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A Life of Bodhidharma by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

Despite his wordless doctrine, Bodhidharma is credited with the writing of some important texts. This may not be precisely the case, as it often happens in Eastern religions that some may have been put down “in his style” by disciples after his death.

Among the works said to have been composed by the master, one of the most important was discovered at the turn of the 20th Century in the Tun Huang caves in China. This important text is known variously as A Dialogue on the Contemplation Extinguished, A Treatise on the Transcendence of Cognition, or, more happily in a newer translation from the Zen Centre in London, The Ceasing of Notions.

This is a remarkable work which, though set down more than a thousand years ago, remains fascinatingly modern. It tells of a dialogue between Master Nyuri and his (almost) intractable pupil, Emmon. The encounter opens with the main theme of Bodhidharma’s Zen, that of pacifying the mind, here called heart (the Chinese character has both meanings).

Emmon: What is called heart? And how is the heart
pacified?
Master: You should not assume a heart, then there
is no need to pacify it. That is called pacifying the heart.
Emmon: But if there is no heart, then how can we learn
the Way?
Master: The heart cannot conceive of the Way, so why
should the Way depend on the heart?

Ceasing of Notions
In his commentary on the text, Soko Morinaga Roshi makes the point that “it is important to recognise the misconceptions and delusions out of which Emmon’s questions arise … If you look at the second question, you will see that Emmon already differentiates between heart and Way (awakening)…The Way and heart are not two separate things.”

Emmon: If (the Way) cannot be conceived by the heart,
how can it be conceived/thought of?
Master: As soon as a thought arises, there also is
the heart. Heart is contrary to the Way …

Soko Morinaga’s commentary on the text analyses Emmon’s main problem thus, “Emmon is desperately looking for some technique he can cling to. He still cannot understand that it rather entails the letting go of all techniques, and handing himself over to the natural functioning of the not-I.”

The dialogue continues at some length until it reaches its apotheosis, with Emmon at the point of no return :

Emmon: I see not one single thing, not even the
tiniest speck of dust. There is nothing more to be said.
Master: It seems that now you have glimpsed the
principle of truth.

Emmon immediately latches onto the master’s word “glimpsed”. A rather insignificant expression he feels. Master Nyuri explains that what he sees is the non-existence of all things as separate phenomena. The commentary takes up this point: “Emmon has only transposed his ideas of being and non-being. He still has not realised that being and non-being are one.”

Finally, the moment of Truth arrives. Emmon sighs deeply and the sound fills the cosmos.

“Suddenly the sound stopped and he had great satori. The mysterious light of clear wisdom radiated of itself and dispelled all doubt.”

What then is Bodhidharma’s meditation principle? Is it simply staring blankly at a wall to keep the mind subdued while something else floats into the ken of experience? We have already heard his injunction to make the mind like a piece of rock. The method was subsequently referred to in China as pi-kuan, and in Japan as hekkwan, meaning “wall-gazing”.

The practice involves an intense self-concentration in which the mind is kept as rigid as a rock-face. Its aim is to discover the source of thought itself, the place at which self becomes Self.

“Being like a cliff or wall refers to an inner state of mind in which all disturbing and entangling chains of ideas are cut asunder. The mind has no hankerings now; there is in it no looking around, no reaching out, no turning aside, no picturing of anything; it is like a solid rock… there is neither life nor death in it, neither memory nor intellection…the mind is no-mind. This is the hekkwan meditation.”

The solid self-concentration, the constantly active engagement of being, then produces the “turning around” in consciousness. Something arises from Being itself and takes the student in. Thereafter, you have nothing to do with it, for you recognise that you are simply a part of the awakened Self, however temporarily that recognition lasts. But the change has been made, the “remaking of life itself” has begun.

“When one, abandoning the false and embracing the true, and in simpleness of thought abides in pi-kuan, one finds that there is neither selfhood nor otherness.”

The straightforward genius of Bodhidharma introduced us to the power and magic of Zen. Had he stayed in India, would we have heard of him today, or would his message have been lost among the jostling throng of more talkative philosophers in the subcontinent? Even in China, where his manner caused much high-level offence, the package of truth he handed down might easily have been lost had it not been for another Zen giant slightly modifying the emphasis of his Buddhism nearly two hundred years later. That particular genius was the native-born Hui Neng, the sixth Patriarch.

When the time came for Bodhidharma to leave, perhaps as legend states, to take his teachings to Japan, or more likely on his death, a typical exchange occurred with his disciples. Here we have him once again dismissing his bodily form and exalting the teaching, which he has left with the students.

Bodhidharma: The time has come for me to leave. Let
me judge of your attainments.
Tai Fu: Truth is beyond yes and no. Thus it moves.
Bodhidharma: You have my skin.
Tsung Ch’ih (a nun): It is like Ananda’s view of the
Buddha-realm of Akshobhya: seen once, it is never seen again.
Bodhidharma: You have my flesh.
Tao Yu: The four elements are void; the five
constituents (skandhas) of form, sensation, perception,
conception and cognition also are void. There is
nothing to be grasped as real.
Bodhidharma: You have my bones.
Hui K’o just bowed and said nothing.
Bodhidharma: You have my marrow.

Hui K’o became the second Patriarch of Zen Buddhism.