Travels of Bodhidharma
According to Southeast Asian folklore, Bodhidharma travelled from south India by sea to Sumatra, Indonesia for the purpose of spreading the Mahayana doctrine. From Palembang, he went north into what are now Malaysia and Thailand. He travelled the region transmitting his knowledge of Buddhism and martial arts[29] before eventually entering China through Vietnam. Malay legend holds that Bodhidharma introduced preset forms to silat.[29]
[edit]Appearance after his death
Three years after Bodhidharma's death, Ambassador Song Yun of northern Wei is said to have seen him walking while holding a shoe at the Pamir Heights. Song Yun asked Bodhidharma where he was going, to which Bodhidharma replied "I am going home". When asked why he was holding his shoe, Bodhidharma answered "You will know when you reach Shaolin monastery. Don't mention that you saw me or you will meet with disaster". After arriving at the palace, Song Yun told the emperor that he met Bodhidharma on the way. The emperor said Bodhidharma was already dead and buried, and had Song Yun arrested for lying. At the Shaolin Temple, the monks informed them that Bodhidharma was dead and had been buried in a hill behind the temple. The grave was exhumed and was found to contain a single shoe. The monks then said "Master has gone back home" and prostrated three times.
For nine years he had remained and nobody knew him;
Carrying a shoe in hand he went home quietly, without ceremony.[30]
[edit]Modern scholarship
Bodhidharma has been the subject of critical scientific research, which has shed new light on the traditional stories about Bodhidharma.
[edit]Biography as a hagiographic process
According to John McRae, Bodhidharma has been the subject of a hagiographic process which served the needs of the Chinese Ch'an movement. According to him it is not possible to write an accurate biography of Bodhidharma:
"It is ultimately impossible to reconstruct any original or accurate biography of the man whose life serves as the original trace of his hagiography - where "trace" is a term from Jacques Derrida meaning the beginningless beginning of a phenomenon, the imagined but always intellectually unattainable origin. Hence any such attempt by modern biographers to reconstruct a definitive account of Bodhidharma's life is both doomed to failure and potentially no different in intent from the hagiographical efforts of premodern writers"[31]
McRae's standpoint accords with Yanagida's standpoint:
"Yanagida ascribes great historical value to the witness of the disciple T'an-lin, but at the same time acknowledges the presence of "many puzzles in the biography of Bodhidharma". Given the present state of the sources, he considers it impossible to compile a reliable account of Bodhidharma's life".[32]
Several scholars have suggested that the composed image of Bodhidharma depended on the combination of supposed historical information on various historical figures over several centuries.[33] Bodhidharma as a historical person may even never have actually existed[34]
[edit]Origins and place of birth
See also: Bodhidharma/Birthplace sources
Dumoulin comments on the three principal sources. The Persian heritage is doubtful, according to Dumoulin:
"In the description of the Lo-yang temple, bodhidharma is called a Persian. Given the ambiguity of geographical references in writings of this period, such a statement should not be taken too seriously".[35]
Dumoulin considers Tan-lin's account of Bodhidharma being "the third son of a great Brahman king" to be a later addition, and finds the exact meaning of "South Indian Brahman stock" unclear:[36]
"And when Tao-hsuan speaks of origins from South Indian Brahman stock, it is not clear whether he is referring to roots in nobility or to India in general as the land of the Brahmans"
These Chinese sources lend themselves to make inferences about Bodhidharma's origins. "The third son of a Brahman king" has been speculated to mean "the third son of a Pallavine king".[3] Based on a specific pronunciation of the Chinese characters 香至 as Kang-zhi, "meaning fragrance extreme",[3] Tsutomu Kambe identifies 香至 to be Kanchipuram, an old capital town in the state Tamil-Nadu. According to Tstuomu Kambe:
"Kanchi means 'a radiant jewel' or 'a luxury belt with jewels', and puram means a town or a state in the sense of earlier times. Thus, it is understood that the '香至-Kingdom' corresponds to the old capital 'Kanchipuram'."[3]
[edit]Indian caste system
In the context of the Indian caste system the mention of "Brahman king"[37] acquires a nuance. Broughton notes that "king" implies that Bodhidharma was of a member of the Kshatriya caste of warriors and rulers.[38] Brahman is, in western contexts, easily understood as Brahmana or Brahmin, which means priest.
