Tracking Bodhidharma

by Andy Ferguson

  41. Bodhidharma’s Cave

  THE NEXT DAY under a bright sun, Shanli and I depart the monastery for a final hike in the mountains.

  The path to Bodhidharma’s famous cave is well-constructed with stone and mortar. The problem is that it leads up a pretty steep mountain, so you should be in reasonable shape, or at least not be in a rush, to visit the place.

  “As part of our kong fu training, we used to run up and down this mountain several times in one morning,” says Shanli. “Once when we were doing this, some members of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan were visiting. They were impressed when I ran up and down the mountain but were more impressed to see me light up a gaff when I finished.”

  I guess Shanli’s ability to do impressive physical feats while smoking has something to do with his study of Esoteric Buddhism. But I recommend against trying this at home.

  The path from Shaolin Temple to Bodhidharma’s cave takes us past a little temple compound called “Bodhidharma’s Hermitage.” It’s a place at the foot of the mountain where he is said to have lived. Now it’s a small nunnery surrounded by a high wall. The gate at the front is open, so we enter to take a few photos in front of a small Buddha Hall that serves as a place of practice for the nuns. The building, built seven hundred years ago, is by far the oldest building still standing around Shaolin Temple. It is in a traditional Chinese style with fishtail eaves. Inside on the walls, barely visible in the darkness, are painted frescoes of the first six Zen Ancestors. The paintings are faded, and the characters that accompany them are hard to read. I ask a nun who is in the building how old the old paintings are, but she says she doesn’t know.

  Outside near the front door is a tall cypress tree. A sign next to it says it was planted by the Sixth Zen ancestor, Huineng, when he came to visit this famous place connected to Bodhidharma. Behind the little Buddha Hall on an elevated area is a living compound for the nuns. In several visits here over the years, I’ve found the nuns to be very friendly and happy to meet foreigners. However, their director discourages such contact, and people aren’t allowed to venture near their living quarters.

  Big icicles hanging from the edge of the roof are glistening and dripping in bright sunlight. The day is warming rapidly. We exit the Bodhidharma hermitage and continue our walk to the cave.

  On the new steps up the mountain, there are places to stop and enjoy the view. The general landscape, which includes a view of Shaolin Temple tucked between Big House Mountain and Little House Mountain, is about the same as what Bodhidharma saw when he stayed here fifteen hundred years ago. Of course the rest of the world is entirely different. Still, the world offers a lot of reasons why leaving it behind and moving onto this quiet mountain could be appealing. Before too long, but with some effort, we reach the level terrace constructed in front of Bodhidharma’s cave. It measures about ten by thirty feet or so, and is partly covered in snow. The sun, low in the winter sky, casts long shadows over the quiet mountains. The silence and light plus the space and snow all support the timeless feeling of the place. Behind the paifang that marks the small cave is an alcove where some old monuments rest. Looking into the cave itself, I see that the nun who usually comes up the mountain to guard against taking pictures inside the place is gone today. We take advantage of this opportunity to photograph each other in the cave next to a statue of its famous inhabitant’s likeness.

  The traditional Zen story of how Bodhidharma instructed his famous disciple Huike about the “no-self-nature” of mind describes an event that allegedly happened in front of this cave.

  According to the story, which appears in various late texts including the late-thirteenth-century Compendium of Five Lamps, which tells the “official story” of Bodhidharma, Bodhidharma practiced meditation within the walls of this cave every day. Huike, an earnest seeker of the Dharma, stood outside the cave in the snow, waiting for Bodhidharma to emerge. Finally, Bodhidharma emerged from the cave, and Huike seized his chance, saying, “My mind is troubled. Please pacify it!”

  Bodhidharma then replied, “Bring me your mind, and I’ll pacify it.”

  This answer gave Huike pause, and he finally said, “Although I’ve looked for my mind, I can’t find it.”

  FIGURE 20. Bodbidharma’s Cave near Shaolin Temple.

  Bodhidharma then said, “There! I’ve pacified it!”

