Bodhidharma Chin., P’u-t’i-ta-mo or Tamo; Jap., Bodaidaruma or Daruma, ca. 470-543 (?); the twenty-eighth patriarch after Shākyamuni Buddha in the Indian lineage and the first Chinese patriarch of Chan (Zen).
Bodhidharma was the student and dharma successor (hassu) of the twenty-seventh patriarch Prajñādhāra (Jap., Hannyatara) and the teacher of Hui-k’o, whom he installed as the second patriarch of Zen in China. The event that marks the transmission of the buddha-dharma from Prajñādhāra to Bodhidharma is described in the Denkō-roku as follows:
Once the twenty-seventh patriarch, the venerable Hannyatara, asked, “Among all things, what is formless?”
The master [Bodhidharma] said, “Nonarising is formless.”
The patriarch said, “Among all things, what is the biggest?”
The master said, “The nature of dharmas is the biggest.”
After Bodhidharma was confirmed by Prajñādhāra as the twenty-eighth patriarch, according to tradition, he traveled by ship from India to south China. After a brief unsuccessful attempt to spread his teaching there, he wandered further to Lo-yang in north China and finally settled at the Shao-lin Monastery on Sung-shan (Jap., Suzan, Susan) Mountain.
Here he practiced unmovable zazen for nine years, on which account this period is known as menpeki-kunen (menpeki), which roughly means “nine years in front of the wall.” Here Hui-k’o, later the second patriarch of Zen in China, found his way to the master and, after an impressive proof of his “will for truth,” was accepted as his disciple. The dates of Bodhidharma, who is said to have been the son of a south Indian brahmin king, are uncertain. There is a tradition that says that his teacher Prajñādhāra charged Bodhidharma to wait sixty years after his death before going to China. If this is the case, Bodhidharma must have been advanced in years when he arrived in China. According to other sources, he was sixty years old when he arrived in China. Both these traditions are incompatible with the dates 470-543, which are given in most sources. After his arrival in what is today the port city of Canton, he traveled at the invitation of the emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty to visit him in Nanking.
The first example in the Pi-yen-lu reports the encounter between Bodhidharma and the emperor. Wu-ti was a follower and fosterer of Buddhism and had had several Buddhist monasteries built in his realm. Now he asked the master of buddha-dharma from India what merit for succeeding lives he [Wu-ti] had accumulated thereby. Bodhidharma answered curtly, “No merit.” Then the emperor asked him what the supreme meaning of the sacred truth was. “Expanse of emptiness-nothing sacred,” answered Bodhidharma. Now the emperor demanded to know, “Who is that in front of us?” “Don’t know,” replied Bodhidharma, who with this answer had really revealed the essence of his teaching to the emperor without the latter’s catching on.
The encounter with Emperor Wu of Liang showed Bodhidharma that the time was not yet ripe for the reception of his teaching in China. He crossed the Yangtsé as the legend tells us, on a reed (this is a favorite subject in Zen painting) and traveled on to north China, where he finally settled at Shao-lin Monastery.
It is not certain whether he died there or again left the monastery after he had transmitted the patriarchy to Hui-k’o. According to a legend given in the Ching-te ch’uan-teng-lu, after nine years at Shao-lin Monastery he became homesick for India and decided to return there . Before departing, he called his disciples to him in order to test their realization. The first disciple he questioned answered, “The way I understand it, if we want to realize the truth we should neither depend entirely on words nor entirely do away with words; rather we should use them as a tool on the Way [dō].” Bodhidharma answered him, “You have grasped my skin.” The next to come forward was a nun, who said, “As I understand it, the truth is an auspicious display of the buddha-paradise; one sees it once, then never again.” To her Bodhidharma replied, “You have grasped my flesh.” The next disciple said, “The four great elements are empty and the five skandhas are nonexistent. There is in fact nothing to grasp.” To this Bodhidharma responded, “You have grasped my bones,” Finally it was Hui-k’o’s turn. He, however, said nothing, only bowed to the master in silence. To him Bodhidharma said, “You have grasped my marrow. “
According to another legend, Bodhidharma was poisoned at the age of 150 and buried in the mountains of Honan. Not long after his death, the pilgrim Sung Yun, who had gone to India to bring the sutra texts back to China, met Bodhidharma on his way home in the mountains of Turkestan. The Indian master, who wore only one sandal, told the pilgrim he was on his way back to India; a Chinese dharma heir would continue his tradition in China. Upon his return to China the pilgrim reported this encounter to the disciples of Bodhidharma. They opened his grave and found it empty except for one of the patriarch’s sandals.
The form of meditative practice the Bodhidharma taught still owed a great deal to Indian Buddhism. His instructions were to a great extent based on the traditional sūtras of Mahāyāna Buddhism; he especially emphasied the importance of the Lankāvatāra-sūtra. Typical Chinese Zen, which is a fusion of the Dhyāna Buddhism represented by Bodhidharma and indigenous Chinese Taoism and which is described as a “special transmission outside the orthodox teaching” (kyōge-betsuden), first developed with Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of Zen in China, and the great Zen masters of the T’ang period who followed him.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Books on Bodhidharma
External links: Shākyamuni / Buddha / dharma / hassu / Prajnatara (Hannyatara) / Hui-k’o / buddha-dharma / Denkō-roku / zazen / menpeki / Pi-yen-lu / Buddhism / Mahāyāna Buddhism / Lankāvatāra-sūtra / Taoism / kyōge-betsuden