We walk into a garden area in front of the school buildings where a gazebo sits among some potted chrysanthemums. The guard points at a few objects on the ground and says, “That’s from the old temple.”
It’s obvious that there’s almost nothing left of the temple that was on the site previously. Next to the gazebo there are some pieces of granite, broken temple colonnades and odd pieces of stone decor all scattered next to some chrysanthemum beds. There are also some stones that mark where the temple’s old well was located. On two sides of the garden alcove are a covered walkway and wall that displays some engraved works of calligraphy inside picture frames.
“Those are all poems written centuries ago about the temple that was here,” says the guard. He points at one on the end of the row and says, “Look, there’s one written by Li Bai.”
Li Bai was the famous poet who wrote the “Night Thoughts” poem I quoted before. He lived during the middle of the eighth century. I look closer and see that not only did Li Bai write a poem about this place, but several other famous poets did as well.
“I read that there is one hall remaining from the old temple,” I say. “Is it still here?”
The guard leads us through the center of the school grounds past an enormous gingko tree. As we pass it, the guard says, “This tree is hundreds of years old. It was a big feature in the middle of the temple.”
The enormous old tree is really gorgeous, its fall leaves shimmering like gold in the light wind. A sign in front of the tree declares it to be the “symbol of Long Reed Middle School’s special spirit.” We walk on toward the rear of the school, and the guard points out a brick building. “That’s the only building still regarded as part of the old temple,” says the guard.
There’s not much to see. The brick building was clearly recently rebuilt and looks more like a storehouse than a temple hall. The double front door is closed and locked. I peek in through a crack in the middle of the door and see that the hall is empty.
Old records of the Six Harmonies area describe how Changlu Temple was once one of the largest temples in Southern China. It contained an assortment of special halls with names related to Bodhidharma, such as the Single Reed (blade of grass) Hall, the Directly Pointing Hall, and the Standing in the Snow Hall (a reference to a story about his main disciple that I’ll tell later). During the Song dynasty (960—1278), more than a thousand monks lived here. The place had imperial support and was widely famous, as evidenced by the wall of poems written over a twelve-hundred-year period.
“What happened to the old temple?” I ask the guard.
He pauses for a moment, then says, “It burned down.”
It was common for temples in old China to catch fire and be destroyed. Incense and lamps would periodically cause accidental fires. Hardly any temple in China hasn’t been rebuilt numerous times.
“Was it an accident?” I ask.
The guard only shrugs. “I’m not sure,” he says. He doesn’t seem to want to say anymore.
We walk back toward the taxi, and I take a last look out across the wide valley toward the river. Of course, the story of Bodhidharma crossing the river on a “single reed of grass” is just a myth, part of the pious orthodoxy invented well after he lived. But I’m feeling pretty melancholy as I take my last look at the place. The destruction of the temple that commemorates Bodhidharma’s river crossing seems incredibly sad, portending that something important is slipping out of our grasp, out of the collective memory of China and Zen culture. The sight of the petrochemical plants surrounding Six Harmonies Village is also depressing. They seem to say that not only is Changlu Temple unimportant, but also there’s no chance that it will ever be remembered and rebuilt. Any remnants of the place will soon yield to the need for making more polyvinyl chloride for New China.
As I ride back to the bus stop, I ask the taxi driver if he knows anything more about how the temple was destroyed. He’s only about twenty years old. He says he doesn’t know what happened to it.
As the bus goes back over the Yang-tse River into Nanjing, I’m really feeling let down. I decide to get off the bus and walk through the northern part of the city, near the old Bell Tower, an area not far from Nanjing University. For a couple of hours I walk along some alleyways and explore a few old bookshops. Finally I notice it’s starting to get late and I should have something to eat. There’s a Ramada Hotel nearby. I notice through the window that they have a nice-looking salad bar, and to lift my spirits I decide to have my first fresh green salad in several weeks. Once inside I tell the waiter that I want a salad buffet but will skip the meat-heavy dinner buffet and order an entrée from the menu. They have one vegetarian dish available, a vegetable curry. I get my salad and start eating.
