Tracking Bodhidharma Read online

  As time went on, the role of a bodhisattva, who in early times was seen as a person who was nearing the apex of Buddhahood in his cycle of lives, took on more supernatural aspects. Eventually certain branches of Indian Buddhism believed bodhisattvas were able to undergo magical transformation and to take on any of a number of different bodies to accomplish their great mission of helping beings. Thus they might appear as a lay person or cleric, male or female, a child, or even an animal. The bodhisattva Kwan Yin, who is worshiped extensively in East Asia, for example, is traditionally said to appear in the world in thirty-two different incarnations, including all of the above.

  In the year 504, three years after assuming power, Emperor Wu became disenchanted with Taoism. He had long engaged that native Chinese philosophy, along with its idealistic vision of naturalness and immortality. Taoist ideas, after all, lay at the heart of Chinese medicine and much else in the culture, and the religion was naturally part of most people’s concern with their own health and well-being. But Emperor Wu decided to make a formal break with Taoism’s philosophy and much of its alchemical hodgepodge. As time went on and his faith in Buddhism grew more fervent, he issued an edict ordering people to turn away from Taoism and support the Buddha Way instead. He also composed a vow entitled “Forsaking the [Taoist] Way, Turning to Buddha,” and led twenty thousand clergy, aristocrats, and commoners in a public ceremony where the vow was recited.

  By the year 513 or so, the emperor had become a strict vegetarian. Around that time he also ceased engaging in sex. The Book of Liang, the dynasty’s official history, says he “did not visit the women’s quarters.” Obviously this left the hundreds of concubines that spent their lives hoping for a liaison with the emperor in a hopeless situation. But records say Emperor Wu released most of his harem from captivity, allowing them to return to their old families. He apparently maintained his commitment to celibacy and vegetarianism until his death in the year 549.

  Emperor Wu himself took the Bodhisattva Vow on at least four occasions in grand ceremonies. Perhaps the grandest and most significant of these ceremonies occurred in the year 519, when he underwent this ceremony at a place called No Impediment Hall in the Flowered Woods Garden at the rear of his palace.

  But the Bodhisattva Vow he recited and the ceremony that the emperor underwent publically in the year 519 were different from what had taken place before. In the years leading up to that grand ceremony, the emperor’s house monks had created a new version of these precepts distilled from many previous different versions, and the ceremony was altered. While in former times the vows were designed for and taken by home-leaving monks, Emperor Wu emphasized the still-controversial idea that people who had not left home could also take these precepts. He gave them a new official name, the “Home-Abiding, Home-Leaving Bodhisattva Precepts.”

  In 521, Emperor Wu built Tongtai Temple, a place that would thereafter be an important stage for his religious activities. The temple’s location, directly across the street from a rear gate of the palace wall, was convenient, allowing the emperor to pass his double life as emperor and monk out of the public eye. In the years 527, 529, and 546, he repeated his acceptance of the Bodhisattva Vow at this location. After each such event he took up residence in Tongtai Temple as a monk, studying and doing chores with the other clerics who lived there.

  Each time Emperor Wu relinquished his position as emperor, he created a crisis for his family and the rest of the aristocracy who enjoyed their high positions through his patronage. The ruling factions that depended on him were then compelled to cough up a big sum of money, essentially a ransom, given to the Buddhist Church, to return the emperor to formal power. After the ransom was paid, the emperor would go back across the street to the palace and resume his imperial duties. But even in the palace, he’d retain his monkish lifestyle, sleeping on a floor mat in an unadorned room of the inner chambers.

  Emperor Wu’s personal lifestyle and commitment to Buddhist principles faithfully followed the Confucian ideal that a king must be a model for his subjects. Though he spent lavishly on building monuments to his religion, his personal lifestyle appears to have remained simple.

  As I mentioned during my visit to Nanhua Temple, until Emperor Wu’s time monks of the Buddhist tradition were able to eat meat under certain circumstances, such as if the animal was not killed specifically for the monk to eat. The idea behind this was that the evil karma arising from violating the first precept, the avoidance of killing of sentient life, would not apply to the monk himself. However, Emperor Wu rejected this idea and enforced a ban on all meat-eating among monks. That ban has continued more or less uninterrupted until today in China’s Buddhist monasteries.

  28. Emperor Wu and His Family

  WHY WOULD A SUCCESSFUL military general and man of letters, a person who had reached the pinnacle of power, embrace a pacifistic religion like Buddhism?

