Tracking Bodhidharma (8 page)

As we are eating, an attendant enters and asks whether we want to hear a lecture being given in the next room by a Chinese man who is giving a talk in English. He's a teacher at the temple. I beg off so that we can finish eating. But a while later the attendant reappears and says the man has finished the lecture and asks if we would like to meet him. Behind the waiter an elderly and very distinguished looking Chinese gentleman enters the room and introduces himself as Jimmy Lin. His English is excellent, and I soon learn that Jimmy's English skills once led him to work for the United Nations. He says he's retired, but on his
business card I see the impressive titles that he still retains, including “Chief Editor” of a publication called the
Golden Tripod
. He has a list of other titles including “Honorary President of the China Vegetarian Association.”

“Maybe you can tell me where to find vegetarian restaurants here,” I say.

“I know them all,” he answers.

For the next several minutes, Mr. Lin and I get acquainted. His life is impressive. He was a lay disciple of the Buddhist teacher Xuan Hua (pronounced
Swan Hwa
), who, although virtually unknown in the United States, is famous in Chinese Buddhist circles for establishing a large Buddhist monastery near Ukiah, California, called the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.

“In that case,” I say, “Your teacher's teacher was Empty Cloud.” Empty Cloud, a Chinese Buddhist monk who died in 1959 at the age of 120 years old, is the most famous Buddhist monk and practitioner in China of at least the past five hundred years.

Mr. Lin's face lit up at the mention of Empty Cloud. “I actually met Empty Cloud myself,” he says. “I was 18 years old at the time and Empty Cloud was 108. He was still very healthy and robust at that age, like a healthy middle-aged man, and he was doing a lot of projects. My teacher Xuan Hua was there then too. He was then just 22 years old.”

“Maybe Empty Cloud lived so long and was so healthy because he was a vegetarian,” I say.

“Also the result of a lifetime of meditation practice,” says Jimmy. “But during his whole life he never ate meat a single time.”

Having read Empty Cloud's autobiography, I know many bizarre stories about that famous teacher's life. One story tells how once while he was giving a sermon, a cow came into the building from the street, came up to the seat where Empty Cloud sat, and got down on its knees as if paying homage to him. A butcher chasing the cow came into the hall, and upon seeing the animal prostrated in front of Empty Cloud as if seeking refuge, he renounced his profession and converted to Buddhism. Such stories about Jimmy's “spiritual grandfather” Empty Cloud are widespread in China, and there are thousands of people alive today who swear they witnessed such incredible occurrences.

“How long have you been a vegetarian?” I ask Jimmy.

“I've been a vegetarian for more than sixty years, since I was thirteen years old,” says Jimmy. “At that time my whole family became Buddhists, and at the same time we all became vegetarians.”

Jimmy tells me that he has another appointment. So after we agree to continue our conversation over lunch the next day, Ruxin takes me back to my hotel where I pore over some old texts about Bodhidharma during the time that many Chinese take an afternoon siesta.

Around two thirty, Yaozhi and Ruxin swing by, and we're off again to visit Guangxiao Temple, probably the oldest and most famous temple in Guangzhou. During the ride, Yaozhi asks me a pointed question.

“In America people are mostly Protestants or Catholics. Are there really any Buddhists?”

“The number of Buddhists is tiny,” I tell him.

“And aren't most of those Buddhists followers of the Dalai Lama? Don't they follow Tantric Buddhism like from Tibet?”

“You're right,” I agree. “There are more people interested in Tibetan Buddhism than there are Zen practitioners. But on the question of whether most people in the United States are Protestants or Catholics, maybe if you ask them, 70 to 8o percent of the U.S. population will say they are one or the other, but maybe only about 35 percent or so go to church regularly.”

“What do you think?” he asks. “Is Christianity like Buddhism?”

“My view is that they aren't the same. Other religions usually seek something ‘outside,' but Buddhism is about observing something ‘inside.'”

Yaozhi expresses his agreement with a slight nod and smile.