  You might think Bodhidharma was trying to be cute. His point was that an individual’s mind does not exist as an entity that can be separated from external experience. Bodhidharma was pointing out that no matter how hard Huike would try to find something that could uniquely be called his personal “mind” or “soul,” he would never be able to do so. The perceptions of the mind cannot be divorced from perceptions and memories that originate “outside.” What is mistakenly thought to be a genuinely existent, some sort of separate “self” may be sought for a lifetime or more. But no such “self” will ever be found. There is, in this Buddhist view, no soul. There is no individually existing mind that exists outside of the arising of the “other.”

  I examine the cave. I think Bodhidharma may have really sat here. But my view is that he did so sometime during the years 475 to 494, when Shaolin Temple did not yet exist, or at least was not yet a formally established temple. The Bodhidharma hermitage down at the base of this mountain is a mile or so away from Shaolin. Bodhidharma may have lived at the place where the hermitage now sits at a time predating the temple’s establishment or, if after the temple was established, with only a tenuous connection to the temple itself. He “avoided places of imperial sway,” and he likely regarded Shaolin as just such a place after it was officially established by imperial decree. Anyway, that Bodhidharma sat in a freezing cave and not in the warm temple attests to his avoidance of the place.

  Back on the terrace in front of the cave, Shanli starts doing a set of kong fu movements to the entertainment of a handful of tourists. He’s obviously a real master of this “Chinese boxing.” He does a martial form of the exercises, not the slow meditative form that is better known. His arms and legs move so fast that they seem little more than a blur in the crisp mountain air.

  We hike past the cave and climb the final fifty yards or so to the top of the peak. There, a large white statue of Bodhidharma gazes out over peaks and valleys of Mount Song. In the other direction, the view from the back side of the mountain stretches toward Luoyang City, just out of view behind hills in the west. Shanli does more kong fu movements, and I snap his picture with the big Bodhidharma, the purported First Ancestor of kong fu, in the background. As the sun begins to set, we turn to go back.

  42. Huishan Temple

  WHILE SHAOLIN IS the most famous, it certainly is not the only important Buddhist temple on ancient Mount Song. Huishan Temple, which sits at the base of Big House Mountain—Mount Song’s highest and most prominent peak—was originally a mountain palace retreat for the Wei emperor Xiao Wen, the same emperor who moved his capital to Luoyang from the north of China and may have forced Bodhidharma to leave the Mount Song area. As I described previously, Emperor Xiao Wen was of the Tuoba people, a “barbarian” nationality that conquered Northern China. He wanted his foreign Wei dynasty to not only rule and control all of China but also to fully accept and embrace China’s superior civilization. Both his Tuoba people and the Han Chinese they conquered were dubious about this fusing of cultures. By moving his capital to Luoyang from the cold north, Xiao Wen enhanced his Chinese bona fides by occupying the imperial grounds of many ancient Chinese dynasties. With this move he took control of the sacred center, the symbolic location from which emperors who had received heaven’s mandate should properly rule. By building a branch palace on Mount Song itself, which subsequently became Huishan Temple, he presented himself to the Tuoba and Chinese people alike as the true and rightful ruler of the Middle Kingdom. Appearances and symbols mattered, and Emperor Xiao Wen did his best to appropriate the key symbols of Chinese culture. He then leavened his political authority, like Emperor Wu who came later,
with Buddhist doctrines, so that he would appear to occupy the moral high ground.

  After Emperor Xiao Wen died in the year 499, his palace on Mount Song was converted into a temple. Thereafter, it was home to several famous monks of various Buddhist schools. Most important, it may be the place where the Southern Zen school of Huineng came face-to-face with Buddhist establishment of the northern court in Luoyang. Mount Song’s Huishan temple may have been an important battleground in the struggle between Imperial Zen and the Zen of Bodhidharma, the Fourth Ancestor Daoxin, and Huineng, the Zen of just “observing mind.”

