Tracking Bodhidharma

by Andy Ferguson

  As our bus winds down the mountain, I try to mix English-language lessons with a few practical life lessons for an aspiring international business major. “It’s good,” I say, “to learn not only a foreign language but some other skills as well. For example, you could learn to manage databases. That is an excellent business skill you can use with your English-language skills.”

  The young man pulls out a dictionary and looks up database. “Yes,” he says. “I think this is a good idea.”

  We talk business and basketball for an hour or so, until the bus arrives in Jiujiang and lets us off near the Jiujiang train station. My English student offers to help me find my way to an ongoing bus to Huangmei. I decide to accept his help. Experience has shown it’s always good to use local help when you can get it.

  In fact, it was at this very place on a sunny morning not long ago that my ability to read Chinese landed me in a confusing situation with the local bus system. On that particular morning I emerged from the Jiujiang train station after an overnight train ride from Guangzhou. It was about 9:00 AM and the sun shone brightly on the wide plaza in front of the station. A few taxis were lined up to pick up the train’s passengers. I bought some water at a kiosk, and before getting in the taxi queue I noticed a rather makeshift sign that said NANJING BUS, TEN O‘CLOCK. I wanted to catch a bus to the Third Zen Ancestor’s temple near Tianzhu Mountain, which was in the direction of Nanjing, so I asked the person next to the sign whether the bus stopped near that location. He said no. I then talked to a person at a ticket counter and learned that I’d need to go to the downtown Jiujiang bus terminal to find such a bus. So I returned to the taxi line and took a five-minute ride to the center of town where the main bus terminal is located. There I got in yet another line and eventually worked my up to the ticket seller behind the window. I asked her, “Is there a bus that stops near Tianzhu Mountain, or the nearby town of Qianshan?” No, she said, and there’s no such bus to there from here. After checking the maps and asking more questions, I finally decided that I wouldn’t go directly to the Third Ancestor’s Temple. Instead I’d try to go there later in my trip after visiting Nanjing. I inquired about getting a bus ticket to Nanjing but was told it wouldn’t leave until eleven o’clock. I checked my watch and saw it was about 9:35. I remembered the bus at the train station that said it was leaving at 10:00. I can save an hour getting to Nanjing, I thought to myself. I ran outside and hailed another taxi. Minutes later I arrived at the train station where the bus to Nanjing was advertised. I approached the person next to the sign and asked to buy a ticket. After I paid my fare, I was told I still had thirty minutes until departure because the bus was late. So I went and bought some snacks and used a restroom, and when I got back, a man with a small motorcycle was standing beside the “Nanjing Bus” sign. He motioned me to get on the back of the cycle. I was carrying a backpack and an average-size suitcase. “Where’s the bus?” I asked. He explained that he’d take me to the bus. So I jumped on the back of the motorbike holding my suitcase in one hand, and off we went into the Jiujiang traffic, weaving between cars, me shifting my suitcase carefully to make sure it didn’t hit someone’s rearview mirror. After a while we reached a place by the Nanjing River Bridge where we stopped and I got off the motorbike. There was a kiosk and some people standing around. After quite a wait, a bus appeared with NANJING written above the front window. The motorcyclist, who was still standing there next to me, waved to the bus. The driver waved back and pointed toward the Nanjing River Bridge, but he didn’t stop. The motorcyclist told me to climb aboard the motorcycle again, and then we circled around a couple of roads to emerge onto the bridge itself. After we traveled a couple hundred yards or so onto the long bridge, the cyclist stopped and told me again to wait. About five minutes later, the bus reappeared coming across the bridge toward us. The bus driver stopped and opened the rear door of the bus. I got on, and the driver waved to the motorcyclist. Then it dawned on me that this was the regularly scheduled eleven o’clock bus I would have caught from the main station had I remained there. The driver and the motorcyclist had a little side business going, snagging passengers from the train station and pocketing their fares. This is not unusual in China, especially around certain country bus and train stations. People will “guide” you to the correct bus whether you’ve asked them to do so or not. They may tell you they are the ticket seller, ask for the fare, then actually buy your ticket at its correct lower price, give it to you, and pocket the difference. People in China aren’t any more dishonest than anyone else, but the struggle to survive in an ocean of competitors compels them into little scams like this Nanjing bus-ticket caper.

