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Prologue in China

“Zen” is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character “chan,” which, in turn, was the Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit word “dhyana,” usually translated into English as “meditation.” The etymology of the word reflects the steady eastward movement of the meditation school of Buddhism from India to China, thence to Japan, and eventually beyond Asia.

Legend has it that Zen was brought to China by an Indian monk named Bodhidharma, who was the 28^th Patriarch—or “ancestor”—of the meditation school in that region. The first Patriarch had been the Buddha himself.

“Buddha” is not a name, but rather a title. It usually, but not always, refers to Siddhartha Gautama also known as Sakyamuni, the Sage of the Sakya Clan. The title means the “awakened” or “enlightened” one. Gautama attained awakening by meditation, and as a result, came to realize that his fundamental nature was no different from that of all existence. The teachings of Sakyamuni were originally intended to help other persons attain the same awakening, to become, like him, a “buddha.”

Bodhidharma began studying with his own teacher, the 27^th Patriarch, Prajanatara, one thousand years after the death of the Buddha. Over time the Buddhist tradition had split into two major branches: the conservative Theravada (the Teaching of the Elders) which spread to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, and the more liberal, but also at times more fanciful, Mahayana which spread north to Tibet, China, and Korea. It was out of the Mahayana tradition (and partially in reaction to it) that Zen would evolve.

By the time of Prajanatara and Bodhidharma, the Mahayana had also broken into a number of competing schools, many of which were speculative and abstract. Monks spent as much or more time analyzing the scriptures, known as sutras, as in meditating. Their faith had become theoretical rather than grounded in the experience of awakening that the Buddha had advocated, the experience the Japanese would later term kensho [ken, seeing into or understanding something; sho, one’s true nature].

Saddened by the deteriorated condition of Buddhism in India, Prajanatara suggested that Bodhidharma travel to China to determine if that land was a suitable environment in which to revitalize the meditation school which still sought to foster the experience of awakening in its practitioners. As a result of that journey, Bodhidharma is considered the First Patriarch of Chinese Zen.

Buddhism was already well established in the “Celestial Kingdom” when Bodhidharma arrived there, and Chinese Buddhists, as well as Daoists and Confucionists, would come to wonder how his teaching differed from that of other Buddhist sects. One of the formal ways in which that question was posed was to ask a Zen teacher, “Why did the First Patriarch come east?” What did Bodhidharma bring that had not already come to China?

The story of Bodhidharma’s arrival in China is recounted in the first koan in a collection known as the Blue Cliff Record [J: Hekiganroku]. A koan is usually an apparently nonsensical question based on an anecdote from the lives of the Zen masters of the past—primarily those in China. The question becomes the focus of a Zen student’s meditative practice and helps the student attain insight. While koans cannot be resolved through reasoning, an understanding of them can be achieved through intuition.

The story recounted in the Blue Cliff Record portrays Bodhidharma as a barbarian—both in the original meaning of the term (someone from elsewhere) and in the figurative sense. In the koan, Bodhidharma was given an audience with the Emperor of China, Wu Liang. The Emperor was a practicing Buddhist and proud of the many ways he had supported the tradition in his realm. When he learned that there was a visitor in his kingdom from the land where the Buddha had lived, he naturally invited Bodhidharma to come to the court. There, Wu described all he had done to promote Buddhism and asked, “What is your opinion? What merit have I accumulated as a result of these deeds?”

Bodhidharma’s reply was blunt and tactless: “No merit whatsoever.”

“Why not?” the Emperor demanded.

“Motives for such actions are always impure,” Bodhidharma told him. “They are undertaken solely for the purposes of attaining future rebirth. They are like shadows cast by bodies, following those bodies but having no reality of their own.”

“Then what is true merit?” the Emperor asked.

“It is clear seeing, pure knowing, beyond the discriminating intelligence. Its essence is emptiness. Such merit cannot be gained by worldly means.”

This was unlike any exposition of the Buddhist faith the Emperor had heard before, and, perhaps a little testily, he asked, “According to your understanding, then, what is the first principle of Buddhism?”

“Vast emptiness and not a thing that can be called holy,” Bodhidharma responded at once.

Wu spluttered: “What is that supposed to mean? And who are you who now stands before me?”

To which Bodhidharma replied: “I don’t know.” Then he left the court.