  The parking lot at Huishan Temple is covered with snow. My taxi rolls gingerly into the virgin whiteness, and I negotiate a suitable fee to have the driver wait for me on an icy fall morning. From the parking lot, I ascend some steps and pass under a paifang that leads to the temple halls. But the place is no longer a practicing temple. It is now a museum that houses exhibits about some of Mount Song’s most famous ancient monks. I make my way up the slope toward what was once the Heavenly Kings Hall. In front of it stand two bare-branched but nonetheless magnificent old gingko trees. According to the temple’s records, they are more than fifteen hundred years old, which means they were planted when Emperor Xiao Wen established his palace here. Recently these and more than a hundred other ancient ginkgo trees that remain on Mount Song have been given special attention in order to preserve them. Like the tree I saw at Changlu Temple, they silently watch over Mount Song’s ancient Buddhist sites. The earliest such gingko trees are at Fawang (“Dharma King”) Temple farther up the mountain. That place is another example of the Dharma King idea that long preceded Emperor Wu—the Dharma King Temple on Mount Song was established in the years immediately following Buddhism’s “official” introduction to China. The two Indian monks who legendarily brought Buddhism to China were present when those trees were planted in the first century.

  But Huishan Temple’s main hall and museum are closed today. The museum staff has wisely decided that no one is crazy enough to try to come for a visit with so much snow on the ground (not taking into consideration a history-obsessed foreigner). So further investigation about the mysterious monk who lived here, named Jingzang, will have to wait.

  What I know already adds some interesting bits to the puzzle of Bodhidharma’s Zen.

  A few years ago I visited Huishan Temple for the first time and spent an afternoon studying displays about its famous monks. Among them was a monk named Lao An (“Old An”). An means “peace” or “safety.” He was a student of Zen’s Fifth Ancestor, Hongren, whose temple is near Daoxin’s at Huangmei.

  Ancient records say that Wu Zetian (China’s only empress, to whom I referred earlier) respected Old An very highly, and she came to Mount Song on three occasions to honor him. She thereafter renamed this temple Anguo (“Peaceful Nation”) Temple. During about that time, Bodhidharma’s Zen became a mainstream Buddhist religion at the nearby Tang dynasty “Eastern Capital” of Luoyang. There the monk Shenxiu, the leader of what was to be called the Northern and Gradual Zen school, along with his disciples, was expounding his Zen teachings. He taught at Luoyang’s imperial court over the course of several years and reigning periods. Shenxiu would be known as the “Teacher of Three Emperors.”

  I probably first read about Huishan Temple in the book The Northern School and the Formation of Early Chan Buddhism by the American Zen scholar John McCrae. In his book McCrae briefly discusses the obscure Zen master named Jingzang (“Pure Storehouse”) and the fact that his burial stupa is located at Huishan Temple. However, the temple really didn’t catch my attention until years later when I was searching the Chinese Internet for texts from old Zen monuments. One fascinating stele was from Huishan Temple, where it was inscribed on Jingzang’s burial stupa. What was fascinating was that the stele lists Jingzang as Zen’s Seventh Ancestor and a student of the famous Sixth Ancestor Huineng. This was surprising, because Huineng had several famous students, but nowhere did I remember reading or hearing about one named Jingzang. He is a virtual Zen unknown. Naturally, after finding out about this burial stupa, I wanted to take a look at it and learn more about this obscure Seventh Ancestor of the Bodhidharma Zen tradition.

  Thereafter, during my first opportunity to visit Huishan Temple, I asked the staff there to tell me exactly where Jingzang’s old stupa was located so that I could take a look at it. They explained that the stupa was nearby but that it was closed to public viewing. When I asked if I could arrange to visit it, I was politely refused. I then explained that I was deeply interested in the history of this unknown Seventh Ancestor and furthermore I would be returning to the temple in about three weeks with a group from the United States that would want to see the stupa. This was actually true, as three weeks later I was scheduled to bring a group from the Los Angeles Zen Center to visit the area. I had not yet told the group about the stupa, but I was sure they would want to see it. The man in charge at the museum gave me his card and told me he would see if this would be possible.