  Back in the present, the young man whom I’ve helped with his English gets directions and helps me find the right bus and bus stop in Jiujiang to continue my journey. I board a bus that takes me into an area in the old part of town, where the driver tells me to get off by a dusty alley surrounded by poor commercial buildings near the Yang-tse River. There, a minibus with a sign in the window that says HUANGMEI (“Yellow Plum”) is nearly full of passengers. That’s my bus, and it has one seat left open. After throwing my bags in the back, I wedge into the van next to a young couple with a two-year-old that exhibits an immediate curiosity for the strange-looking man with a pointed nose. A minute later, my nose firmly in the grasp of my young inquisitor, the minibus lurches, clutch squealing, out of the lane and onto the dusty avenue jammed with afternoon traffic.

  Huangmei, about twenty-five miles north of Jiujiang and the Yang-tse River, has the same name today that it did when Zen’s Fourth and Fifth Ancestors established their temples in that area fourteen centuries ago.

  The Fourth Zen Ancestor, named Daoxin (pronounced Dow-sin) is another key figure in the development of Chinese Zen. His monastery, ten miles or so from Huangmei, sits beneath Potou (“Broken Top”) Mountain. Before Baizhang established the “Pure Rules” for Zen monastic life, Daoxin had already set up a Zen monastery independent from China’s ruling circles. Two hundred years before Baizhang formally fused Zen to manual labor, the farming way of life may have already entered the Zen religious scene at Daoxin’s place.

  After an hour of cramped traveling, I arrive on the south side of Huangmei. Emerging from the bus station, I cross the busy street to a small shop selling snacks and drinks. When I greet the shopkeeper in Chinese, she strikes up a conversation, curious to know why I’ve come to town. I explain that I’m heading for the Fourth Ancestor’s temple for the night and tomorrow will participate in the opening ceremony for a new temple called Laozu Temple at Twin Peaks Mountain.

  “Do you need a taxi?” she asks. Before I can answer her, she disappears out the front door and waves toward a new Toyota pickup parked nearby. A man emerges, and I soon discover that he is both a taxi driver and a member of the local Buddhist community that practices at the Fourth Ancestor’s temple. After I buy a few snacks, we’re on our way west of the city toward my evening’s accommodations at the monastery.

  20. Up or Down the Yang-tse River?

  WHEN BODHIDHARMA traveled north and reached the Yang-tse River, he must have made a decision. He could either travel upstream on the Yang-tse, following its Han River tributary to the area of Luoyang and Mount Song, or he could go downstream to reach the lower reaches of the Yang-tse and the capital city at what is now the city of Nanjing.

  FIGURE 11. Upon reaching the Yang-tse River in his journey northward, Bodhidharma could have gone either upstream or downstream. Records indicate he taught in both Luoyang and the Yang-tse River regions.

  Bodhidharma’s record in the Continued Biographies offers no clear evidence about this. It says he arrived in the country during the Liu-Song dynasty, a time span that stretched from 420 to 479 CE. If he had a normal lifespan, he arrived toward the end of this dynasty. Various accounts of Bodhidharma’s death place it sometime between the years 528 and 537. If this timeframe is correct, and he lived to the plausible age of ninety-five, then he could have arrived in China in the year 46
3 at around thirty years of age.

  A young Buddhist missionary would need time to learn Chinese before he could begin teaching in that language. Therefore it seems unlikely that Bodhidharma would have immediately started taking disciples or publically teaching. It seems plausible, if he arrived in the country between the years 455 and 465, that he would first seek assistance and advice from a fellow countryman who had arrived in China before him, someone already famous and respected as a foreign Buddhist teacher. Gunabhadra, a famous Indian who that lived around Nanjing at that time, was just such a person.