During our conversation I repeat a view that I first heard spoken by Dr. Lew Lancaster, then the head of Buddhist Studies at Cal Berkeley, many years ago. He said that the three teachings of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are three legs of a tripod for Chinese society. Buddhism concerns the mind, Taoism concerns the body, and Confucianism concerns social relationships. The three philosophies cover pretty much everything. But Yaozhi looks as though he's heard this idea before. Maybe this isn't one of Dr. Lancaster's many original personal insights, as I had thought.

Our conversation is interrupted when we suddenly pull into the back gate of Guangxiao Temple.

GUANGXIAO (meaning “Bright Filial”) Temple is famous in Zen history for several reasons. Perhaps most important is that this is where the Sixth Ancestor, a pivotal figure in Buddhist history and Chinese culture, took tonsure as a monk. An old bodhi tree, a type of ficus tree under which the historical Buddha realized enlightenment, marks the spot where the Sixth Ancestor's tonsure ceremony took place at the rear of the temple. The current tree is the offspring of the original that was planted in the fifth century.

One very famous legend about Guangxiao Temple is that it was here the Sixth Ancestor settled a debate about a flag waving in the wind in the courtyard. According to the story, one day while the temple abbot, Yin Zong, was giving a talk, the wind came up and was blowing a flag on the temple grounds. Somehow an argument broke out about whether it was the wind that was moving or the flag that was moving. The Sixth Ancestor, who at that point was still a lay person, famously settled the argument by saying, “It's neither the wind nor the flag that is moving. It is your mind that is moving.”

A young attendant of Guangxiao Temple's abbot appears as we stand beneath the famous bodhi tree. It will be a few minutes before the abbot can meet us, he says. So we decide to take a look around. He leads us to the meditation hall at the rear of the grounds and peeks in the window to make sure we don't bother anyone before we go inside. As we pass through the canvas door at the front of the building, I first see a large statue of Shakyamuni Buddha at the center of the hall. With a bow, I follow our guide around the perimeter of the large room. It is set up in the traditional style, with an elevated bench with cushions adjacent to the wall for meditators to sit on. Here in the hot, humid south, I don't see the usual blankets available that are wrapped around the legs up north to keep the meditators warm. I also notice that above the meditation
platforms are large wooden signs with beautifully written and embossed Chinese characters that hang in a row stretching around the top of the walls. Each has a phrase, such as ATTAINING THE UNSURPASSED MIND or THE DHARMA WHEEL TURNS ETERNALLY. The guide explains that the handsome calligraphy was individually brushed and presented to the temple's abbot by other abbots of other temples upon his installation in his position during the grand “Mountain Seat” ceremony that marks such occasions. One of the signs was made and presented by Yaozhi, the abbot with me now, to the abbot we are about to meet upon his “ascending the mountain seat” of this temple.

Before we leave the hall, the guide shows me a piece of split bamboo about five inches wide. It's an apparatus used by meditators in the south of China to keep cool on hot days. The bamboo is placed on the lap, hollow side down, with the hands resting on top of it. This allows the heat to dissipate much better from the body. Chinese meditation is not meant to torture its practitioners!

The differences between the Chinese and Japanese ways of meditating tell something about each culture. While the Japanese tend to be rigid and quite formal in their meditation style and ceremony, the Chinese often appear more relaxed. Between periods of sitting meditation that are signaled by hitting a board with a wooden hammer, Japanese meditators walk slowly in a single circle, sometimes at an excruciatingly slow pace that to me is tedious beyond all reason. Chinese, on the other hand, do such walking meditation in a relaxed way, each person walking at their own pace in a wide circular area, swinging their arms and making a good healthy hike out of it.

The individual teaching styles of some Chinese Zen teachers can approach the rigid Japanese way of teaching. But the fact that the Chinese can be less formalistic about such things was particularly revealed on an occasion when I sat with an American Zen group in a Zen meditation hall on top of a famous mountain in China. The abbot of the temple where we were visiting, a very friendly and engaging old fellow, helped us all get set up in our sitting meditation positions, carefully laying blankets over our laps and showing us how to tuck them in so that we would be comfortable. Our group, accustomed to meditating in the Japanese style, was lined up around the perimeter of the hall on the
meditation platform. We faced the center of the place unlike in Japan where they sit facing the wall of the room. After we were all set, the little old abbot picked up a wooden mallet and unceremoniously whacked the wooden board signaling the start of the meditation session. As we all looked on, he then took out his false teeth, placed them next to a little statue of the Buddha next to his seat, hopped up on the platform, and sat down. We all had to stifle a laugh. This definitely didn't seem like the Japanese way, with its intricate bowing and ceremony!