  It’s doubtlessly true that Emperor Wu saw, in Buddhism’s doctrines, a place to find personal refuge from his bloody age. But he also used Buddhism as a way to consolidate his rule using a religious ideology, a divine and popular metaphysic of liberation that provided cover for more mundane political interests. Buddhist doctrines offered a coherent view of life, and combining Buddhism with Confucianism, a philosophy that reinforced social relations and familial solidarity, was especially useful and important. The combination of these two faiths fused ideas of social harmony (Buddhism) and loyalty (Confucianism). These were ideal models for promoting stability in a feudal society.

  Less cynically, Buddhism offered a relatively progressive, one could even say “rational,” set of beliefs in a superstitious age. In the years after Emperor Wu seized power, he largely rejected Taoist ideas in favor of Buddhist doctrines. His personal conversion was deeply sincere, not the thin religious profession that can be expected of a politician, then and now. Emperor Wu’s conversion to Buddhism bordered on revolutionary. It involved unprecedented scale and cost. Why such devotion?

  Doubtless, Emperor Wu’s experience with the Jinling Eight, his official and royal friends who met for “pure conversation” about Buddhism many years prior, led him toward his faith. He also developed a deep belief in an afterlife. Where this belief came from is especially telling.

  A legend that helps explain Emperor Wu’s deep conversion concerns his wife Lady Shao (464—499). The only woman that the emperor ever married, Lady Shao bore him three daughters but no sons. She died prematurely at the age of thirty-six from an unknown illness just prior to Xiao Yan’s two-year campaign to dethrone the mad boy emperor Baojuan.

  Prior to Lady Shao’s death, Xiao Yan brought a single concubine into his household, a young woman named Ding. Lady Shao despised and resented her husband’s new mistress. According to the story, her venomous loathing for the woman led to an event that had deep impact on Emperor Wu’s religious beliefs and long effect on Chinese culture. The story says that soon after Emperor Wu occupied the throne, his late wife appeared to him in a dream, begging for his help. She explained to him from the dream that before she died she had secretly persecuted his new young concubine. As a result she suffered rebirth in the body of a snake, a huge boa constrictor like that “found in the South Seas.” Lady Shao begged Emperor Wu to do something to save her from her unhappy rebirth as a reptile.

  Shocked by this experience, Emperor Wu more deeply accepted Buddhist teachings about the “wheel of birth and death,” and directed his Buddhist teacher Baozhi and others to create a special Buddhist ceremony on behalf of his late wife. In the ceremony for Emperor Wu’s wife, much of it composed by Wu himself, the emperor and his Buddhist monks prayed to liberate Lady Shao from her snake’s body to a higher realm of rebirth. And Emperor Wu’s intercession with the Buddha to help his wife gain a more auspicious birth was reportedly successful. Even today, the Water and Land Ceremony references Lady Shao’s experience as part of its inspiration, but the impact of this story spread even more widely.

  The ceremony Emperor Wu established
to save his wife led to the wide celebration of the Hungry Ghost Festival throughout China. This holiday was thereafter celebrated as a sort of Chinese Halloween. Even today many Chinese, on that holiday, make offerings to deceased ancestors who have purportedly been temporarily let out of hell to wander the world. These unhappy spirits try to satisfy their insatiable appetites as they roam city streets. With big stomachs and tiny necks, they are unable to satisfy their hunger, the karmic consequence of excessive greed during their earthly lives. Thus a folk holiday was born from Emperor Wu’s dream and its religious significance, a celebration recently resurrected in today’s China.

  CROWN PRINCE ZHAO MING (ALSO NAMED XIAO TONG)

  At the time he seized control of the country, Emperor Wu had a seven-month-old son by his concubine Ding. The boy’s name was Xiao Tong (501—531), and he is famously known in Chinese history by his posthumous title, Zhao Ming. As a youngster Zhao Ming devoted himself to studying the Chinese classics and Buddhist scriptures. Brilliant and precocious, he gained wide fame while still young as the compiler of China’s first literary anthology, a translator of Buddhist scriptures, and a composer of poetry. Tragically, he suffered a premature death at the age of thirty. The young prince’s verses are still read and studied in China, and localities associated with his life remember him with monuments and libraries.

  Emperor Wu and his family affected China in other ways, far surpassing in importance foot binding, hungry ghosts, and literary anthologies. Emperor Wu and Zhao Ming elicited an unprecedented embrace of Buddhism throughout the country. Other emperors had exalted the religion and worked to spread its teachings. But Emperor Wu went so far as to demote China’s other great spiritual tradition, Taoism, and made profound changes to Buddhism to integrate it deeply into the fabric of China’s culture and politics.

  29. Emperor Wu and the Temples of Bell Mountain

  Buddhist monks ’midst mountain peaks,

  For others’ sakes their chants are loud,

  But distant city folks there see,

  Just peaceful white and drifting clouds.