My curry arrives, and a couple of minutes later a young man in a chef’s hat appears at the table. He smiles at me and asks, “Are you a vegetarian?”
I confirm that I am and ask him if he is a cook here in the hotel.
He says yes. Then he says, “I’m a vegetarian also.”
It’s a strange conversation but I play along.
The young Chinese man then takes off his chef’s hat and says, “I’m also a Buddhist. ”I notice that his head is closely shaven. He says, “I’m going to take my vows soon and become a monk.”
I feel a little surprised at how this conversation is proceeding. “Congratulations,” I say. “Did you know I’m a vegetarian because of what I ordered from the menu?”
He then admits that one of the waiters said there’s a vegetarian foreigner in the dining room. He decided to come say hello.
“What are you doing here in Nanjing?” he asks.
I explain to him that I’m here visiting places related to Buddhist history. I’m especially interested in places related to Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma.
He says, “Have you been to Long Reed [Changlu] Temple?”
“I was just there today! Do you know that place?” I speak without disguising my surprise. The temple and its tiny village are far out of town and certainly unknown to nearly all of Nanjing’s general population.
“That’s where I went to school,” says the cook. “I was a student at Long Reed Middle School.”
It takes a moment for his words to sink in. “You went to Long Reed Middle School?”
“Yes,” says the cook. My family comes from Long Reed Village. Greater Nanjing has a population of about seven million people. From the looks of Long Reed Village, where the medical clinic I passed earlier in the day is located, it has at most a few hundred people.
The cook tells me his name is Shao, and we exchange cards. I tell him I’m highly pleased to meet him. I’m curious to ask him why he’s about to become a home-leaver, but then I remember the unwritten rule of Chinese religious etiquette that you shouldn’t ask a monk why he decided to leave the world. Instead I ask him to sit down and talk with me for a few minutes. “What happened to the temple?” I ask him. “The place was important to Zen history. Why did they build a school on the site? Do you know what happened there?”
Shao smiles and starts to explain. “Have you heard of the Nanjing massacre?”
“Of course,” I tell him. “Everyone knows about it.”
“Well, when the Japanese came and occupied Long Reed Village, they burned down the temple. Some monks who were living in the temple tried to save it, but they were driven away and some were killed.”
“How do you know this?” I ask him.
“My grandmother worshipped at that temple and she saw what happened. She told me about it.”
“Why did they burn down the temple and kill monks?” I ask. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That happened a lot. When the Japanese came, they wanted to get rid of the Chinese Buddhist clergy in the temples and put their own monks in charge. They installed their own Japanese monks to be in charge of the temples and told the population they had to follow them now.”
I sit silent for a few moments, trying to grasp the import of what
Shao was saying. Finally I say, “You mean the Japanese army killed the Chinese Buddhists and put Japanese monks in charge of the temples? Why would they do that? How could Buddhists do such a thing? Isn’t Buddhism about peace?”
Shao shrugs his shoulders. “They just wanted everyone to follow them now. This was true for everything. Even religion.”
“Is there any proof about this? Has anyone written about what happened at Long Reed Temple?”
Shao shakes his head. “I don’t know. Anyway, it’s better to forget all this now. There’s enough that’s been said and done. There’s the memorial museum.”
Shao’s words roll over me like a ocean wave. For a few minutes I feel a little disoriented. I really don’t know what to say.
Then Shao speaks again. “I should go back to work now. If you come to Nanjing again, I will have my head shaved and be wearing monks’ robes.”
I get up and shake Shao’s hand and ask him to pose for a photo. Then he steps back and bows slightly to me, his hands together. He turns and walks toward the back of the dining room.
I order a coffee and sit looking at the traffic outside while the day grows dark. I’m stunned about the strange meeting I’ve just had. I’m also struck by the fact that when Shao told me about the Japanese burning down Long Reed Temple and killing or driving away the monks there, he had no rancor or hatred in his voice. There was no malice or desire for revenge in his words. His face had a calm look, and his voice was steady as he described those awful times.