  21. Meeting Gunabhadra?

  GUNABHADRA (394—468), like Bodhidharma, was an Indian monk from the Brahman class. A record of Gunabhadra’s life appears in the Biographies of Eminent Monks, the book after which Daoxuan modeled his Continued Biographies. According to this record, Gunabhadra enjoyed immense fame as a Buddhist teacher and translator of scriptures. He lived, for the most part, in the city of Nanjing, where he managed the work of translating a large number of Indian Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. As he was the most famous Indian Buddhist in South China, it seems likely that Bodhidharma would have met Gunabhadra if he had the chance.

  One of the many texts that Gunabhadra translated into Chinese was called the Lankavatara Sutra. This text was an early text of the Yogacara (the Yogis) school of Buddhism. It is also a text, Daoxuan states, that Bodhidharma and his successors used to spread their Zen teachings in China.

  For these and other reasons, it seems reasonable that Bodhidharma, if he arrived at the south shore of the Yang-tse River prior to Gunabhadra’s death in the year 468, would have traveled downstream to the capital city of Nanjing, a place where Gunabhadra and other foreign monks were received and honored. There he could find support, learn Chinese, and best begin his own missionary career in China.

  BODHIDHARMA IN LUOYANC 488—494?

  The Continued Biographies claims Bodhidharma arrived in China before 479. Another critical clue about his whereabouts in the years that followed appears in that text in the biography of Sengfu, his senior disciple. Daoxuan’s description of Sengfu’s life contains various clues about Bodhidharma, and I’ll examine it in more detail later. For now, the critical point is that it places Bodhidharma in the Luoyang/Mount Song area during the period 488 to 494 CE. That’s the time the record says Bodhidharma accepted Sengfu as a student somewhere in that region.

  I surmise that if Bodhidharma arrived in China in 460 he would have had ample time to travel and even teach in both Southern and Northern China before arriving in the Luoyang region in the north by 488.

  In another section of Daoxuan’s Continued Biographies (which, again, was composed around the year 650, more than a hundred years after Bodhidharma lived), there is a passage where the author offers his opinions about the Zen school of Buddhism. His comments in this part of the text are almost unmentioned in China and are virtually unknown in the West. Yet they provide, in my opinion, critical clues about Bodhidharma’s reputation and importance during his lifetime. The text that reveals this information is difficult to decipher. The passages that are the most important are nearly impenetrable. But with the help of some Chinese scholars, I’ve reviewed them carefully and below offer an interpretation of their meaning.

  The passage in question, which is a general description of Chinese Zen teachers of the early to mid sixth century, clearly ranks Bodhidharma as among the most important of the teachers of his age. Daoxuan also speaks about Bodhidharma and his Zen teachings with admiration, offering comments that go beyond what he wrote in Bodhidharma’s biography. Daoxuan first discusses the great influence that Zen monks had during the time Bodhidharma lived. Finally he says the following:Bodhidharma was of this sort [of popular Zen teacher]. He converted [people to] and established the Zen doctrines in the Yang-tse and Luoyang regions. The “wall-gazing” practice of the Mahayana is the highest [teaching]. Those who came to study with and honor Bodhidharma were like a city ... Bodhidharma would not remain in places of imperial sway. Those [in high places] who desired to see him could not draw him near them.

  Notice that Daoxuan says that Bodhidharma “established the Zen doctrines in the Yang-tse and Luoyang regions,” indicating that Bodhidharma’s teaching activities occurred in both North and South China. He also “would not remain in places of imperial sway” and “those who desired to see him could not draw him near them.” Since Bodhidharma’s followers were “like a city,” it follows from the above passages that the ones who “could not draw him near them” were persons of the highest standing, namely emperors, kings, and their courts, all the people of places within “imperial sway.” Other evidence in the text seems to bear this conclusion out. Clearly, Bodhidharma proselytized in the Yang-tse region, an idea absent from the widely known accounts of his life that dominated the Zen tradition later.

  The Yang-tse flows from west to east through Southern China. It originates in the Tibetan Plateau, flows through the provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, passes the central city of Wuhan, and soon turns northeast to loop over the top of Nanjing before entering the sea. For reasons that will become clear when we look at the record of Bodhidharma’s senior disciple Sengfu, Bodhidharma almost certainly did not carry out his activities in the upper reaches of the Yang-tse. Instead it was the lower reaches of the river where he likely journeyed and stayed. Nanjing, as the main population center and seat of imperial power in South China during Bodhidharma’s time, must be considered as the area where Bodhidharma lived and taught in the Yang-tse region. It is clear from Gunabhadra’s biography and countless other sources that the imperial capital of Nanjing was then already a ferment of Buddhist activity.

