Tracking Bodhidharma

by Andy Ferguson

  Nanquan’s age, like all ages, was in a critical political way not so different from ours. Who is it, then and now, who will speak the appropriate word and save the cat?

  16. Youmin Temple

  YOUMIN TEMPLE, jammed between buildings in the central part of Nanchang City, is all but deserted. In years past several monks lived and practiced here, but it seems that as country monasteries have opened, many monks have left the noisy environment of the city to practice in the quiet of the mountains. But I enjoy visiting here because it retains all the traditional three halls I’ve previously described. At the back end of the temple complex, a large Dharma Hall remains standing. Unlike other halls, inside there are no big statues of Buddha or other figures, just some works of calligraphy and art on display and a place where people can sit and hear lectures from a teacher.

  I’ve mentioned that such halls were “signless,” without statues of Buddhas and the like. But there was, strictly speaking, one sign of the Dharma that could be seen there. The old Zen master who spoke to the monks would wear his formal robe. The robe, a patchwork of squares traditionally said to represent fields of rice or grain, was an important symbol that monks wore to signify the Dharma. However, it should be noticed that even in this example the robe represented the signlessness of the teaching. It did not reveal some arcane symbolism but was simply a representation of ordinary life, made up of a patchwork that represented the checkered fields where farmers work their crops. In Zen Buddhism, just that ordinary signless place, shown in the assembled patchwork of the Buddha’s robe, is taken as the ultimate “signless” symbol, worn by someone who has left the rest of us behind.

  17. The Trip to Baizhang Temple

  AROUND ELEVEN O’CLOCK in the morning, the Nanchang central bus station is concealed behind a mass of people. The taxi driver motions me toward where there must be a ticket office, but I can’t see it in the churning crowd. Weaving and dodging, I squeeze my gear between buses, bicycles, and every other manner of motorized and nonmotorized vehicles that are all pinched into the street. I look for the entrance to the bus station, but, failing to see it, I simply push in the direction of some buses I see parked behind an iron fence. I pass through a gate into the bus yard and realize I’ve just gone through an exit gate and so now must walk through the parked buses to get to the doors of the main terminal building. Reaching there, I see that I’ve entered the main station without buying a ticket or passing through security. I pause to buy a bottle of water from a vendor and ask her where the ticket office is. She motions toward the area outside of the security X-ray machine, so I pass the security checkpoint going the wrong direction into the ticket-selling area. There I find five ticket-selling windows, but four are empty, and the one window manned with a ticket seller has a very long line. The line ends at a small stack of luggage and bags, which seems to indicate that someone is holding their place in line with these objects. I stand behind them, and within moments some people walk in front of me and take a position in line in front of the bags. I mutter something in Chinese about “not understanding proper etiquette” and move close behind the newcomers so that no more people can crowd in front of me. After some time, I reach the front of the line and ask for a ticket to the country town of Fengxin (pronounced Fung-sin). I buy my ticket, and the woman behind the window says I should “go outside and down the street” to catch the bus. Her talk is garbled by the bad microphone-speaker setup, but I dutifully go outside into the street again and ask some attendants at a taxi stand where the bus will arrive. They motion toward a nearby bus stop. Then I see a bus whose front sign says it is going to Fengxin, but it’s apparently already departed, and my ticket says my bus doesn’t leave for another half hour. The bus in the street doesn’t look too promising anyway. It’s stuffed with people and covered with a thick layer of dust and grime. I watch the bus attempt to run the blockade of vehicles in front of the station. It’s having a hard time. After about ten minutes it finally clears the area. In the meantime I’m subjected to a passenger bus that’s just arrived from the countryside that has a man unloading live pigs from inside bags in the luggage compartment under the passengers. Some of the pigs, sensing they’ve arrived at their doom, are squealing inside the bags. A few have escaped from their bags but are groggy and confused, apparently from the heat of their ride next to the bus engine. I recite a mantra for their benefit and retreat in the crowd to a place next to a noodle restaurant and snack stand. After I’ve stood there a few minutes, one of the locals ventures a “hello” in English, and I say hello back. Before long, I’m surrounded by a crowd of people all delighted to chat with a foreigner that speaks Chinese. Laughing and joking with them takes my mind off the pigs. When one of them asks where I’m going, I say Fengxin, and he motions to a bus stop farther down the street. Soon I manage to break away from the crowd by threatening to take everyone’s picture. They scatter, and I walk to the other bus stop. But there I don’t see anything to indicate that my bus will arrive. As the departure time on my ticket draws close, I figure something is wrong. No intercity buses have stopped at this bus stop. With only a couple of minutes to go, I return to the “exit” where I went in before and go toward the buses. There’s an attendant there and I show him my ticket and ask where my bus will load. He points me to a place on the far side of the bus parking lot, and I realize for the first time that there’s a second bus terminal there, down the street and close to where I was standing outside at the bus stop. I suddenly realize that the bus stop I’m supposed to go to is in that second terminal, not on the street, and so I hurry across the wide parking lot toward that terminal. My bus will leave any second. Frantically I read the destination on every bus parked along the boarding area. There it is! A bus to Fengxin! I dash over to the bus and the bus conductor, seeing me coming, yells to me to get aboard and grabs my ticket out of my hand, saying, “I’ll get it punched for you.” Naturally I haven’t gone into the second station properly either, haven’t gone through security, and haven’t gone through the line where you get your ticket punched before you board the bus. I fall panting into an empty seat at the rear of the bus. Seconds later the ticket conductor rushes down the aisle toward me, my punched ticket in her outstretched hand. The door closes. The bus lurches, then crosses the wide parking lot toward the exit. The road leaving the bus station passes a flower store over which a sign inexplicably reads DESPOT FLOWERS in both English and Chinese (a gift for your favorite despot?). We bounce into the confusing and tightly jammed chaos of the main street. Another trip into the Chinese countryside successfully begins.

