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Bodhidharma was a semi-legendary Bhikkhu who lived during the 5th or 6th century CE. He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Chan Buddhism to China, and is regarded as its first Chinese patriarch. He is also popularly regarded as the founder of Shaolin kung fu, an idea popularized in the 20th century, but based on the 17th century Yijin Jing and the Daoist association of daoyin gymnastics with Bodhidharma.
Little contemporary biographical information on Bodhidharma exists, and subsequent accounts are layered with legend and unreliable details. According to the principal Chinese sources, Bodhidharma came from the Western Regions, which typically refers to Central Asia but can also include the Indian subcontinent. He is described as either a "Persians Central Asian" or a "South Indian ... the third son of a great Indian king." Aside from the Chinese accounts, several popular traditions also exist regarding Bodhidharma's origins. Throughout Buddhist art, Bodhidharma is depicted as an ill-tempered, large-nosed, profusely bearded, wide-eyed non-Chinese person.
The accounts also differ on the date of his arrival. One early account claims that he arrived during the Liu Song dynasty (420–479 CE). Later accounts date his arrival to the Liang dynasty (502–557 CE). Bodhidharma was primarily active in the territory of the Northern Wei (386–534 CE). Modern scholarship dates him to about the early 5th century CE.
Bodhidharma's teachings and practice center on meditation and the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. The Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall (952) identifies Bodhidharma as the 28th Patriarch of Buddhism in an uninterrupted line that extends back to the Gautama Buddha himself.Philippe Cornu, Dictionnaire enclyclopédique du Bouddhisme
Bodhidharma is associated with several other names, and is also known by the name Bodhitara. Faure notes that:
Bodhidharma is his dharma name. According to tradition, he was given this name by his teacher Prajnatara (or Prajñādhara and Panyatara). His name prior to monkhood is said to have been Jayavarman or Bodhidhana.
Tibetan sources give his name as "Bodhidharmottara" or "Dharmottara", that is, "Highest teaching (dharma) of enlightenment".
His traditional epithets in Chan texts include the "founder" () as the first teacher of Chan in China, "golden rooster" (), "bearded man" (), "pierced-ear guest" (, many Indian Buddhist monks wore earrings), "wall-gazing Brahmin" () on account of his nine year meditation at the Shaolin Monastery by gazing at a wall (zazen), and "blue-eyed barbarian" (, a general term non-Han people from the Western regions).
The Western Regions was a historical name specified in the Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE that referred to the regions west of Yumen Pass, most often Central Asia or sometimes, more specifically, the easternmost portion of it (e.g. Altishahr or the Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang). Sometimes, it was used more generally to refer to other regions to the west of China as well, such as the Indian subcontinent (as in the novel Journey to the West).
The account of Bodhidharma in the Luoyan Record does not particularly associate him with meditation, but rather depicts him as a thaumaturge capable of mystical feats. This may have played a role in his subsequent association with the martial arts and esoteric knowledge.
Tanlin's account was the first to mention that Bodhidharma attracted disciples, specifically mentioning Daoyu (道育) and Dazu Huike (慧可), the latter of whom would later figure very prominently in the Bodhidharma literature. Although Tanlin has traditionally been considered a disciple of Bodhidharma, it is more likely that he was a student of Huike.
Tanlin's preface has also been preserved in Jingjue's (683–750) Lengjie Shizi ji "Chronicle of the Laṅkāvatāra Masters", which dates from 713 to 716./ca. 715 He writes,
Firstly, Daoxuan adds more detail concerning Bodhidharma's origins, writing that he was of "South Indian Brahmin stock" (南天竺婆羅門種 nán tiānzhú póluómén zhŏng).
Secondly, more detail is provided concerning Bodhidharma's journeys. Tanlin's original is imprecise about Bodhidharma's travels, saying only that he "crossed distant mountains and seas" before arriving in Wei. Daoxuan's account, however, implies "a specific itinerary": "He first arrived at Nanyue during the Sung period. From there, he turned north and came to the Kingdom of Wei" This implies that Bodhidharma had travelled to China by sea and that he had crossed over the Yangtze.
Thirdly, Daoxuan suggests a date for Bodhidharma's arrival in China. He writes that Bodhidharma makes landfall in the time of the Song, thus making his arrival no later than the time of the Song's fall to the Southern Qi in 479.
Finally, Daoxuan provides information concerning Bodhidharma's death. Bodhidharma, he writes, died at the banks of the Luo River, where he was interred by his disciple Dazu Huike, possibly in a cave. According to Daoxuan's chronology, Bodhidharma's death must have occurred prior to 534, the date of the Northern Wei's fall, because Dazu Huike subsequently leaves Luoyang for Ye. Furthermore, citing the shore of the Luo River as the place of death might possibly suggest that Bodhidharma died in the mass executions at Heyin (河陰) in 528. Supporting this possibility is a report in the Chinese Buddhist canon stating that a Buddhist monk was among the victims at Héyīn.
