Tracking Bodhidharma

by Andy Ferguson

  From Mount Lanka’s peak a jeweled moon appears, inside a Golden Man unfurls his silks,

  His appearance like the earth, his true body empty,

  Unblemished, unadorned, in eternal purity, he penetrates the cloud and fog of Mind,

  A lotus which, with majestic form, brings eternal joy to each in their situation,

  Not of existence or nonexistence, not coming or going, the learned and talented can’t explain,

  [Ideas of] real and empty don’t matter, and all great and small affairs are cut off,

  In an instant attaining sublime awakened Mind, the leaping fish in the Wisdom Sea surpasses the former sages,

  The principle is in the eternally coursing Dharma, whence has it ever ceased to flow?

  Within the Black Dragon’s pearl is a mind-light, whose bright rays dull every opposing blade,

  New followers scurry about, their Compassion Eye closed, but through residing in Zen River currents, their roof beams break,

  No going, no coming, no is or isn’t, it is here that body and mind part ways,

  Abiding or moving all return to perfect stillness, so from where have cries ever issued?

  Telling him to clasp his hands, he passed the lamp, birth and death, coming and going, are all like lightning,

  Yet unwavering Mind remains, not destroyed [even] by the aeonic fire,

  Only [Hui]ke gained possession of true Dharma, his ignorance dispelled.

  Many things are striking about the memorial’s text. It is filled with metaphors and pieces of stories widely associated with Bodhidharma. Some of the memorial’s words are closely connected with Zen teachings still used today. The memorial offers commonly used metaphors like the moon appearing from the clouds, or “rafters breaking” upon experiencing enlightenment. The text offers an early reference to “nine years” of meditation, perhaps the nine years Bodhidharma is credited to have sat in his cave at Shaolin.

  The text’s passages suggest they were not composed by Emperor Wu. Early in the text, there is an odd reference to the emperor using a third-person expression. I translated the text as “What was the emperor’s error?” But the characters that are used here to refer to the “emperor” ( ) are not typically found in such a context. This compound word is widely defined as being analogous to the word God, or the creator, and is not a word normally found when the emperor refers to himself. The text thus appears to be meant to flatter the emperor and was therefore likely written by a third person.

  Other passages seem to indicate an origin well after Bodhidharma, and even Emperor Wu himself, died. The stele at Kong Xiang Temple self-proclaims that it is signed by Emperor Wu, yet the name Wu, which means “Martial,” was not connected with the emperor until after his death. As such, the text could not have been written, as it claims, upon Bodhidharma’s death twenty years or so prior to the emperor’s own death in the year 549. Another clue rests in the phrase “Though his body was interred there in a grave, his appearance traveled to the western regions,” which appears to be a reference to the legend that Bodhidharma was seen walking back to India at a time after his death. Obviously, a memorial composed immediately after the time of his death could not contain such information.

  Another reason Emperor Wu likely didn’t write the text can be found in the passage that claims that Bodhidharma was Emperor Wu’s teacher. The text says, “But my teacher has done so, the great teacher Bodhidharma.” This might be a perfunctory expression of praise, not an actual description of the relationship between Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma. The Zen tradition itself claims they had no such relationship. Yet, could it indicate that Bodhidharma had some as yet undefined relationship with the author of this text, if not Emperor Wu?

  Later, the text hints at Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma’s legendary estranged relationship when it says, “Alas! I saw him but didn’t see him! Met him but didn’t meet him!”

  For these and various other reasons, Chinese scholars and others believe the memorial was created for political reasons long after Bodhidharma died.

  With careful dating and analysis, a Chinese scholar named Ji Huazhuan has argued that the monuments were likely created between the years 728 and 732. The main reason Professor Ji offers this conclusion is that a tally of all the memorials existing at Shaolin Temple was taken just before that time, and this memorial by Emperor Wu was not listed among them. Other early sources, such as a reference to the memorial in the works around 73 of the monk Shenhui, confirm that the monument certainly existed by the year 732. Professor Ji also argues that the monuments were likely composed by a Northern school Zen monk named Jingjue. That monk is the known author of a text called the History of the Lankavatara Misters, and Professor Ji points out similarities in style between the two texts.

  Professor Ji maintains that the creation of the memorials, plus the Lankavatara Masters text authored in this time period, were part of the political propaganda meant to give credence to the Northern school of Zen in the court of Emperor Xuan Zong of the Tang dynasty. The moral lesson the steles impart is that emperors will regret it if they reject the Zen tradition. The steles seem to say that Emperor Wu only belatedly realized the meaning of Bodhidharma’s teaching and regretted that he earlier failed to comprehend its truth (“I saw him but didn’t see him! Met him but didn’t meet him!”). Thus the memorials’ not-so-subtle message was that then emperor Xuan Zong and others should not make the same mistake Emperor Wu made. They should not fail to recognize Bodhidharma’s importance, and they should support the Zen tradition associated with him.

  Without going into all the details of Ji Huaxhuan’s arguments, it must be acknowledged that on many levels he makes a strong and well-constructed case about the memorials’ origin and purpose.