  Three times previously I’ve tried to go to Baizhang Temple, and each time I was forced to turn back due to road construction. It’s been two years since my last attempt, and I’m hopeful the roads are fully passable now. Twenty minutes out of Nanchang City, the bus crosses the Gan River and heads west on a four-lane highway. Some previous trips in this area have caused me to dread this stretch of road. Two lanes run each direction, east and west, and although there is a divider between lanes going in opposite directions, it is only intermittent, apparently so cars can turn across the other lanes to exit the highway. The trouble is that it is common for drivers impatient with the progress in their own lanes to pass completely into the two lanes going in the opposite direction and go headlong toward oncoming traffic whenever they think they can get away with it. Then the divider appears again, and they are stranded going the wrong direction, and everyone is forced to squeeze together to avoid head-on collisions at high speed. I’m pretty used to China’s wild highways. Now I hardly notice things that once seemed shocking and still scare the daylights out of other foreigners. But I’ve never gotten used to this particular stretch of road, the Zen Country Highway of Death.

  The highway is also a nightmare because pedestrians, animals, and nonmotorized vehicles clutter its edges and are all but impossible to see in the darkness of the night or late evening. Once, as I traveled here at night in a small van with a group from the United States, we
were shocked to see a small child, maybe four or five years old, walking next to the divider in the center of the lanes while cars raced by in each direction. We were in the left lane, closest to the child, and we yelled at our driver to stop. He refused. There was absolutely no way to stop without causing a pileup. One of the members of our group claimed she saw someone who was probably accompanying the child, but I didn’t see that.

  But today the sun is out, the weather is clear, and the road seems to be quite civilized. Happily, I don’t need to travel it at night, and my route today leaves this road and turns onto a safer two-lane highway for the leg of the journey that goes to Fengxin after only a half hour or so.

  The scenery is interesting if you’re not paralyzed in fear by dangerous traffic. I particularly like the water buffaloes that are common here. Their calm, enduring demeanor, whether while tethered to the plow or grazing in the shade of a bamboo grove, captures some ancient grace about China’s countryside. Watching them lumber along the road, dutifully following the tethered lead of a nine-year-old child who weighs less than a tenth what the animal weighs, still amazes me.