  —“Visiting the Brothers and Sisters in the Mountains” by Wang Wei (701—761)

  FROM MY OPEN cable car gondola, I look over a wide swath of Bell Mountain’s thick forest. The mountain’s ancient name must have come from all the Buddhist bells that once rang across these pretty valleys, pealing out each morning from scores of Buddhist temples that nestled in its shady hollows and slopes. In Emperor Wu’s age, the mountain offered one of the grandest spectacles of ancient history, a fairy tale—like vista of sedate temples floating high in the clouds. My long cable car ride goes all the way to Bell Mountain’s summit, where Love and Honor Temple once stood. Grandest of all the mountain’s temples, it was one of Emperor Wu first great projects, constructed in the early years of his reign—an architectural wonder undertaken with utmost reverence as an act of filial piety toward his late father.

  A boy, fifteen or so, shares my three-seat gondola with me. He periodically waves and shouts to his three friends in the car ahead of us, no doubt wishing he could have shared the long ride to the top of the mountain with them instead of with a boring foreigner.

  “Have you come up here before?” I ask him.

  He looks surprised, then nods. “A few times,” he says.

  In recent years China’s press and Internet have witnessed a lot of discussion about the “post-1980” generation, Chinese young people born after 1980 who have a different view of the world than their parents. Those doted-upon children, raised without siblings under China’s single-child policy, enjoyed an unprecedented level of attention and were called ”little emperors.” More recently the ”born after 1990” generation has been recognized and has moved into the limelight. That newer generation, with significant disposable income, is driving new fashions and commercial campaigns by Chinese manufacturers and retailers, much like what has happened in Japan and Western countries in the decades since World War II. The post-1990 group is truly a harbinger for change. Eric’s son, Kevin, like the boy in my cable car, is in that age group. When Eric speaks of Kevin and that generation, he simply shakes his head and says, “They know everything!” And Eric’s description is not meant as the usual cynical remark that the old heap upon the young. In critical ways, the new generation really does “know everything.” The brightest among them understand how their elders messed up the world and why their parents are clueless about where the world’s going and what wonders it may hold in store in the new digital and biomedical age. They are technically savvy. I wonder if the boy next to me is in the “know everything” camp, or whether he might instead be one of the many denizens of China’s new “opium dens,” the Internet bars. In those smoky places, many of China’s young men drape themselves languidly across chairs, chain-smoke cigarettes, and blast virtual Nazis with virtual machine guns and rocket launchers.

  “Why are you visiting here?” the boy asks me.

  “I think this place is important for Chinese history,” I reply. “Have you ever heard of Emperor Wu?”

  “Of course,” the boy says. “He was the most famous emperor who lived here. He built many temples on this mountain and made Nanjing a famous city in ancient times.”

  “Oh, you know a lot,” I say. “Do you study Emperor Wu in school?”

  “In school we study Nanjing history, and also my parents told me stories and gave me some books.”

  I gather that the young man in the cable car is in the “know everything” group.

  Emperor Wu’s temple-building campaign on this mountain and other locations was a fundamental part of his effort to spread Buddhism. Aristocrats and commoners both contributed to the building effort and worshipped in the new temples. Famous Buddhist monks, “Dharma masters,” lived and taught in these places, some receiving public acclaim close to rock-star status. A poem written two hundred years after Wu’s time by a famous Tang dynasty poet named Du Mu paid tribute to that brilliant era and its Buddhist landscapes, saying, “Four hundred eighty temples of the Southern dynasty, so many pavilions and terraces amid the fog and rain.” The actual number of temples even surpassed what Du Mu described. A memorial to the throne written in the year 522 indicated that more than five hundred Buddhist temples then existed around Nanjing alone. Other ancient records indicate that within the entire territory of the country (including only Southern China because the Wei dynasty controlled the north) a total of 2,846 temples were officially recognized. The list included only temples large enough to be officially noted. Smallish temples and shrines, too numerous to account for, were not included.

  In that age around eighty large temples sat amid Bell Mountain’s forests and meadows. Unfortunately, all of them are now gone, victims of penurious centuries and in a few cases of modernity and political passions. Only a few of the ancient sites where they stood have been excavated by Chinese archeologists, though more digging is planned. The tumbled underbrush and soft soil below the cable car may reveal more clues about Bodhidharma etched on cold and forgotten monuments, toppled and buried in forgotten upheavals.

  We know something about these old religious habitats. The Continued Biographies offers some information about these old temples and their illustrious inhabitants. It was in these temples that Emperor Wu assembled and supported his well-educated and highly talented coterie of monks from home and abroad, tasking them to undertake Buddhist translation and other projects on an immense scale.

