
According to tradition, Bodhidharma was invited to an audience with Emperor Wu Di of the Liang dynasty (Southern dynasties) in 520. When the Emperor asked him how much merit he had accumulated through building temples and endowing monasteries, Bodhidharma replied, "None at all."
Perplexed, the Emperor then asked, "Well, what is the fundamental teaching of Buddhism?"
"Vast emptiness," was the bewildering reply.
"Listen," said the Emperor, now losing all patience, "just who do you think you are?"
"I have no idea," Bodhidharma replied.
With this, Bodhidharma was banished from the Court, and is said to have sat in meditation for the next seven years "listening to the ants scream".
Nine years of wall-examining
Bodhidharma traveled to the recently constructed Shaolin temple in the north of China, where the monks refused him admission. Bodhidharma sat meditating facing a wall for the next 9 years, supposedly burning holes into the wall by staring at it. Only then did the monks of the Shaolin Temple respect Bodhidharma and allow him inside. There, he found the monks so out of shape from a life of study spent copying scrolls that he introduced a regimen of meditation exercises, which later became part of Shaolin kung fu. However, as to whether he founded Shaolin style of Kung Fu, it is unlikely. Historically, many schools of martial arts existed within China centuries prior to his entry and history suggests that the monks most likely began codifying martial arts from retired military personnel who resided at their temple for self protection. For example, textbooks exist from Han times and before relating to self defense. The various styles of the Shaolin subset of Chinese Kung Fu resulted over centuries of mixing of the various self-defense styles in China.
Bringing tea to China
Japanese legends credit Bodhidharma with bringing tea to China. Supposedly, he cut off his eyelids while meditating, to keep from falling asleep. Tea bushes sprung from the spot where his eyelids hit the ground. It is said that this is the reason for tea being so important for meditation and why it helps the meditator to not fall asleep. This legend is unlikely as tea use in China predates Chan Buddhism in China. According to Chinese mythology, in 2737 BC the Chinese Emperor, Shen Nung, scholar and herbalist, was sitting beneath a tree while his servant boiled drinking water. A leaf from the tree dropped into the water and Shen Nung decided to try the brew. The tree was a wild tea tree. There is an early mention of tea being prepared by servants in a Chinese text of 50 B.C. The first detailed description of tea-drinking is found in an ancient Chinese dictionary, noted by Kuo P'o in A.D. 350.
Daruma dolls
It is also reported that after years of meditation, Bodhidharma lost the usage of his legs. This legend is still alive in Japan, where legless Daruma dolls represent Bodhidharma, and are used to make wishes.
Bodhidharma and Hui Ke
Bodhidharma was the first Zen patriarch of China. All later Chinese and Japanese Zen masters trace their master-disciple lineage to him. Hui Ke, who was to become the second patriach, was first ignored when he tried to approach him, and left outside in the snow, until he cut his own arm and offered it to the Master (a legend which is likely apocryphal; according to Dao Xuan his arm was cut off by wandering bandits). Bodhidharma later transmitted to him the insignia of the patriarchs: the robe, the Buddha's begging bowl, and a copy of the Lankavatara Sutra.
The lineage of Bodhidharma and his disciples
Although Bodhidharma is commonly said to have had two primary disciples (the monks Dao Yu and Hui Ke), a common voice in the "Records" of the Long Scroll is that of a Yuan, possibly identified with the nun Dharani who was said to have received Bodhidharma's flesh — his bones having been received by Dao Yu, and his marrow received by Hui Ke. An list of Bodhidharma's early students follows.
- Bodhidharma
Works attributed to Bodhidharma
- The Bloodstream Sermon
- The Breakthrough Sermon
- The Outline of Practice
- Two Entrances
- The Wake-Up Sermon
See also
External links
References
- Bodhidharma, Tan Lin, Layman Hsiang, et al.; Jeffrey R. Broughton, translator; The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. (1999) ISBN 0520219724
- Tom Lowenstein, The Vision of the Buddha. Duncan Baird Publishers, London. ISBN 1903296919
- Red Pine, translator; The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma. North Point Press, New York. (1987)
- Alan Watts, The Way of Zen. ISBN 0375705104
- Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. ISBN 0415025370