  All considered, from the Continued Biographies account we can surmise that in the course of many decades in China Bodhidharma would have had plenty of time to travel in the lower Yang-tse River area, perhaps not just a single time. Daoxuan’s account indicates he probably traveled widely over an extended period of time, perhaps going back and forth several times along the Yang-tse population centers or at least remaining for an extended time in part of that area.

  If Bodhidharma chose to visit Nanjing early in his time in China, it would mean he arrived there more than thirty years before Emperor Wu took power and set up his dynasty and fully fifty years before the year 527, when the most widely believed story about him claims that he arrived in China and met the emperor.

  Considering Daoxuan’s limited account in more detail, there is a possible clue that suggests that Bodhidharma did indeed go to Nanjing and meet Gunabhadra. That clue can be surmised from Bodhidharma’s reported “not remaining in places of imperial sway.”

  China’s imperial system of rule was set up so that the reigning emperor ruled from the main capital city, while “kings” of lower status than the emperor ruled over local provinces or prefectures. These local kings were typically one of the emperor’s close relatives such as a brother, uncle, nephew, and so on, with none far removed from his nuclear family.

  Around the years 450—454, Gunabhadra, at the invitation of the local king of a place called Jing Province, took up residence in what is now the city of Xuzhou (the name of this city sounds similar to Suzhou, the famous garden city near Shanghai). Xuzhou is located on the Huai River and is about two hundred miles northwest of Nanjing, the location of the emperor’s throne during the Liu-Song dynasty that then ruled South China. In 454, the local king who was Gunabhadra’s student rebelled and tried to seize the emperor’s throne. Due to Gunabhadra’s fame as a Buddhist teacher, the rebel king compelled him to join his cause, forcing him to accompany his army as it marched toward Nanjing to overthrow the emperor. The rebel exploited Gunabhadra’s holy status to rally people to his rebellion. Like a cross before armies of the Christian Crusades, Gunabhadra was put in the vanguard of the advancing troops, his role like that of a mystical shield meant to legitimize the rebel as a “Buddhist” king who would establish righteous religious rule over the country.

  As it turned out, the emper
or crushed the rebel forces, and the rebel king was beheaded. The emperor then considered executing Gunabhadra as well for his role in the rebellion. But because of Gunabhadra’s fame and position, the emperor allowed the old teacher to present evidence of being forced unwillingly to accompany the revolt. The emperor examined letters between Gunabhadra and the rebel king, finding that Gunabhadra had actually opposed the rebellion, and thus permitted Gunablzadra’s head to remain attached to his body. But undoubtedly the old teacher gained a clear understanding about the pitfalls of getting mixed up in China’s high ruling circles.

  Bodhidharma, if he met Gunabhadra, likely learned from him about the dangers of dealing with people in high places. Even if they didn’t meet, the story likely reached Bodhidharma’s ears. This object lesson may have contributed to Bodhidharma’s shyness about meeting royalty. Was this episode the source of Bodhidharma’s disposition to “not remain in places of imperial sway”?

  FOURTH ANCESTOR’S TRUE ENLIGHTENMENT TEMPLE

  Traditional accounts claim the unbroken line of Zen teachers and students in China starts with Bodhidharma. Following him was his most famous disciple, Huike (pronounced Hway-kuh), followed in turn by his most famous disciple, Sengcan (pronounced Sung-san), and then his student, the Fourth Ancestor, Daoxin.

  The Fourth Ancestor’s teaching seat, named True Enlightenment Temple, sits in a mountain valley that is one scenic waterfall above rich Yang-tse Valley farmland. It offered the Zen master and his students an ideal balance between secluded mountain practice and land to grow food for self-support. The Fourth Ancestor’s teachings and temple represent a critical step toward putting Bodhidharma’s Zen on a solid and independent footing, setting the stage for it to become the dominant religious stream in East Asia.