Maybe the problems that China has experienced before and since World War II also inform Shao’s demeanor and maturity. Politics, greed, hunger, betrayals, and countless other heartaches have been part of China’s society, not just in recent history, but for longer than history can remember.
With his calm words, Shao revealed his personal answer to these tragedies. His is the path of leaving the world and its troubles. He leaves not just its humiliating defeats and pain, but its intoxicating victories as well. He’ll renounce and leave behind the famous “three poisons” of greed, hatred, and folly. His personal answer is to live without rancor or resentment. He has mentally already “left home.” He’ll soon show his complete devotion to this ideal with the act of shaving off the rest of his hair, publically shedding the final vanity that identifies him with the samsaric world. He’ll be someone who does not bow to a king.
37. Train to Wuhan
THE TRAIN GLIDES silently out of the station and accelerates out of town, slipping quietly over the Yang-tse and speeding into the countryside with none of the boisterous noise I’ve learned to expect from a Chinese railway. The train from Nanjing to Wuhan looks and moves very much like Japan’s old Shinkansen, the bullet train operating in that country since the 1960s. I take a last distant look at the Mufu Mountains and the forested hills where Bodhidharma’s cave sits hidden in the woods. The passengers are as quiet as the train. For the next few hours I can consider some of the facts that my trip along Bodhidharma’s trail has turned up and what they might mean.
When I resolved to come to Nanjing, I hadn’t included the Nanjing Massacre among my reasons for doing so. Yet in some strange sense that event now looms over my journey. For the last several nights I’ve researched this and related events that make up the history of Japan’s occupation of Nanjing on the Chinese Internet. I especially wanted to see if there were any accounts of the destruction of Long Reed Village and Changlu Temple.
What became clear to me as I searched through the many stories available is that the meta-narrative for Japan’s invasion of China in World War II included, in no small part, the propaganda that it had a sacred mission to “liberate” China. This supposed liberation had both a physical and spiritual component. Japan would free China from the clutches of Western imperialism and the threat of Soviet Communism, plus it would “unite” with China and other Asian countries to purge the scourge of liberal democracy from East Asia.
The spiritual component was, put simply, that the emperor was divine.
For a period of about one hundred years prior to World War II, certain of Japan’s intellectuals developed, and the country came to deeply embrace, the ideology of kokutai ( ).The term is translated as “national identity” or “national polity” but has in the Japanese context the further implication of meaning “national essence.” Japan’s kokutai fused together components of Japan’s ancient origin myths, including the myth of an unbroken and divine line of emperors, with modern nation-state chauvinism. A big dose of metaphysical claptrap was thrown into this heady kokutai brew for good measure. The result was something akin to a master race theory, complete with rituals, with the emperor acting as master of ceremonies. Kokutai became the political “theory,” loosely defined, that underpinned Japanese militarism and expansionism.
The mythical beginning of “divine emperors” supposedly started with a goddess named Amaterasu, though the earliest-dated emperor, according to Japanese mythology, was Emperor Jimmu, who purportedly lived around 600 BCE. However, it should be noted that the historical “record” of the earliest Japanese emperors was not actually recorded in writing until after Buddhism brought that skill to the country much later. Scholars generally cite the earliest written records about the ancient Japanese emperors to the early eighth century (around the years 710—715 CE). Buddhist scriptures and the means to write history appeared in Japan more than a thousand years after the ancient Emperor Jimmu reportedly lived. Thus it seems likely that the early imperial histories were a part of the process of inventing the Japanese nation, the uniting of contending clans under unified rule.
It turns out that Buddhism played a central role in this process. The Japanese ruler Prince Shotoku (573—621), a key figure in the building of a unified Japan, famously created a “constitution” based on Buddhist and Confucian principles for the governing of the country. He lived during the Yamato period, the time when Japan’s identity as a unified country took shape. During World War II, the term Yamato was synonymous with Japan’s self-described unique national spirit or essence. One symbol of “Yamato spirit” was the country’s biggest battleship of that era. Japan’s largest warship, the Yamato, was sunk by American planes in the closing days of World War II.