  If the story of Bodhidharma meeting Emperor Wu wasn’t established until the time of the carving of the memorials, in the early 700s, then political motives may have been what gave rise to the story of their meeting. Yet here, like in everything about Bodhidharma, the clues do not lead directly to that conclusion.

  There are references in the memorial that connect it to famous Zen stories and suggest it may have been their origin. For Zen students the most obvious and interesting connection is the reference to “penetrate[ing] the nonexistence [mu] obstruction.” This seems to be a reference to the same famous story called “Zhaozhou’s Mu!” that Zen students are familiar with and that the Japanese Sugimoto used to expound on emperor worship. The memorial is a reference to the story that appears in a Zen context at least a hundred years before Zhaozhou lived. Another Zen text claims a connection to this text prior to Zhaozhou, but the memorial is the earliest use of the mu story in the Zen tradition that I am aware of. Another example of the text’s connection to a later Zen story may be in its reference to an “aeonic fire.” This appears to parallel another later Zen story, a subtle and interesting teaching attributed to a Zen master named Dasui (878—963).A monk asked Zen Master Dasui, “When the aeonic fire engulfs everything, is ‘this’ annihilated or not?”

  Dasui said, “Annihilated.”

  The monk said, “Then it is annihilated along with everything else?”

  Dasui said, “It is annihilated along with everything else.”

  The monk refused to accept this answer. He later went to Touzi Datong and relayed to him his conversation with Dasui.

  Touzi lit incense and bowed to the [statue of] Buddha, saying, “The ancient Buddha of West River has appeared.” Then Touzi said to the monk, “You should go back there quickly and atone for your mistake.”

  The monk went back to see Dasui, but Dasui had already died. The monk then went back to see Touzi, but Touzi had also passed away.

  This story appears on its face to contradict the teaching set forth in the steles. The steles indicate that “this” (which in Zen refers to the mind, or consciousness) is not exterminated in the “aeonic fire” that ends the universe. Yet Dasui appears to contradict the words on the memorial by saying that “this” is indeed annihilated. The
monk then goes to the Zen Master Touzi, who highly praises Dasui’s answer and tells the monk to return and “atone for your mistake” (of not accepting Dasui’s answer). But then the monk returns to find that Dasui has died. When the monk subsequently returns to see Touzi, he discovers that Touzi has also passed away. Both teachers are now “annihilated.” So Dasui’s answer that “this” is annihilated, from the perspective of the inquiring monk, has a peculiar irony and a subtle twist not untypical of Zen stories.

  In his analysis of the memorials, the Chinese scholar Ji Huazhuan cites several eighth- and ninth-century texts that reference their existence. Clearly, these memorials attributed to Emperor Wu served as source material for some later and important Zen teachings. An exhaustive study of their content is beyond the scope of this discussion.

  If the monuments were created around the year 730, does it follow that their content was also fabricated at that time? I think not. Certain phrases in the text seem to suggest that at least some of the passages were originally authored at the time of Emperor Wu. It is this possibility to which I’ll now turn.

  During the time period when Professor Ji claims the memorials were created, Zen was already a well-established religious tradition whose legends were known at China’s imperial court. The main disciple of Daoxin, the Fourth Zen Ancestor, was the Fifth Ancestor Hongren. At least three of that Zen ancestor’s disciples are known to have taught at the Tang dynasty court. This means that at the time these memorials were carved and set up, the Zen tradition of Bodhidharma was already widely known and honored not only by the emperor but also by many people in Chinese society.

  For that reason I think it’s unlikely that information put on Bodhidharma’s monuments were made up out of thin air. The text on the memorials was not simply fabricated by the monk Jingjue. At least some of the stories on these monuments must have been in circulation before their creation and may even stretch back to Bodhidharma’s time. It seems likely that at that time there were other written records related to Bodhidharma. Those other records are now lost, but they must have contributed at least certain portions of what was carved on the long-lasting stone monuments that remain now.

  The way the old text was written seems to show that it was not composed at one sitting or even by one author. Oddly, the time and place of Bodhidharma’s death are provided at the middle of the text. Typically such information would be placed at the end. This raises the possibility that the latter part of the text was added at a later time. The content of this latter portion of the text seems to support this idea. The description of the monks’ mourning and the great attendance at Bodhidharma’s funeral seems formulaic and lacking in genuine detail. Bodhidharma’s disciples are not described with individual names, but rather by the phrases “their tears drenching their bodies” and “mourning as though their fathers and mothers had died.” These expressions look as if they were added to heighten the drama. Another late entry in the text says that “his appearance traveled to the western regions,” which appears to be a reference to the legend of Bodhidharma returning to India with only a single sandal. This legend appears in the later Compendium version of Bodhidharma’s death and other much-later texts. Obviously, if the memorial was written at all once right after Bodhidharma died, then this old legend would not yet have been known.

  Thus there is the possibility that at least part of the text that appears before the passage citing the date of Bodhidharma’s death was written much earlier, and the latter text was added at the time the memorials were created.

