The Zhao Ming Tower is named after Crown Prince Zhao Ming, the oldest son of Emperor Wu and the author of the poem examined earlier. It rests on the approximate spot where Xiao Yan’s governor’s office stood a millennium and a half ago. It’s also where Zhao Ming was born, a year or so prior to Xiao Yan’s successful overthrow of Baojuan. Although Zhao Ming lived at this spot during only the first year of his life, the city still remembers and honors his illustrious name, keeping it at the center of its old geography and equating it with its past glories.
Exiting the taxi, I point my umbrella into the blowing sleet and head toward the river along the wet pavement. Along the way a few people are buying scarves or mittens at street stalls. A number of people crowd around a man selling bowls of hot noodles. A boy bundled in a blue snowsuit rides on his father’s shoulders and looks shocked to see a foreigner walking along behind him.
A passageway through the old wall of the city leads me to the south side of the wide, fast-flowing Han River. Flowing from the north, the river turns east to pass where I am standing on its southern shore and then turns south again. It looks to be a full half mile across.
The area where I’m standing on the bank is a wide pedestrian walkway and park built up several meters above the water. What is immediately obvious is why the old city was situated where I’m standing. Ships swept south on the river’s current could take advantage of its turn eastward to easily land on its right bank. Grain barges and other cargos coming from North China would here find an ideal spot to land and unload. Similarly, shipping coming from the south could sail or pole its way along the north shore and then let the current sweep it into the south shore docks. Geography explains a lot.
Because of the same geography, invaders coming from the north would be at a disadvantage, their ships pushed by the bend in the river toward the starboard shore, coming within range of defenders’ catapults and crossbows. The city’s Web site tells how its strategic position has been the site of innumerable battles for at least three thousand years. It relates that when the Mongolians invaded China in the thirteenth century and fought their way from the north to the south of the country, it took the Great Khan’s experienced army two years to overcome this historic spot’s excellent defenses.
Clearly, this river was a suitable way for Bodhidharma to make his way south from the region south of Mount Song and sail all the way to Nanjing. This key part of the Bodhidharma puzzle is clear from the size and role of the Han River.
I walk west along the river a short distance and then turn left and walk south. Soon I reach Sandalwood Road. Local records say that it lies along the area where a large stream, called Sandalwood Creek, once ran. Now nothing remains of that stream due to centuries of floods and silting from the Han River. But the street is still subject to severe flooding if the Han River overflows its banks.
According to Chinese records, Governor Xiao Yan (Wu) secretly laid up stores of wood in that ancient Sandalwood Creek. When he launched his rebellion to overthrow Emperor Baojuan, he used the wood as armor on the grain barges that lined the river, creating troop transports. From here, he led his army down the Han and Yang-tse waterways, the current at his back, to win naval and land victories over Qi dynasty defenders.
Along the same Sandalwood Creek where Xiao Yan hid his timbers there was a Buddhist temple called Gold Virtue Temple. It was established by a famous Buddhist monk named Daoʼan during the fourth century. Dao’an was instrumental in establishing Buddhism in China. He started the Chinese custom of naming Chinese monks with the surname Shi (pronounced sure) that designated them as members of the family of Shijiamuni (Shakyamuni), the historical Buddha. He was also instrumental in bringing a famous sutra translator named Kumarajiva to China from Central Asia. When Dao’an lived here in old Xiangyang, he once received a massive amount of copper as a donation to his monastery. With it, he build a sixty-foot statue of Buddha at Gold Virtue Temple, which was somewhere around where I’m walking. This imposing landmark was visible to greet beleaguered migrants that made their way down the river from Northern China. Undoubtedly, most of them stopped to take on provisions as they traveled south. It seems possible, given the timeline of Bodhidharma’s possible passage along the river, that Bodhidharma stopped and stayed at that same temple located where I am now. Then it sat aside Emperor Wu’s stockpile of war preparations. In any case, if Bodhidharma did indeed teach in the “south and the north” and in the region of “Luoyang and the Yang-tse,” he likely stayed and taught along these banks. Perhaps it was here, even while Xiao Yan was governor of the region, that his followers numbering “like a city” crowded the banks of Sandalwood Creek to hear him speak. It’s a narrative worth considering, even if any traces of his life in this area have long been swept away by the Han River’s currents.
