Tracking Bodhidharma Read online

  Late afternoon services are under way in the old temple’s Buddha Hall and there’s no one in the guest reception room. The man who brought me there suggests I wait until after services have finished and someone can come to register my presence. I agree to wait. When he leaves, I walk up the hill a few yards to view the layout of the place. At the rear of the rectangular enclosure of the temple grounds there is no Dharma Hall behind the Buddha Hall. But from the look of things, it appears there was space for one there in ancient times.

  ZEN MASTER BAIZHANG’S TEACHINGS

  Baizhang’s contribution to Bodhidharma’s Zen gave the tradition staying power in China. He adhered to important principals that defined Bodhidharma’s practice and then made key contributions to Zen that helped set it apart from other Buddhist sects. He wrote the Pure Rules for monastic life that formalized the independent farming and laboring existence that Zen monks followed. This gave Zen a certain independence from the emperor and ruling circles. Baizhang also defined the manual labor involved with this agricultural life as part of a Zen monk’s spiritual practice. This emphasis on work and ordinary life as one’s practice went hand in hand with Baizhang’s conscious avoidance of philosophical speculation. He forcefully argued against allowing metaphysical interpretations of Zen and would not engage in theological debate.

  There is a passage in The Record of Baizhang that lays out his views on such matters quite clearly. Baizhang instructed his monks as follows:If you cling to some fundamental [read: “metaphysical”] “purity” or “liberation,” or that you yourself are Buddha, or that you are someone who understands the Zen Way, then this falls under the false idea of naturalism [i.e., something not subject to cause and effect]. If you cling to [the idea of self or things‘] “existence,” then this falls under the false idea of eternalism. If you cling to [the self or things’] “nonexistence,” this falls under the false idea of nihilism. If you cling to the twin concepts of existence and nonexistence, this falls under the false idea of partiality. If you cling to a concept that things do not exist and also do not not exist, then this is the false idea of emptiness, and [all these ideas] are also called the heresy of ignorance. One should practice only in the present without views of Buddha, nirvana, and so on, nor with any ideas about existence or nonexistence, and so on; and without views about views, which is called the correct view; or what you have not heard or not not heard, for this is true hearing. This is all called overcoming false doctrines.

  Baizhang formalized an agricultural “farmer Zen” tradition already started by Zen’s Fourth Ancestor Daoxin (more on this later) so that Zen could remain outside the imperial orbit. This represented a clear break from the Buddhist precepts established in India and carried on in other Chinese Buddhist schools. In India, Buddhist home-leaving monks were required to exist on donations only and were forbidden to engage in labor. In contrast, the monks of Baizhang’s monastery were required to engage in labor daily to maintain their own livelihood. This was a unique innovation in Zen Buddhism.

  A key part of making labor part of a monk’s life was Baizhang’s creation of the Pure Rules (in Chinese, Qing Gui) that prescribed activities in the monastery. These rules were thereafter followed in other Zen monasteries. After a few hundred years, Zen economic independence became less of a factor in the tradition, and these rules died out, the original rules themselves falling into oblivion.

  As I mentioned, Buddhist monks in ancient India depended on the donations, called dana, provided by lay people. Work of any type was strictly forbidden for Buddha’s home-leaving disciples. This was not because they were seeking a life of ease. The home-leaving ideal demanded that karma-generating activities must cease, and among such activities was gainful employment. From the Protestant work-ethic point of view, this may seem rather naïve, if not selfish. But the idea was that by giving up any ideas of gain, monks would gain freedom from all vexing desires (sex, of course, was strictly forbidden as well). In India, where the climate permitted monks to live in the forest using little more than their robes for shelter, an itinerant lifestyle of little activity presented no great difficulty. Each morning, traditional Indian monks could walk into town with their individual begging bowls and receive donations from the faithful. For much of Buddhism’s early history, a number of Indian monks lived and practiced in small groups in the forest, gathering in larger groups once a month under the full moon to jointly honor the Buddha. Even today, the full-moon ceremony is performed in Buddhist monasteries, a continuation of this tradition. However, in northern regions, monasteries appeared, a necessary development due to cold winters that made living outdoors impossible. This development was even more necessary in China, where winters can be extremely severe.