The first few lines of Prince Shotoku’s constitution read as follows:Harmony [Wa, ] must be upheld and conflict avoided. All men have biases, and few have farsighted vision. Thus some disobey their superiors and fathers and feud with others. But when superiors are harmonious and inferiors are friendly, then matters are discussed quietly and correct views are the basis of action.
The Three Treasures, which are Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha [the “Sangha” is the community of Buddhist believers], must be highly honored, for they are the true refuge for all beings. Few are so evil that they cannot realize the truth.
Obey the commands of your Sovereign. He is to be compared with heaven, while the vassal is like the earth, which supports heaven. When heaven and earth assume their correct place, the seasons naturally follow their course, and everything’s correct nature is preserved.
But if the Earth attempts to overthrow heaven, then heaven is corrupted [and unnatural order results]. Therefore the inferior listens when his superior speaks and obeys the superior’s words. Thus when you hear the commands of your superior, carry them out faithfully lest ruin will come to pass.
The ideas set forth in these passages came directly from China. Besides the references to Buddhism’s “Three Treasures,” the idea of the sovereign being the intermediary between heaven and earth is quintessential Chinese Confucian philosophy.
Buddhism entered Japan meaningfully in the sixth century when a powerful clan called the Soga gained ascendency over other clans vying for dominance. The Soga had strong ties to one of the three kingdoms then ruling Korea called the Baekje Kingdom. The Baekje, in turn, had ties directly to the Liang dynasty court of Emperor Wu. These ties were a major route for introducing Chinese culture to Japan, and they contained a heavy element of the Buddhi
st-Confucian philosophy that Emperor Wu expounded. It was not long after Emperor Wu’s model of the “Bodhisattva [and Confucian] Emperor” entered Japan that the Soga clan utilized it as their ruling ideology. They were the entity that placed Prince Shotoku in power and espoused the Buddhist/Confucian ideology revealed in his constitution.
The official Chinese history of Emperor Wu’s dynasty, the Book of Liang, tells how the Korean Baekje Kingdom sent many delegations to Emperor Wu’s court to study Chinese culture. The record specifically says that these delegations from Korea, in an earnest desire to learn more about Buddhism, requested copies of the Lotus and Nirvana Sutras. Emperor Wu granted their request and thus those sutras officially entered Korea during the 530s. In Japan, according to historical records, after the Soga clan seized power in 531, the Soga chieftain named Soga no Iname imported these and other Buddhist scriptures through his close ties to the Korean Baekje Kingdom. Thus the Soga clan embraced the same heady mixture of Buddhism and Confucianism that Emperor Wu used to rule his Liang dynasty, and these ideas provided the ideology underlying Japan’s clan unification, as well as the key role of Japan’s emperor in the country’s unified society. In light of this, Emperor Wu’s court directly gave rise to the supposedly unique Japanese “polity,” the ideas underlying Japan’s political cohesion and establishment as a country.
But there was an even earlier and even more direct path by which Emperor Wu’s Buddhism was passed to the Soga clan and thus diffused in Japan’s ruling circles. In the year 522, soon after Emperor Wu received the Bodhisattva Precepts at Flowered Woods Garden, one of his subjects, a Buddhist sculptor named Sima Dadeng ( ), traveled to Japan as a Buddhist missionary and artist. He took up residence in what was then Japan’s power center, located in the area of modern Sakurai (“Cherry Blossom”) City in what is now Nara Prefecture. There he created a Buddha Hall and sculpted Buddha statues to be placed in it. His Buddhist proselytizing caught the ear and patronage of Soga no Iname. Thus Japan’s powerful Soga clan first learned of the great ruling wisdom of Emperor Wu and his empire through the person of the sculptor/missionary Sima Dadeng. To the Soga it appeared clear that the religio-political power of Emperor Wu’s great empire must have resulted from his Buddhist and Confucian devotion. Soga no Iname took this lesson to heart, became the patron of Sima Dadeng, and spread the new Buddhist doctrines in Japan.
Tracking Bodhidharma Page 28