39. Mount Song and Shaolin Temple
Beside long reeds and swift clear stream,
My leisured horse and carriage track,
The creek tries to accompany
the flocks in evening winging back,
Old ruins by the river’s ford,
Fall’s sunset hills illuminate,
Far ’neath Song Mountain’s dimming peak,
Arriving home, I close the gate.
—“Returning to Song Mountain” by Wang Wei (699—759)
LONG BEFORE BUDDHISM arrived in China, the country’s ancient Taoist philosophers had designated five sacred mountains in the country. Each mountain sat in one of the five cardinal directions of Taoist cosmology, the north, south, east, west, and the sacred center. Mount Song was the mountain at the middle, the peak of the “central” direction. Westerners don’t normally think of the “center” as a direction, but this idea reflects a long-established way of thinking in Chinese culture. The name China itself means the “middle kingdom.” In Confucianism, an important idea is the “doctrine of the center.” Thus when Buddhism came to China advertising itself as a religion of the “middle way,” the idea found receptive ears.
FIGURE 17. Map of Luoyang/Mount Song Area.
Mount Song is not a single mountain but an area that holds two large mountains and some lesser peaks and valleys. The largest peak, which in Chinese may be called either “Mount Song” or the “Big House,” is said to be where a grand residence of Yu the Great, the first great unifier of China, was located. Legends say that sometime around 2000 BCE, Yu tamed the raging Yellow River by dredging and using dykes. The smaller peak of Mount Song, called “Little House,” is where Yu reportedly set up a smaller residence for his wife’s younger sister. From the Chinese term “little house” (shao shi) comes the name for Mount Song’s most famous temple, Shaolin (meaning “Little Woods”), which was set amid the forest by the Little House Mountain slopes.
Not far from Mount Song is the city of Luoyang, a city that served as the capital of many of China’s ancient dynasties. From the country’s earliest times, emperors came from there to worship the nation’s gods on Mount Song’s slopes.
The city of Dengfeng, which rests amid Mount Song’s peaks and valleys, now offers hotels for the legions of tourists that flock to visit the place’s most famous site, Shaolin Temple. The city is also famous for forty or so boarding academies that serve both as schools and training centers for young Chinese martial arts students. The city’s name, Dengfeng, literally means “Ascendant Fiefdom,” but locals say this name is derived from an earlier term with the same pronunciation. In ancient times China’s only empress, named Wu Zetian, loved to come from her court in Luoyang to visit and pay honor to Mount Song’s Buddhist teachers. She would “ascend the peak,” which also is pronounced deng feng in Chinese. Wu Zetian, having never traveled too far from Luoyang, thought Mount Song to be the world’s highest mountain.
Shaolin Temple is not simply the legendary home of the world’s kong fu practitioners. It is known as the “birthplace” of Zen in China. According to the prevailing story, Bodhidharma came here after failing to come to an understanding with Emperor Wu and remained here for nin
e years, practicing his Zen meditation in a cave near Shaolin Temple.
Soon after I arrived last night on a bus from Zhengzhou City, a snowstorm blanketed the area. This morning the street in front of the hotel is frozen, and the few cars and pedestrians brave enough to venture out carefully inch their way along. Despite this, some taxis are still pursuing their livelihood, and I wave one to the side of the huge roundabout intersection near my hotel. We set off slowly into the mists toward the base of Song Mountain.
40. Shaolin Temple
ALTHOUGH THE TERM kong fu usually means “martial arts,” it may refer to any great skill or capacity. In Chinese there is an old verse about Bodhidharma that goes like this:Bodhidharma came from the west with a single word, “Mu!,”
The nature of mind was his only kong fu,
Trying to grasp Dharma by using written words,
You’ll drain Poting Lake to make the ink, but it still will never do!