[edit]Bodhidharma's name
According to tradition Bodhidharma was given this name by his teacher known variously as Panyatara, Prajnatara, or Prajñādhara.[39]
Bodhidharma is associated with several other names, and is also known by the name Bodhitara. Faure notes that:
Tibetan sources give his name as "Bodhidharmottāra" or "Dharmottara", that is, "Highest teaching (dharma) of enlightenment".[41]
[edit]Bodhidharma's abode in China
Buswell dates Bodhidharma abode in China approximately at the early 5th century.[42] Broughton dates Bodhidharma's presence in Luoyang to between 516 and 526, when the temple referred to—Yǒngníngsì (永寧寺), was at the height of its glory.[43] Starting in 526, Yǒngníngsì suffered damage from a series of events, ultimately leading to its destruction in 534.[44]
[edit]Martial arts
Traditionally Bodhidharma is being credited to be the founder of the martial arts at the Shaolin Temple. However, martial arts historians have shown this legend stems from a 17th century qigong manual known as the Yijin Jing.[45]
The authenticity of the Yi Jin Jing has been discredited by some historians including Tang Hao, Xu Zhen and Matsuda Ryuchi. This argument is summarized by modern historian Lin Boyuan in his Zhongguo wushu shi:
As for the "Yi Jin Jing" (Muscle Change Classic), a spurious text attributed to Bodhidharma and included in the legend of his transmitting martial arts at the temple, it was written in the Ming dynasty, in 1624, by the Daoist priest Zining of Mt. Tiantai, and falsely attributed to Bodhidharma. Forged prefaces, attributed to the Tang general Li Jing and the Southern Song general Niu Gao were written. They say that, after Bodhidharma faced the wall for nine years at Shaolin temple, he left behind an iron chest; when the monks opened this chest they found the two books "Xi Sui Jing" (Marrow Washing Classic) and "Yi Jin Jing" within. The first book was taken by his disciple Huike, and disappeared; as for the second, "the monks selfishly coveted it, practicing the skills therein, falling into heterodox ways, and losing the correct purpose of cultivating the Real. The Shaolin monks have made some fame for themselves through their fighting skill; this is all due to having obtained this manuscript." Based on this, Bodhidharma was claimed to be the ancestor of Shaolin martial arts. This manuscript is full of errors, absurdities and fantastic claims; it cannot be taken as a legitimate source.[23]
The oldest available copy was published in 1827[46] and the composition of the text itself has been dated to 1624.[23] Even then, the association of Bodhidharma with martial arts only became widespread as a result of the 1904–1907 serialization of the novel The Travels of Lao Ts'an in Illustrated Fiction Magazine[47]:
One of the most recently invented and familiar of the Shaolin historical narratives is a story that claims that the Indian monk Bodhidharma, the supposed founder of Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhism, introduced boxing into the monastery as a form of exercise around a.d. 525. This story first appeared in a popular novel, The Travels of Lao T’san, published as a series in a literary magazine in 1907. This story was quickly picked up by others and spread rapidly through publication in a popular contemporary boxing manual, Secrets of Shaolin Boxing Methods, and the first Chinese physical culture history published in 1919. As a result, it has enjoyed vast oral circulation and is one of the most “sacred” of the narratives shared within Chinese and Chinese-derived martial arts. That this story is clearly a twentieth-century invention is confirmed by writings going back at least 250 years earlier, which mention both Bodhidharma and martial arts but make no connection between the two.[48]
[edit]Practice and teaching
Bodhidharma is traditionally seen as introducing dhyana-practice in China.
[edit]Pointing directly to one's mind
One of the fundamental Chán texts attributed to Bodhidharma is a four-line stanza whose first two verses echo the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra's disdain for words and whose second two verses stress the importance of the insight into reality achieved through "self-realization":
"A special transmission outside the scriptures,Not founded upon words and letters;
By pointing directly to [one's] mind
It lets one see into [one's own true] nature and [thus] attain Buddhahood."[49]
The stanza, in fact, is not Bodhidharma's, but rather dates to the year 1108.[50]
[edit]Wall-gazing
Tanlin, in the preface to Two Entrances and Four Acts, and Daoxuan, in the Further Biographies of Eminent Monks, mention a practice of Bodhidharma's termed "wall-gazing" (壁觀 bìguān). Both Tanlin[51] and Daoxuan[52] associate this "wall-gazing" with "quieting [the] mind"[9] (安心 ān xīn).
In the Two Entrances and Four Acts, traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma, the term "wall-gazing" is given as follows:
Daoxuan states: "The merits of Mahāyāna wall-gazing are the highest".[54]
These are the first mentions in the historical record of what may be a type of meditation being ascribed to Bodhidharma.
Exactly what sort of practice Bodhidharma's "wall-gazing" was remains uncertain. Nearly all accounts have treated it either as an undefined variety of meditation, as Daoxuan and Dumoulin,[54] or as a variety of seated meditation akin to the zazen (坐禪; Chinese:zuòchán) that later became a defining characteristic of Chán. The latter interpretation is particularly common among those working from a Ch'an standpoint.[55]
No comments:
Post a Comment