Finally, as opposed to Daoxuan's figure of "over 180 years," the Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall states that Bodhidharma died at the age of 150. He was then buried on Mount Xiong'er (熊耳山), to the west of Luoyang. However, three years after the burial, in the Pamir Mountains, Song Yun (宋雲)—an official of one of the later Wei kingdoms—encountered Bodhidharma, who claimed to be returning to India and was carrying a single sandal. Bodhidharma predicted the death of Song Yun's ruler, a prediction which was borne out upon the latter's return. Bodhidharma's tomb was then opened, and only a single sandal was found inside.
According to the Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall, Bodhidharma left the Liang court in 527 and relocated to Mount Song near Luoyang and the Shaolin Monastery, where he "faced a wall for nine years, not speaking for the entire time", his date of death can have been no earlier than 536. Moreover, his encounter with the Wei official indicates a date of death no later than 554, three years before the fall of the Western Wei.
According to this text, Bodhidharma taught two "entrances" to the Dharma. The first is a subitist teaching that directly apprehends the ultimate principle, that is, the true nature or buddha-nature. The second entrance deals with four practices: (1) accepting all our sufferings as the fruit of past karma, (2) accept our circumstances with equanimity, (3) to be without craving, and (4) to let go of wrong thoughts and practice the six perfections.
According to Yanagida Seizan, the first "entrance of principle", was a Subitism teaching which derives from the sudden enlightenment thought of Daosheng; while the four practices are a reworking of the "Satipatthana", which were popular in the late Six Dynasties period Buddhist meditation circles.
In the Two Entrances and Four Practices, the term "wall-gazing" is given as follows:
Daoxuan states, "the merits of Mahāyāna wall-gazing are the highest". 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, or as a variety of seated meditation akin to the zazen () that later became a defining characteristic of Chan. The latter interpretation is particularly common among those working from a Chan standpoint.
There have also, however, been interpretations of "wall-gazing" as a non-meditative phenomenon. Jeffrey Broughton points out that where Bodhidharma's teachings appear in Tibetan translation among the Dunhuang manuscripts, the Chinese phrase "in a coagulated state abides in wall-examining" (ning chu pi-kuan) is replaced in Tibetan with "rejects discrimination and abides in brightness" (rtogs pa spangs te | lham mer gnas na).Jeffrey Broughton, The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen, page 67, University of California Press, 1999 Broughton sees this as a curious divergence, as Tibetan translations of Chinese Chan texts are usually quite literal. He concludes that in early Tibet, "wall examining" did not refer to a literal practice of sitting cross-legged facing a wall.Jeffrey Broughton, The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen, pages 67-68, University of California Press, 1999
Another early text, the " Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra" () of Jingjue (淨覺; 683–750), also mentions Bodhidharma in relation to this text. Jingjue's account also makes explicit mention of "sitting meditation" or zazen:
In other early texts, the school that would later become known as Chan Buddhism is sometimes referred to as the "Laṅkāvatāra school" (楞伽宗 Léngqié zōng).
The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, one of the Mahayana sutras, is a highly "difficult and obscure" text whose basic thrust is to emphasize "the inner Bodhi that does away with all duality and is raised above all distinctions". It is among the first and most important texts for East Asian Yogācāra.
According to Suzuki, one of the recurrent emphases in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra is a lack of reliance on words to effectively express reality:
In contrast to the ineffectiveness of words, the sūtra instead stresses the importance of the "self-realization" that is "attained by noble wisdom" and, according to Suzuki, occurs "when one has an insight into reality as it is": "The truth is the state of self-realization and is beyond categories of discrimination". According to Suzuki, reflecting his own emphasis on kensho, the sūtra goes on to outline the ultimate effects of an experience of self-realization:
This encounter was included as the first kōan of the Blue Cliff Record.
The biographical tradition is littered with apocryphal tales about Bodhidharma's life and circumstances. In one version of the story, he is said to have fallen asleep seven years into his nine years of wall-gazing. Becoming angry with himself, he cut off his eyelids to prevent it from happening again. According to the legend, as his eyelids hit the floor the first tea plants sprang up, and thereafter, tea would provide a stimulant to help keep students of Chan awake during zazen.
The most popular account relates that Bodhidharma was admitted into the Shaolin temple after nine years in the cave and taught there for some time. However, other versions report that he "passed away, seated upright"; or that he disappeared, leaving behind the Yijin Jing; or that his legs atrophied after nine years of sitting, which is why have no legs.
Bodhidharma passed on the symbolic robe and bowl of dharma succession to Dazu Huike and, some texts claim, a copy of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. Bodhidharma then either returned to India or died.
Vajrayana tradition links Bodhidharma with the 11th-century south Indian monk Dampa Sangye who travelled extensively to Tibet and China spreading tantric teachings.