The word Mu in the verse is a double entendre, since it literally means “no” or “none.” Thus the verse on the one hand means that Bodhidharma didn’t bring a single word with him to China (no scriptures to study). But later the single word mu became the focus of a famous mu koan of Zen. In Japan and the West, many Zen students concentrate on this single word, mu, as part of their Zen training. So the verse above is a typical Chinese play on words with a clever two-fold meaning. This mu reference is also about the same word that the Japanese militarist Sugimoto employed to explain his worship of the Japanese emperor.
Shaolin Temple claims, through its connection with Bodhidharma, to be the home of both Zen and Chinese kong fu. From its earliest days, Shaolin was connected to the imperial court. Its founder, the Zen teacher Fotuo, reportedly established the temple in 496 under the command and support of Emperor Xiao Wen of the Northern Wei dynasty, and thereafter Shaolin long represented the unity of the imperial throne and the Buddhist religion.
Like Emperor Wu, Emperor Xiao Wen devoted himself to Buddhist sutra study, issues of doctrine, building temples, and ordaining monks and nuns. He proclaimed himself to be the Tathagata (Buddha), and he actively took part in religious life. In the year 476, for example, he ordained a group of a hundred monks and nuns, personally cutting their hair and enrobing them in a grand ceremony. He also sponsored vegetarian banquets for the Buddhist clergy. In 478, during one such banquet, he pardoned the country’s condemned criminals. In 493, he established forty-seven precepts required to be taken by those entering monkhood.
Old records make clear that Emperor Xiao Wen was devoted to the study of Buddhist doctrines. He did not, however, forsake the study of Zen, as indicated by his enthusiasm for the Zen teacher Fotuo who established Shaolin Temple. Even before Shaolin temple was established, Emperor Xiao Wen built a large Zen monastery near his old northern capital city of Pingcheng where Fotuo could teach.
How can the fact that Bodhidharma is called the First Ancestor of Zen be reconciled with the fact that his contemporary Fotuo, who was also a non-Chinese of South Asian origin, was a Zen teacher? An explanation for this can be found in the Chinese Zen tradition itself. Fotuo is described as an advocate of Hinayana (“Little Vehicle”) Zen, as opposed to the more lofty Mahayana (“Great Vehicle”) Zen. But the alleged difference between Zen before Bodhidharma and Zen after Bodhidharma may simply be the result of politics. The earliest major Zen advocate in China was a monk named Anshigao who lived three centuries before Bodhidharma. He based his Zen practice on the Yin Chi Ru Sutra. A rendering of this scripture’s name in English might be “Entering [the Way by] Practicing [supporting] the Mysterious [darkness].” The scripture taught “stillness [meditation] and observing.” Since Bodhidharma’s own teaching was “observing the nature of the human mind,” through meditation, the alleged difference between early Chinese Hinayana Zen and Bodhidharma’s Mahayana Zen seems to be not too great. Bodhidharma’s purported practice of “observing mind” doesn’t look that much different from what came before him. Perhaps Bodhidharma, in line with his times, embraced the Bodhisattva ideal as indicated in his “Two Entrances and Four Practices” cited above. In any case, claims that Bodhidharma was the first Ancestor of Zen seem to have much to do with politics. The clear demarcation between his Zen and Emperor Wu’s Imperial Zen is stark.
Under the Northern Wei Emperor’s orders, Fotuo officially founded Shaolin Temple in the year 496. Presumably it took about two years to build the temple, so the date surrounding its establishment matches with the time when Bodhidharma’s disciple Sengfu is recorded in the Continued Biographies to have departed from the same area. Bodhidharma and his disciples are said to have lived at a spot about a mile from Shaolin Temple that is now a small nunnery. In light of the Continued Biographies timeline that claims that Sengfu left the area in 494 and again in 496, the date recorded for when Shaolin Temple was built, the possibility that Bodhidharma and his monks were living at the place and decided to move when construction on the new temple began is worth considering. Tellingly, despite his association with the place, mention of Bodhidharma cannot be found in Shaolin Temple’s early records. Also, there is no trace of him found in the court history of Emperor Xiao Wen. It seems he wasn’t in the area, or at least had dropped out of sight, by the time that temple’s construction was finished.