  During the days after that first visit to Huishan, I contacted some local friends who served as tour guides for groups I had previously brought to the area. I knew a local guide named Winston Wang, a young man who was also a Buddhist and who often accompanied my tour groups on visits to Shaolin Temple. If it were possible to visit the stupa, Winston could surely arrange it.

  A few weeks later when I returned to Huishan Temple with the Los Angeles group, Winston accompanied us. He had contacted the local government antiquities bureau and arranged for one of its officials to meet us at Huishan Temple. Strangely, we were again politely told that visiting the stupa would not be possible because it was closed. I got a little animated, explaining to the local official that I had done research work concerning Jingzang and furthermore our group had traveled all the way from the United States to visit the place (along with many other places, of course). After they gave us more polite refusals, it finally came to light why the stupa was “closed.” Immediately west of Huishan Temple there is a Chinese military police base, and the stupa happens to rest within its boundaries. Allowing a group of American tourists to visit such a place was probably unprecedented if not unthinkable. Yet after more arguing, the local antiquities official, who apparently was well-acquainted with the base commander, seemed of two minds. He said it might be possible to ask the appropriate officials whether we could simply enter the base and visit the stupa, which was near the front gate, and not take pictures of anything except the stupa itself. I readily agreed with this idea. After a few mobile-phone calls, the official said we had received permission to enter the base and view the stupa.

  It so happened that my friend Bill Porter, who is well-known in Chinese Buddhist circles, was helping me lead this particular group in China, and our group was being filmed by a Chinese television film crew that was documenting his experiences. The crew had been with us for several days. Naturally, they were forced to remain behind as our group made its way along a road and up a hill to the military base’s front gate. There, the guards who had been informed of our arrival literally crouched on top of their German shepherd guard dogs, muzzling their mouths to keep them from barking as our group passed under the gate and into the restricted area.

  Happily, the stupa was not within sight of any military facilities but simply sat right next to the base entrance road. I was walking at the rear of the group to make sure everyone got into the place without any problems and then hurried forward to catch up. The road made a sharp left turn, and when I came around the corner I saw an astonishing sight. Even from a long distance I could see that Jingzang’s stupa was far bigger than I was expecting. Its photo on the Internet did not convey its size. It was way bigger than an individual monk’s stupa would normally be from that era, larger than any such stupas in the famous “Pagoda Forest” at Shaolin Temple or scores of other temples I had visited. I started yelling “Look at that! That’s a big stupa! Look at the size of that thing!” Others in the group looked at me as if I were a
little strange. I suppose they didn’t know how big such monuments normally were and didn’t realize what we were seeing.

  Jingzang’s burial stupa is nearly ten meters tall and sits on a base about six meters wide. Chinese archeologists say its special octagonal architecture, which came from South Asia, is all but unknown elsewhere in the country. While the famous murals in the Dunhuang Caves, far out on the Silk Road, depict stupas of this ancient design, almost none remaisn in existence. One of the few exceptions was this stupa.

  What was most amazing is its great size, which naturally means the person it honored must have been considered especially important. Suddenly the claim of Jingzang being Zen’s Seventh Ancestor seemed plausible, a claim that might be more than hyperbole written by grief-stricken disciples.

  For the next fifteen minutes or so we examined this ancient, virtually unknown relic of the Zen tradition. Traces of ancient carvings could be seen on the different faces of the stupa. Obviously, when it was built it was not only big but also elaborately carved and decorated. We circumambulated the structure and took multiple photos. I was the most excited of anyone in the tour group. I had a sense that we were seeing the symbol of a genuine mystery of great importance. What could that importance have been?

  Jingzang’s stupa may reveal that he was a unique, even pivotal, figure of his time. This could have big implications for Bodhidharma’s Zen and its historical meaning. No similar stupa remains in the area, and, as I said, no other stupa of similar purpose compares to Jingzang’s in size and design. Moreover, constructing such a structure required lots and lots of money. Who paid for it? We have little record about this teacher except the text that was left on the memorial itself.