In the 6th century, the biographies of famous monks were collected. From this genre, the typical Chan lineage was developed:
According to McRae, it is not clear that the practitioners surrounding Bodhidharma and his disciple Huike considered themselves as belonging to a unified movement or group, such as a "Chan school," nor did they have any sense of sharing any continuity with the later tradition. He says even the name "proto-Chan" is not really reflective of their activities.John McRae, Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism, page 15, University of California Press, 2003
D. T. Suzuki contends that Chan's growth in popularity during the 7th and 8th centuries attracted criticism that it had "no authorized records of its direct transmission from the founder of Buddhism" and that Chan historians made Bodhidharma the 28th patriarch of Buddhism in response to such attacks.
| Bodhidharma | |
| Huìkě 慧可 (487? – 593) | Dàoyù 道育||style="text-align:center;"| Dàoyù 道育 ||style="text-align:center;" Dàoyù 道育 |
| Huìkě 慧可 (487? – 593) | |
| Sēngcàn 僧璨 (d.606) | |
| Dàoxìn 道信 (580–651) | |
| Daman Hongren 弘忍 (601–674) | |
| Huineng 慧能 (638–713) | |
| Xuánzé 玄賾 | |
| Xuánjué 玄覺 (665–713) |
According to the Song of Enlightenment (證道歌 Zhèngdào gē) by Yongjia Xuanjue, Bodhidharma was the 28th Patriarch of Chan, in a line of descent from Gautama Buddha via his disciple Mahākāśyapa:
McRae's standpoint accords with Yanagida's standpoint: "Yanagida ascribes great historical value to the witness of the disciple Tanlin, 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.
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. Bodhidharma as a historical person may even never have actually existed.
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 Pallava king". Based on a specific pronunciation of the Chinese characters 香至 as Kang-zhi, meaning "fragrance extreme", Tsutomu Kambe identifies 香至 to be Kanchipuram, an old capital town in the state Tamil Nadu, India. According to Tsutomu 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'."
Acharya Raghu, in his work 'Bodhidharma Retold', used a combination of multiple factors to identify Bodhidharma from the state of Andhra Pradesh in South India, specifically to the geography around Mt. Sailum or modern day Srisailam.
The scholar Ahmad Hasan Dani speculated that according to popular accounts in Pakistan's northwest, Bodhidharma may be from the region around the Peshawar valley, or possibly around modern Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan.See Dani, AH, 'Some Early Buddhist Texts from Taxila and Peshawar Valley', Paper, Lahore SAS, 1983; and 'Short History of Pakistan' Vol 1, original 1967, rev ed 1992, and 'History of the Northern Areas of Pakistan' ed Lahore: Sang e Meel, 2001
The attribution of the Yijin Jing to Bodhidharma has been discredited early on, and is also rejected by historians like Tang Hao, Xu Zhen, and Matsuda Ryuchi. According to Lin Boyuan, "This manuscript is full of errors, absurdities, and fantastic claims; it cannot be taken as a legitimate source."
The composition of the text itself has been dated to 1624, while the oldest available copy was published in 1827. In the 19th century, when the Yijin Jing became popular in military circles, and the Shaolin monks started to use it, the Shaolin martial tradition became gradually associated with Bodhidharma. 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, which incorporated this newly developed attribution of Shaolin martial arts to Bodhidharma. According to Henning, the "story is clearly a twentieth-century invention," which "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."
In a short addendum from 1245 CE, the text refers to a motto attributed to Bodhidharma: "Bodhidharma coming from the west, unattached to any words, pointing directly to the mind of man, advocated seeing into one's Buddha-nature and becoming Buddha." The legend of Dazu Huike and Bodhidharma is recounted in case no. 41 of The Gateless Gate.
Bodhidharma's image became the inspiration for Japanese , which originated in Meiwa-era Takasaki as good luck charms. p.15 p.14 A daruma-ichi is held at the Shorinzan Daruma Temple in Takasaki every year, celebrating the city as the birthplace of the Daruma doll. Over 400,000 attendants come to purchase new dolls. The Japanese version of the children's game statues is named Daruma doll]] Fell Over".
A 1989 South Korean film, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?, derives its title from a kōan about Bodhidharma's legendary transmission of Chan Buddhism to China. The film screened at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and was the first South Korean film to release theatrically in the United States. In 1994, the Hong Kong film Master of Zen (also known as Bodhidharma) adapted the legends of Bodhidharma's life into a martial arts drama film, partly inspired by the master's association with Shaolin Kung Fu. The 2011 Indian Tamil language science fiction martial arts film 7 Aum Arivu features a descendant of Bodhidharma as a main character portrayed by Suriya, with its plot centering on the ancient monk's legendary skills and knowledge. The film faced criticism for its historical inaccuracies, particularly regarding Bodhidharma's age upon entering China. The controversy led to hunger strikes among Indian followers of Bodhidharma.
There also exists a Dunhuang manuscript titled Treatise of Dhyana Master Bodhidharma ( Tianzhu guo Putidamo chan shi lun 天竺國菩提達摩禪師論). According to McRae, this text "might be taken as a guide to the teachings of early Ch'an. The text is probably relatively early, although its putative date of compilation or transcription, 681, is not reliable. Unfortunately, its contents do not lend themselves to precise dating."
Commonly attributed works include:
The stanza, in fact, is not Bodhidharma's, but rather dates to the year 1108.
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