  In China, a long-established Taoist hermit tradition showed how an individual might live apart from society. However, Taoist hermits living alone high in the mountains grew and collected much of their own food. Early on, China’s Buddhists didn’t regard the Taoist path to be true to their religious practice. Yet there was no dana tradition in China. A monk who tried to support himself by begging might starve to death in the cold.

  To survive, Chinese Buddhist monks needed to build monasteries and take their meals in dining rooms made for that purpose. The Chinese, in a nod to earlier tradition, used the name conglin (“forests”) to denote their monasteries. But the need for proper shelter from the harsh weather naturally won out over embracing the home-leaving, woods-living ideal.

  Solving this problem had far-reaching consequences. Immediately, there was the problem of how monasteries would be financed, both for their construction and for the support of the monks who would live inside them.

  An emperor, especially a newly converted one, could be approached to provide the Buddhist church with support, or even lavish wealth. With imperial help, gold leaf might shine from the Buddha statues and temple roof tiles. But isn’t such a course of action contrary to a religion that idealizes leaving the material world behind?

  Ironically, a tradition dedicated to “leaving home” and forsaking the karmic world thus always faced a fundamental problem of a political nature. What it boiled down to was government control. For when monks lived in a monastery, the decisions of who would lead it, how the abbot and director of the place would be chosen, and what would be taught there always came to the fore. Would the new abbot be someone who supported the home-leaving ideal, someone who allowed monks to forsake the world and practice apart from its polluted influence? Or would the abbot be chosen according to the emperor’s (who was paying for it all) personal understanding and interest in Buddhist doctrines?

  Understanding the dynamic between Zen and central imperial power is a vital aspect of understanding Zen’s development in China. Bodhidharma seems to have been at pains to maintain independence from the court. Baizhang played a key role in this continued effort when he formalized the economic independence of Zen monks.

  Baizhang’s well-known dictum that prescribed the work ethic for home-leavers is revealed in this famous story from old Zen records:In the everyday work of the monastery, Baizhang always was foremost among the assembly at undertaking the tasks of the day. The monks in charge of the work were concerned about the master. They hid his tools and asked him to rest.

  Baizhang said, “I’m unworthy. How can I allow others to work in my behalf?”

  He looked everywhere for his tools but was unable to find them. He even forgot to eat [while looking for his tools], and thus the phrase “a day without working is a day without eating” has become known everywhere.

  Although not the first Chinese Zen monastery to adopt farming to feed itself, Baizhang’s monastery symbolized this way of life. One of Baizhang most famous disciples, named Guishan Lingyou, carried on this nontraditional Buddhist lifestyle at Gui Mountain, establishing what became known as the Guiyang Zen school. Guishan not only undertook gardening and tea production for his monks to live, but also was famous for retaining draft animals like water buffalo. Here again, Zen m
oved further away from the Indian precepts, among which were rules that forbade keeping or restraining any animals.

  So in China (and perhaps in India long before), building monasteries had political overtones. How independent from the emperor could a monastic order remain? To fully appreciate Bodhidharma’s life and legend in China, one needs to examine him with this in mind.

  In the Zen tradition, the purity of the home-leaving ideal was diluted so that monks could practice the religion without political compromise. The need to just “observe mind” led Bodhidharma’s Zen to avoid the court, but also, perhaps, to backslide on issues like growing their own food and keeping their own animals.