  One of the early famous temples on this mountain, built before Emperor Wu came to power, was called Dinglin Temple (Dinglin means “Samadhi Forest”). That temple, which served as home to several famous Buddhist teachers, housed a large library of Buddhist texts that its inhabitants had collected, composed, or translated. Another temple was later built down the slope from Dinglin and was thus called Lower Dinglin Temple. The two Dinglin Temples were widely famous. Both figure heavily in Emperor Wu and Bodhidharma’s histories.

  When Emperor Wu came to power, he wanted to make use
of Upper Dinglin Temple’s important library and moved much of it to a new hall that he built within the Tai Cheng Palace, a big and specially built library in his imperial garden, the place called Flowered Woods. The library, called Flowered Woods Hall, was the focus of important religious and secular literary activity. It provided materials used by the Crown Prince Zhao Ming to develop China’s first literary anthology and was the repository for newly created Buddhist bibliographies and reference books created at Emperor Wu’s orders. Naturally, the Flowered Woods Hall also was the repository for hundreds of new Buddhist translations, the many thousands of pages of new Buddhist scripture that continued to arrive from the Indian subcontinent along with foreign teachers to expound them.

  It was in this ferment of activity created by Emperor Wu that a story solidly connecting Bodhidharma’s tradition to Nanjing took shape. This story, found in the Continued Biographies, is about the monk named Sengfu, a monk almost forgotten today who was, says the record, Bodhidharma’s oldest disciple.

  According to Sengfu’s story in the Continued Biographies, he lived in two of Bell Mountain’s long-lost temples, both located on the mountain’s northwest side. He resided in those places during the period 494 to 524, a time that covers more than two decades early in Emperor Wu’s rule and when the emperor’s religious activities reached high dudgeon. Sengfu’s story offers clues not only about the life of this obscure disciple of Bodhidharma but about his teacher as well. Scholars concur that Sengfu is the same monk referred in later records as Daoyu, who is described in the Zen literature to have “attained the bones” of Bodhidharma’s teaching. Critical information that appears in Sengfu’s biography helps piece together the hazy events that occurred before Bodhidharma’s Zen became China’s mainstream religion. Most important, his biography suggests reasons why Bodhidharma became highly honored in subsequent ages. Here is the Continued Biographies record of Sengfu, Bodhidharma’s oldest disciple, and an inhabitant of Bell Mountain during its Buddhist golden age:Sengfu: His family name [before becoming a monk] was Wang. His home was in Qi County in Taiyuan Prefecture. [As a young child] he was weak and unable to do things. He [was also] introverted and avoided groups. As the years passed he studied and attained insight. Some in his village considered him strange. He was different from those who lacked humanity. Also he naturally loved quiet contemplation. He roamed far and wide. He packed his bag and went everywhere, unsuccessfully looking for a teacher. Then he heard about Zen master Bodhidharma, whose illustrious teachings [were about] the practice of perception. So [Sengfu] went up to the cliffs and caves to ask [Bodhidharma] about deep wisdom. He followed Bodhidharma and became a home-leaver [took his vows] with him. He embraced [Bodhidharma’s teachings] thoroughly and never again asked about questions of [scriptural] doctrine. He practiced the samadhi [Zen] teachings faithfully, [as he had already] received and exhausted the meaning of scriptures. Moreover he understood that the truly enlightened do not speak [of enlightenment]. In the Jian Wu era of the Qi dynasty [494] he moved to Yang Nian [Nanjing]. He resided at Lower Samadhi Forest Temple on Bell Mountain. He delighted in its forests and meadows, finding it an ideal place for the mind to dwell. He would stroll through the frost and ice [of winter]. He gained spiritual authority, and his only possessions were nothing more than the three garments and six objects [traditional articles possessed by a monk]. He entered [the Way] according to principle appropriate to the time and was taken as a model by the clerical and lay communities. [Sengfu‘s] fame became such that the emperor and his court called on him to come and speak [to them], and they were disappointed that he would not do so. [Although] only a short distance from the emperor, [Sengfu] would not meet him. His actions were widely recognized and extolled. Emperor Wu honored his pure virtue [even without meeting him], praising him highly. [Emperor Wu] commanded craftsmen to examine Sengfu’s room [at Lower Dinglin Temple] and build [a replica] at Kaishan Temple [nearby on Bell Mountain] to receive him. [The Emperor] feared Sengfu was too fond of staying in the wilderness. But each time Sengfu would arrive at the gate [of Kaishan Temple], he would lean on his staff and sigh, saying, “[It’s like] obstructing one’s view with a tiny window.” [So the emperor] made the quarters much larger. [But Sengfu said] “Should I prefer a big, grand place over a simple thatched hut? A quiet place is all that’s needed. If the ancients thought such a place adequate, why should I want more than that? That is what delights the ears and eyes!”