Tracking Bodhidharma (18 page)

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:

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:

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 moved 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.

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:

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?

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.