  Other country scenes of rural China sweep past—a closed and crumbling bamboo-products factory; people playing cards in front of a whitewashed cement house; a young couple on parked motorbikes under the shade of a tree, a worried look on her face as if she’s breaking the news of pregnancy; a truck loaded with cages of live chickens broken down in the road; and other scenes of joy, pain, and pathos reveal themselves every few seconds. A sign next to a service station says IF YOU’RE SICK, DON’T GET IN THE CAR. IF THE CAR’S SICK, DON’T GET ON THE ROAD! Frequently, on the roadside, farmers dry unhusked rice on bamboo mats under the autumn sun. Soon they will purposefully put the rice on the road itself where passing vehicles will roll over it and husk the grain.

  Before long we reach Fengxin. I remember the first time I passed through this small city about eleven years ago, when it was a small, run-down country town. Now there are rows and rows of new and attractive apartment buildings surrounding a town that has exploded in size. We arrive at the bus station and I go inside. A ticket taker tells me that a connecting bus that goes all the way to Baizhang Temple has already left, and another won’t be leaving until after two hours from now. It’s already one thirty, and such a wait would get me to Baizhang late in the day. I opt to take a bus for Shangfu Village, an intermediate stop, which leaves in a few minutes. I should be able to get a bus or other transport from there to the temple. I buy a ticket and am directed to the Shangfu bus. Soon I’m traveling down the highway again, at the back of a crowded coach, next to a gentleman who’s taking his grandchildren home from school. It turns out he’s an off-duty bus driver who actually drives the route we’re taking. We chat about how the roads have improved and make other light conversation until the bus arrives in Shangfu an hour later. At one point he tells me that it will be cold up on the mountain by Baizhang Temple. This is something I hadn’t considered, and I realize I’m not carrying any heavy clothing.

  Finally we roll into Shangfu, a small town that is the closest I ever got to Baizhang’s place on my previous attempts to visit there. When I get off the bus, the off-duty bus driver also tells me that it’s too late in the day to catch another bus west, so I should take a taxi. He guides me down the street to an intersection next to a river where a group of taxis and their drivers sit languidly waiting for fares. I negotiate the hour-or-so ride to Baizhang Temple for a hundred yuan, about $12. It’s a twenty-five-mile ride to the top of Great Hero Mountain, where the temple is located. I turn to the off-duty bus driver and thank him for his help, asking “What’s your name?”

  “It’s Xie” (pronounced See-eh), he says.

  This is both a surname and the Chinese word for thanks, so I say, “Many thanks! Many thanks!” Back when people in China wanted big families, this play on words would have had more meaning.

  It’s obvious now that I will need to spend the night at or near Baizhang Temple. What I hadn’t considered was that the night would be quite cold there, nestled as it is on the top of a mountain. I hadn’t brought a jacket so, before leaving Shangfu with the taxi driver, I check out the nearby stores to see if any sold something that would protect me from the cold. I dash back and forth along the street for several minutes, but amazingly there’s not a single adult’s coat or sweater for sale in any of the stores I can see. I decide to chance it.

  I jump in the taxi and again strike out to the west. The taxi driver turns out to be very personable, and soon we’re chatting and laughing as we wind along the new road next to a stream that goes into the mountains. We talk about how much pressure young people have to endure these days in China. Everything is super competitive, and times are hard for everyone. Young men trying to support families are under particular stress. China is still a little traditional in this way. While there is a surprising amount of equality between the sexes here compared to, say, Japan, the traditional role of men as breadwinners and women as child bearers still dominates the roles of young Chinese couples. Still a little more conservative than in the United States, I guess. We both agree that the drive to amass wealth is a common factor everywhere. He says, “No matter how much people make, they always want to make more.” He also poses a slightly strange question, asking me, “What about public security in the United States?”