After leaving Wu Liang’s court, Bodhidharma took up residence in the Shaolin temple located on Mount Songshan. There he built a hermitage on the peak of Mount Shaoshi, where he practiced silent meditation while facing the wall of a cliff which rose in front of his hut. He came to be known locally as Biguan, the wall-gazing Brahmin, and the hut was known as the “Wall-gazing Hermitage.”

Unlike the largely academic Buddhism then common in China, Bodhidharma’s practice was grounded in seated meditation, zazen in Japanese [za to sit; zen meditation]. He described his Buddhism as:

A special transmission outside the scriptures;

Not dependent on words or letters;

By direct pointing to the mind of man,

Seeing into one’s true nature and attaining Buddhahood.

It was not a practice that had much immediate appeal to the Chinese.

There was, however, a Confucian scholar named Ji who had been searching for a teacher to help him resolve the concerns that weighed heavily on his mind. He had visited Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist teachers and was well versed not only in the Confucian classics but also in the doctrines of both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions. Nothing, however, had brought him peace of mind. In desperation, he came to the Wall-gazing Hermitage, seeking the barbarian monk who had come from the land of the Buddha.

When Ji presented himself at Bodhidharma’s hermitage, the old Indian monk suspected his visitor was another who came seeking an intellectual explanation of Buddhist doctrine rather than the experiential insight that comes from the practice of meditation. So, for a long time, he ignored Ji. The Confucian, however, remained patiently outside the hut, waiting for Bodhidharma to acknowledge him. One night, it began to snow. The snow fell so heavily that by morning, it was up to the supplicant’s knees. Seeing this, Bodhidharma finally spoke, asking, “What is it you seek?”

“Your teaching,” Ji told him.

“The teaching of the Buddha is subtle and difficult. Understanding can only be acquired through strenuous effort, doing what is hard to do and enduring what is hard to endure, continuing the practice for even countless eons of time. How can a man of scant virtue and great vanity, such as yourself, achieve it? Your puny efforts will only end in failure.”

Ji drew his sword, cut off his left arm, and presented it to Bodhidharma as evidence of the sincerity of his intention.

“What you seek,” Bodhidharma told him, “can’t be found through another.”

“My mind isn’t at peace,” Ji lamented. “Please, master, help me pacify it.”

“Very well. Bring your mind here, and I’ll pacify it.”

“I’ve sought it for these many years, even practicing sitting mediation as you do, but still I’m not able to get hold of it.”

“There! Now it’s pacified!”

Upon hearing those words, Ji achieved awakening, the same insight that earned Gautama the title “Buddha.”

After Ji’s awakening, Bodhidharma gave him the name Huike, which means, “his understanding will do.” By bestowing his disciple with a new name, Bodhidharma signaled his approval of the younger man’s insight. This began a tradition by which a teacher recognized those students whose insight were equal to or surpassed his own and thus were worthy to be called Masters of Meditation, or Zen Masters. In the Rinzai School, the process is known as inka or transmission. In bestowing inka, the teacher acknowledges the student as his successor.

The Japanese, who developed their own pronunciation of the kanji characters they adopted from China, pronounced Huike as “Eka.” From this point forward, the Japanese renderings of Chinese names will be used.

Bodhidharma was an Indian and his understanding of both Zen and Buddhism were the product of the culture from which he came. With Eka, the slow process of developing a Chinese meditation school began. It has been suggested that Zen is the result of the coming together of the philosophical Indian Buddhist tradition with native Chinese Daoism, with its emphasis on the rhythms of nature—the natural flow, or “way” (Dao), of things.

Eka met the man to whom he would give transmission when a layman, named Sosan, who was afflicted with leprosy, approached him. The leper hoped that Eka could free him of the sins that he believed were the cause of his condition. Echoing his own teacher, Eka told Sosan, “Bring your sins here, and I’ll rid you of them.”

“When I reflect on my sins,” the man admitted, “I’m not sure what they are.”

“Then you’re cleansed,” Eka told him. “Now all that remains is for you to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.” “Dharma” is the Sanskrit term for both the teachings of the Buddha and the way things are in general (the truth). “Sangha” was originally the term for the congregation of Buddhist monks and nuns.

Sosan said, “I understand that you are member of a group referred to as the Sangha, but what are the Buddha and the Dharma?”

“Mind is Buddha. Mind is Dharma. Dharma and Buddha are not two. So it is with the Sangha.”