  BAIZHANG AND THE BODHISATTVA WAY

  That early Zen rejected indulging in metaphysics or making grand statements about reality is clearly shown in some of Baizhang’s teachings. He warned against falling into any partial views whatsoever. He wanted to keep practice grounded in what’s right in front of us. In this light, his “views” on the idea of reincarnation are especially interesting. What does he have to say about the idea of rebirth on the wheel of birth and death? For an insight into his views on this controversial doctrine, there is a famous story in old Zen records called Baizhang’s Wild Fox:Every day when Zen Master Baizhang spoke in the hall, there was an old man who would attend along with the assembly. One day when the congregation had departed, the old man remained.

  Baizhang asked him, “Who are you?”

  The old man said, “I’m not a person. Formerly, during the age of Kasyapa Buddha, I was the abbot of a monastery on this mountain. At that time, a student asked me, ‘Does a great adept fall into cause and effect or not?’ I answered, saying, ‘A great adept does not fall into cause and effect.’ Thereafter, for five hundred lifetimes, I’ve been reborn in the body of a fox. Now I ask that the master say a turning phrase on my behalf, so that I can shed the fox’s body.”

  Baizhang said, “Ask the question.”

  The old man said, “Does a great adept fall into cause and effect or not?”

  Baizhang said, “A great adept is not blind to cause and effect.”

  Upon hearing these words, the old man experienced unsurpassed enlightenment. He then said, “Now I have shed the body of a fox. I lived behind the mountain. Please provide funeral services for a monk who has died.”

  Baizhang then instructed the temple director to tell the monks to assemble after the next meal for funeral services. The monks were all mystified by this, because there was no one who was ill in the temple infirmary, so how could this be? After the meal, Baizhang instructed the monks to assemble by a cave behind the mountain. He then brought out the body of a dead fox on his staff and proceeded to cremate it according to established ritual.

  It appears, given the magical events it relates, that this story was made up by someone to make a point. Yet the story is instructive.

  Baizhang’s “not blind to cause and effect” appears important because it skillfully addresses the problem of “cause and effect,” which is here also the “wheel of birth and death” without sinking into a set view, a “metaphysical” understanding. Zen practitioners, like others in the Buddhist and Vedic traditions, thought this “wheel” idea to be the essential existential problem people face. Baizhang’s answer about the correct way to view this idea was that, in effect, the wheel of birth and death shouldn’t be thought to “exist” or “not exist.” He simply says he can see it. Whether it is real or unreal, an illusion or genuine, it is nonetheless the unavoidable problem that appears to Baizhang when he looks closely. This is what is seen in the “observing the nature of mind” practice that is at the heart of Zen.

  There is one other passage in The Record of Baizhang that is quite startling. Baizhang, one of the towering figures of Zen history and the Bodhidharma Zen lineage, specifically counseled against embracing the bodhisattva ideal. In the record of his historical teachings, the same work where he counseled against holding doctrinal views, he said, “Don’t fall into the bodhisattva vehicle.” He followed this instruction by saying one should “Break [the shackles of] the three phrases.” The “three phrases” to which Baizhang refers in this passage were ancient explanations of what is fundamental to following the Bodhisattva Path, namely (1) bodhi-mind, (2) great compassion, and (3) every manner of expedient means (for helping beings).

  Nowhere in my study of Western Zen literature do I remember anyone quoting this passage (although of course maybe someone has done this, and I’m not aware of it). In any case, it seems quite astonishing that Baizhang would make such a statement. How do we square this idea, uttered by one of the most highly honored of the old Chinese Zen masters, with the modern Western Zen tradition that fervently embraces the Bodhisattva Path and ideal? Did Zen, early on, associate the Bodhisattva Path with problems?

  A TOUR OF BAIZHANG TEMPLE

  After a while, services end, and a young monk appears to greet me. He says his name is Juexing (“Enlightened Nature”). He’s very accommodating, and before long I’ve registered and have been given a futon bed in the old guesthouse. The new guesthouse, he explains, still has no electricity, so it will be best if I stay in the old one for the time being. I agree; minutes later, after I put down my things, Enlightened Nature reappears with three garments he suggests I use if I get cold. One is a massive overcoat, one is a padded vest, and the final one is a light jacket typically worn by lay workers at the temple. I thank him and slip into the jacket. The chill of the evening had been worrying me. Now, because of Enlightened Nature’s thoughtfulness, everything will be fine. A bell rings, and he invites me to dinner.