Yet strangely, since the sixteenth century or so, the temple has claimed that Bodhidharma not only started Zen at this place, but kong fu as well. Where did the kong fu connection come from?
Popular folklore and some solid historical clues do connect Shaolin Temple to Chinese kong fu from early in its history, yet there is no evidence that Bodhidharma had anything to do with this. Scholars have suggested, and recent archeological evidence supports, the idea that the temple’s kong fu began with a disciple of the temple’s founder, Fotuo. That monk, named Seng Chou, one of the great Zen teachers cited and praised highly by Daoxuan, seems to have learned to defend himself from tigers in the mountains using a staff. This may be the origin of Shaolin Temple’s famous kong fu.
SHAOLIN TEMPLE AND IMPERIAL-WAY BUDDHISM
Uncertain folklore and kong fu notwithstanding, Shaolin Temple’s close ties with China’s emperors is a prominent feature of the temple’s history. During the battles that established China’s most illustrious and famous Tang dynasty (713—905), a handful of Shaolin’s monks assisted the future Tang emperor Tai Zong (ruled 627—650) by stealthily capturing an enemy general. Later, this brave martial act was commemorated on a stele erected by that emperor, its text still proudly displayed at Shaolin Temple today.
If the Tang emperors who lived long after Bodhidharma wanted to make a show of embracing his Zen tradition and co-opting it into their political sphere, then connecting him to Shaolin Temple in legend makes sense. It’s easy to see why they would push that idea. By taking over the Zen tradition and declaring its origin to be in the imperial monastic system, they could bask in the light of Bodhidharma’s popularity and also put an end to his tradition’s irritating independent streak. Claiming that Bodhidharma was part of a place synonymous with Imperial-Way Buddhism helped consolidate imperial authority over that wayward religious element.
In this light, Shaolin’s association with Bodhidharma reveals not the origin of Zen but his tradition’s political capture by China’s emperors.
Back in the present, my taxi creeps along the icy road and under a gray overcast and light snow. “Stop at the gas station on the left before we get to the temple,” I say. “My friend will meet me there.”
A young European man in the long thick winter frock of a monastic stands on the other side of the road next to the gas station. He is tall and has the bald head of a monk.
It must be Shanli. He greets me with a handshake and waves toward the back entrance gate of Shaolin Temple. “This way,” he says, his breath making a big cloud of steam in the winter air.
We set off into the valley where Shaolin Temple and its many related structures sit. The guard waves us past the side entrance gate where resi
dents go in and out.
We begin to get acquainted by talking about our obvious common interest, Shaolin Temple history.
“Seng Chou, the third abbot of Shaolin, was the person who actually started the kong fu tradition,” says Shanli. “There’s no evidence that Bodhidharma had any part in it.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been telling people in my lectures for the past year,” I say. “You’re the first person I’ve ever met that also says that!”
Shanli tells me how he arrived in China at the age of sixteen. In Leipzig, his home in what was previously Communist East Germany, he was an accomplished pianist, a student at the Bach Institute. When he arrived in China, he thought he would spend a year or so here. After two days in Beijing, he traveled to Shaolin Temple, where he has remained now for nearly twelve years. Now, at twenty-eight, he’s spent long years in kong fu training, meditation, esoteric Buddhist practices, and learning to speak both Chinese and English fluently. He was only seven or eight years old when the Berlin Wall came down. He detests the society he lived in as a young child.
“The Stasi [East German secret police] were the best spies in the world,” he says. “They had informers and files for everyone. People say I gave up living in one Communist society to come live in another one. But the truth is that my guru—is that the right word? There should be a better one—anyway, my guru is transmitting something very special to me, and I don’t dare leave now.”
We arrive at the main temple complex, and Shanli leads me to a side gate. We enter a small compound with a bronze statue of a bare-chested monk in the center of a courtyard. Chinese characters on the statue’s torso depict the locations of energy meridians, all important for both kong fu and traditional Chinese medicine. At the side of the courtyard we enter a guest reception room.
Tracking Bodhidharma Page 30