  I don’t know exactly what he’s driving at. Is he implying that there are problems with the public security apparatus in China and wondering if the United States is different or better? Or is he just asking about whether we feel secure going about our daily lives? I sort of let the question pass without addressing it head on.

  Before long we’ve entered a forested area where the road climbs into the mountains alongside a stream. It’s getting colder, and as we climb, the landscape undergoes a clear change from semitropical rice paddy to the beginnings of a coniferous forest. In less than an hour, we have traversed the mountain switchbacks and emerge into a valley on Great Hero Mountain. The main road turns from pavement to gravel, but there is a side road that is paved, leading right into the valley. We follow it, and after a couple of fast corners we find ourselves next to a very large parking lot that is under construction. One of the workers at work placing and mortaring large cobblestones is a woman, and it appears her young son is playing near her while she works. When I get out of the taxi the boy has an astonished look on his face, so I Say in Chinese, “Wa! A big-nosed foreigner scaring people!” The taxi driver laughs loudly as the boy appears ready to cry from the fright of seeing me. I shake the driver’s hand and turn to look at Baizhang Temple.

  18. Baizhang Temple

  LOOKING UP THE VALLEY past a big paifang, I realize that the parking lot is not the only new thing happening here. In the distance, past the front gate and across a very large plaza, I see that a very grand, very new Baizhang Temple is being constructed. In front of it are bridges and water features being built even as I watch. Beautiful new sweeping roofs also adorn what look like dormitories and other buildings.

  ANCIENT TEMPLE GATES

  In ancient times, there would have been three gates to pass before I could enter Baizhang Temple. These gates were called the Gate of Emptiness ( ) the Gate of Signlessness ( ) , and the Gate of Nonaction ( ). The Chinese word for three (san) sounds very much like the word for mountain (shan). In many Chinese dialects, the words sound the same. For this reason, the two words intermingled, and “three gates” became synonymous with the phrase “mountain gate” (there is no difference between the singular and plural form in such Chinese words). The term Mountain Gate then became synonymous with Zen monastery,

  The first Zen gate, called “Emptiness,” is named after one of the most misunderstood and confusing terms used in the Buddhist religion. I’ve already explained my view that emptiness is not as important as “signlessness” and won’t go into it much further. Our grammar school teachers taught us that things are made from basic building blocks called atoms (which are in turn
made of quarks). Atoms form elements and molecules. Thus we learned very early that everything in the world is made of these building blocks, and things do not have some “essential” nature. This is as good an explanation of the idea of things being “empty” as anyone needs. Anyway, if you look at the human body under a microscope at ever smaller scales, you’ll never find any essential “mind.” There is no “mind” in the human body. The brain is just the antenna for the field of mind (there’s probably not a “field” either, but that’s the topic of some other book to be written by modern physicists or neurobiologists).

  I’ve already explained the meaning of signless, so I’ll only mention that the last gate, called “Nonaction,” in part symbolized the ultimate ideal of leaving the world, not doing any more action that causes harm. A real Zen adept must pass through all three gates both physically and mentally to attain the Zen way.

  I make my way through assorted work crews laying mortar and cobblestones and find my way to the front of the temple complex. I slip through a walkway leading past the Heavenly Kings Hall to find the inner temple area alive with even more activity. Construction crews are hard at work everywhere. A big mechanized scoop is moving dirt near a newly constructed Buddha Hall. I cross an area of construction and ask a man standing to one side if there is a guesthouse at the temple. He says yes and points me to the back and right of the line of new buildings. I pick my way along on construction planks, hopping over open ditches.

  Soon I reach the general area where the man was pointing and run into another man who approaches me and asks if I’ve come to stay the night. I answer in the affirmative, and he leads me out the side of the new construction toward a group of buildings that constitute the old temple. Here we pass another Heavenly Kings Hall and enter the rectangular area of Baizhang’s original temple. The temple buildings ascend a slope leading up the side of the valley, with various terraces created for the buildings. The man leads me to the guest reception hall of the old temple. Aside the wide-open door is a big poster with four pictures of Mickey Mouse, all waving “Welcome!”