  The dining hall turns out to be self-service-style at dinner time. Huge pots of rice and noodles provide the base for other dishes of pickled and/or spicy vegetables from the temple garden. It’s a feast.

  After dinner Enlightened Nature offers to show me the important landmarks on the hill behind the monastery. I readily agree, and we wind our way up a well-constructed pathway through a forest of very tall timber bamboo. Climbing a hundred feet or so of steps, we arrive at two large boulders. Each has characters inscribed into the rock. The characters on the upper boulder proclaim THE PURE RULES BENEATH HEAVEN. The Pure Rules were of course the rules by which Zen monks would live in their monasteries as set up by Baizhang. The term Beneath Heaven can be translated as “known everywhere,” and it is a term widely used to denote something of great fame. Enlightened Nature says the characters were inscribed in the stone during the Tang dynasty, about twelve hundred years ago, to commemorate the promulgation of the Pure Rules. Nearby there’s another large, flat boulder with the words COILED DRAGON STONE inscribed on its side. According to tradition, says my guide, the Tang Emperor Xuan Zong (pronounced Swan Zoong) once sat in meditation on top of this flat stone. Xuan Zong was, as a young man, a student of one of Mazu’s famous students, Huangbo. Huangbo once slapped him to wake him up. Thereafter, Huangbo gained fame as a Zen teacher cheeky enough to slap an emperor.

  I say to Enlightened Nature that I know there is another famous story about this mountainside. “What about the Wild Fox koan?” I ask.

  “Come this way,” he says. He leads me to small crevice in the ground where some boulders sit oddly stacked and juxtaposed, forming a small cave. Here is the spot where Baizhang purportedly retrieved the fox’s body from the hillside. The characters WILD FOX ROCK are etched on an overhanging boulder.

  Enlightened Nature accompanies me back to the old monastery as darkness falls. He says, “The wake-up bell will sound at 4:30 AM, and morning service will be at 5:00 AM. Do you know the chants we do?” I say I don’t know them but I’ll try to attend the service anyway.

  I return to my room and consider going to sleep. I’m already quite tired, but my watch says it’s only six thirty in the evening, too early for bed. I sit and write in my journal for a while, then I hear some monks talking. I notice they are sitting on the veranda of what looks like living quarters across the garden from my guestroom window. I slip out into th
e darkness and go around the building to join the monks.

  They welcome me and immediately pull out a stool for me join them. I notice that one of the three figures is not a monk, but the lay gentleman who met me when I first arrived and guided me to the guesthouse. Of the two monks on the porch, one is pretty young, about twenty to twenty-five years old. The other is around thirty.

  From our vantage point, the outlines of the great new halls in the valley are backdropped by the mountains, a last light of the sun, and a half-moon that appears high overhead above the new temple’s rooftops. A complete stillness has settled over the scene now that the workers have gone and the stars are appearing. I’m surprised at how clear the sky is. China’s well-publicized air pollution doesn’t seem to reach here, even though we’re far from the ocean. I already like the secluded mountain setting of Baizhang Temple more than any of the other scores of temples I’ve visited in China. I remark to the monks about how peaceful it is. The younger monk says that here on Great Hero Mountain it’s much cooler in the summer than at many other monasteries. It’s the ideal mountain retreat.

  The monks are interested to learn where I’m from and what leads me here. I explain that I organize tour groups of people interested in Zen to come to China and visit famous places of the tradition. They wonder if I’m connected to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, near Ukiah, California. As I mentioned before, that place seems far more famous in China than it is in the United States.