A short stroll from the Guangxiao Temple meditation hall brings us to the Bowl Washing Well. This is the place where Bodhidharma is said to have washed his begging bowl during his stay at Guangxiao Temple. Under an otherwise unremarkable little gazebo is a screened hole where the well sits. Another place, it seems, that connects Bodhidharma to wells, sources of pure water.

Soon the abbot Sheng Ming of Guangxiao Temple makes his appearance. He greets us in a friendly fashion and ushers us into a meeting room that adjoins the area by Bodhidharma's well. We sit at the middle of a long conference table. The abbot seems welcoming enough, but I sense he has other important things to do, especially on a Sunday, when he might otherwise be resting. I really feel awkward about meeting such people. On the abbot's card there are literally nine different titles and positions listed. Among his titles are “Representative at the National People's Congress,” “Vice Chairman of the National Buddhist Association,” etc. All I offer is a card with the name of my little travel business, South Mountain. I can imagine him thinking “Who is this strange-looking lay foreigner, and why is he taking up my time?”

I try to explain that I organize tours of foreigners to come to China and visit famous historical temples. Perhaps, I think, that is a worthy-enough activity to merit his using part of a Sunday to meet with me. Another thing I know might engage his interest is the question of how Buddhism is evolving in the West. I sense that that question is secretly a hot topic, though no one will admit to this openly.

After an exchange of some pleasantries, the topic does indeed turn to the situation in the West. The abbot is interested to know if the Platform Sutra, a pivotal work said to have been expounded by the Sixth Ancestor Huineng, has been well-translated and widely disseminated in the
West. I tell him that my friend Red Pine (Bill Porter) and others have provided excellent translations of this “sutra,” (a term normally reserved for words of the Buddha but in China also applied to this work).

The “Platform” mentioned in this scripture's name refers to an ordination platform where Huineng conveyed his Signless Precepts to monks and lay Buddhists. Because these precepts were sufficiently unique and central to Chinese Buddhist thought, this “sutra” is considered a sacred text, unique to Chinese Buddhism. More on this later.

We talk about the Signless Precepts of the sutra. I ask the abbot if he is aware that some Japanese and Western scholars have claimed that the Platform Sutra was not composed by Huineng but by someone perhaps far removed from that famous figure of Chinese religious history. The well-known Japanese Zen scholar Yanagida has claimed, for example, that the Platform Sutra was composed as a forgery many decades after Huineng died.

The abbot's face looks annoyed at my question. He says that he doesn't care what scholars have to say about the subject. The important thing, he says, is the sutra's content. Of course he's right about that, and I tell him so.

Anyway, there's one thing that scholars of Zen history do agree about, and that is that virtually all the old records of Zen are at least partly suspect. At best, scholars in the field cannot do much more than make educated guesses about much of the lives of Huineng, Bodhidharma, and other early Zen figures.

I don't want to keep the abbot from his weekend rest, so before long I beg off and say I should leave the abbot to his important duties. After a group photo in front of the Bowl Washing Well, Yaozhi happily returns me to my hotel.

The next morning before noon, I follow directions Jimmy Lin gave me in order to meet him at the Buddha World vegetarian restaurant, located about a hundred yards from the International Red Cross building in Guangzhou. I find Jimmy sitting at a large table on the fourth floor. The place is a typical Chinese-style restaurant, and everyone is talking at once. People at the tables around us are talking so loud that Jimmy and I have to lean close and nearly yell in order to hear one another. After living in Hong Kong, I'm pretty used to restaurants of
this type, but this one is particularly bad, and I strain to hear details of Jimmy's life.