Sosan then made one of those intuitive leaps of understanding only possible when one has been considering a problem, as he had been considering the problem of sin, for a long time: “Now I understand that sins are neither within nor without,” he exclaimed. “Just as the Mind is, so is Buddha, so is Dharma. They aren’t two.”

Eka recognized the leper as his successor and gave him the name Kanchi, which means, “jewel monk.”

Sosan Kanchi would later write the Inscription on the Believing Mind, a verse composition that would come to be revered in Japan as well as China and is still popular with Zen practitioners today. The opening verses demonstrate the way in which Kanchi’s Zen combines Daoist terminology with Buddhist principles.

The Perfect Way [Dao] knows no difficulties

Except that it refuses to make preference:

Only when freed from hate and love,

It reveals itself fully and without disguise.

A tenth of an inch’s difference,

And heaven and earth are set apart;

If you want to see it manifest,

Take no thought either for or against it.

To set up what you like against what you dislike—

This is the disease of the mind:

When the deep meaning of Tao is not understood

Peace of mind is disturbed and nothing is gained. (2)

Both Eka and Sosan Kanchi dwelt in obscurity in the mountains alongside the Yangtze River because the political environment in China after the death of Emperor Wu was hostile to Buddhism. Wu’s successors were traditional Confucianists who considered both Daoism (which had originated in China) and Buddhism (which they dismissed as a foreign teaching) to be disruptive elements in society. In particular, the celibate life of monks and nuns in Buddhist monasteries was repugnant to Confucianists, who put great value on family life and social responsibility. They argued that the monks and nuns living in temples such as Shaolin were parasites who contributed nothing to society.

An edict was passed banning these two traditions. Religious texts and works of art were destroyed. Monks and nuns, such as those formerly supported by the Emperor Wu, were ordered to return to lay life.

When acknowledging Sosan as his successor, Eka told him he had a responsibility to protect the teaching he had received. Therefore, instead of dwelling in the cities and towns where he would draw the attention of the authorities, he should remain in the mountains. Thus began the tradition of establishing Zen temples in mountain settings far from the activities of city life.

Regardless of how reclusive Zen masters were, highly motivated students continued to search them out. So it was that a seeker named Doshin tracked down Sosan. The third patriarch asked his visitor what he was looking for, and Doshin replied: “Please show me the way to achieve liberation.”

“Who is it that holds you in bondage?” Sosan asked.

“Well, no one,” Doshin admitted.

“Then why are you seeking liberation?”

These words startled the young man, and he became Sosan’s disciple. After many years, he too attained awakening, and Sosan declared him his successor, giving him the robe and bowl that had been passed down from Bodhidharma.

By the time of Doshin, the suppression of Buddhism had abated and monasteries were once again open, and a formal tradition of Zen training started to evolve. Doshin instructed his disciples to be earnest in their practice of zazen. “Zazen is basic to all else. Don’t bother reading the sutras; don’t become involved in discussions. If you can refrain from doing so and concentrate instead on zazen, for as much as thirty-five years or more, you will benefit. Just as a monkey will eat a nut still in its shell although it’s only satisfied when it has patiently extracted the nut from that shell, so there are only a few who will bring their zazen to fulfillment.”

Zazen was brought to fulfillment in the “emptiness” of which Bodhidharma had spoken to Emperor Wu. But Doshin warned, “When those who are still young in the practice see emptiness, this is seeing emptiness, but it isn’t real emptiness. To those who are mature in the practice and who have attained emptiness, they see neither emptiness nor non-emptiness.”

The Zen school was still relatively young when Doshin taught, but it was beginning to draw seekers not only from China but from the Korean peninsula as well. One of the students who sought out Doshin came from even further away, from the islands northeast of Korea that the Chinese dismissively referred to as the Land of Wa—“the land of dwarves.” (In Japanese, on the other hand, the “Land of Wa” means the “Land of Harmony.”) His name was Dosho, and he is the first Japanese recorded to have studied Zen.

Dosho came to China in 653 to study with teachers of the Hosso School of Buddhism. The Hosso School is derived from an Indian tradition known as Yogacara or “Mind Only School.” Its central tenet is that the world we perceive as real is only a product of mind. For a period, the Hosso School would be the primary form of Buddhism in Japan.

Dosho also became familiar with Doshin’s meditation school, and when he returned to Japan he opened the first meditation hall in that country, in Nara, the city that would become the capital of Japan for much of the 8^th century.

With this, Zen had taken its second step east.