  The Continued Biographies account of Sengfu, Bodhidharma’s senior disciple who lived in Nanjing, says that upon his death he was greatly honored by Emperor Wu and his court. It states that Emperor Wu’s daughter, Princess Yong Xing, approached the Crown Prince Zhao Ming and invited him to compose the laudatory memorial to be erected in Sengfu’s honor. This suggests that Zhao Ming, the son of Emperor Wu and a very famous literary figure, composed such memorials for teachers of high reputation, perhaps on behalf of his father. What is even more interesting is that there seem to be clues in the first part of the Bodhidharma memorial that could link that part of the text to Zhao Ming himself.

  The main clues may lie in two phrases that are found in both the stele and in the poem I earlier translated that told of Zhao Ming’s visit to Kaishan Temple in the early morning. Certain phrases in each text, metaphorical passages, are quite similar.

  In Zhao Ming’s poem about a Dharma talk he attended at Kaishan Temple is the phrase “The Dharma Wheel illuminates the dark room.” This passage has a double meaning. The speaker that day at Kaishan Temple sat in a dark room at the break of dawn, and the poem correlated the scene that morning to the illumination of darkness with the teacher’s Dharma words. Therefore, Zhao Ming’s phrase in the poem was not a general metaphor used in other Buddhist poetry or prose but a description of a specific place and time, a talk on a particular morning at Kaishan Temple on Bell Mountain.

  On the memorial stele we find the following phrase that refers to Bodhidharma and his teaching: “He spoke the unspeakable Dharma, like a bright candle in a dark room.” What this indicates, to my thinking, is that the author of the steles knew of Zhao Ming’s poem and incorporated a similar metaphor. Again, this metaphor is not a general metaphor for the nature of the Dharma, like other metaphors I’ve described earlier, but is a specific reference to the event described in Zhao Ming’s poem.

  There is only one other use of this metaphor that I have found in Buddhist poetry, and it tends to confirm the link. In a poem titled “Receiving the Precepts in Flowered Woods Garden,” the prince Xiao Wang, Emperor Wu’s second son and Zhao Ming’s younger brother, uses essentially the same phrase. The poem describes a ceremony of receiving the Bodhisattva Precepts in the same garden where some say Emperor Wu met Bodhidharma, the garden of the same name as Hualin Temple in Guangzhou. A few lines of Wang’s poem highly praise the words of the preceptor of the ordination ceremony, but they don’t identify him. In his poem the prince uses almost the exact phrase found in Zhao Ming’s poem about Kaishan Temple and on Bodhidharma’s memorial stele. And he adds a twist that seems to draw the poem even closer to the Bodhidharma style of teaching. A passage in his poem reads as follows:A true Mind shines wondrously,

  The ferried boat honors the profound teaching,

  Drawing near this, imperial affairs drop away,

  And the light of the mind illuminates a dark room.

  The last line’s metaphor adds weight to the idea that a composer of the first part of Bodhidharma’s stele at the very least was intimately familiar with the poetry of the Liang dynasty princes. It may also suggest that Wang accompanied his older brother Zhao Ming to visit Kaishan Temple that dark morning.

  But the illumination of a “dark room” metaphor is not the only correlation between the steles and the poetry of the Liang princes. Right after the occurrence of the metaphor I’ve described above, the memorial says of Bodhidharma, “He was like a leaping fish in the sea of wisdom.” Similarly, the term sea of wisdom appears in Zhao Ming’s poem when he says, “Here the sea of wisdom is crossed.” The term sea of wisdom is not a widely used Buddhist expression. It would be somewhat familiar to persons conversant with Buddhist literature. Here, the occurrence of the term in both Zhao Ming’s poem and Bodhidharma’s stele may lend weight to the idea that the author of the steles knew the princes’ poetry.

  One other clue may lie in the use of the phrase used for “emperor” that I mentioned earlier. Zhao Ming used extremely flattering language whenever he mentioned his father Emperor Wu. In the Kaishan Temple poem, he flatters his father with the following line: “Countless tributes for a hundred generations will go to my emperor!” It makes sense that many people may have talked like this in an age when an emperor could have your head removed on a whim. Still, the flattery used in each instance is unusual. The phrase of high praise for Emperor Wu that is in the Kaishan Temple poem strikes a tone similar to the deference shown to Emperor Wu in t
he memorial text. This again points to the writing style of the Crown Prince Zhao Ming.

  There is yet another piece of evidence to consider. Zhao Ming also composed a separate poem about an unidentified monk who gave a talk to an audience at Tongtai Temple. That was the special temple built behind Tai Cheng Palace where Emperor Wu lived during times when he had renounced the imperial throne. In that poem about a monk talking at Tongtai Temple, Zhao Ming first refers to Vulture Peak, the place in India where Buddha taught and that was the legendary origin place of the Zen sect, the place where Buddha held up a flower. The reference to Vulture Peak may suggest not only a link to Zen, but also that the lecturing monk was a foreigner. Here’s a translation of the first few lines of the “The Virtuous Talk of a Monk at Tongtai Temple” by Xiao Tong (Zhao Ming):Illumination flows from the world of Vulture Peak,