Talk:Bodhidharma

List of archived discussions
8 September 2003 – 19 October 2006 16 November 2006 - 26 November 2006 26 November 2006 - 28 November 2006

Yet again

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establishment of shaolin

That was batuo. Wong Kiew Kit the authority on Shaolin arts does refer to him in similar terms regarding his role in martial arts.

Meaning: The man credited for the establishment of the Shaolin is Batuo (now turn to Ta Mo). Ta Mo is referred in similar terms (terms like father) as Batuo regarding his role in shaolin martial arts.

You misunderstood.

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Take a look at the Foreign influence on Chinese martial arts. The quote JFD so gleefully went to is not mentioned in the NYT citations.

again, the NYT citations mentioned are this and this.

Read them, arrive at your own conclusions.

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For falsely citing the material. The material stayed and I bought the citations for it following a conversation with Subhash Kak, with him directing me to Stanley Wolpert.

Take a look at the article in it's finished form, the only thing my contribution has done is provide sources.

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I could go at length about the past when JFD tried to stop the Shaolin from being menioned at all, a part of his compromise. JFD tried to erase Batuo from the very history of the Shaolin, an act I did not allow him and such but I'll refrain from going into the details for now.

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Take a look at Indian martial arts and Foreign influence on Chinese martial arts in their final forms.

Take another close look at Yi Jin Jing and Disputed Indian origins of East Asian martial arts, articles which the cabal created.

Judge the finished articles. Arrive at your own conclusions.

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• third-party publication
• peer-review
• academic journals or university presses

The most prestigious martial arts institutions on the planet, views from the Shaolin, the Discovery Channel. Arrive at your own conclusions.

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IMO, None of the conversations on this Talk page since the article was unprotected have contributed to anything except inflamed passions.

I cannot stand it when someone of the cabal's agenda and standards of morality talks back. I will go on a wikibreak as soon as this is finished though.

If insult would not have been inflicted on Bakaman, this would already have been finished.

As far as I'm concerned this is finished now, time for a break. Unless the cabal feels otherwise.

Freedom skies (send a message to Freedom skies) 23:48, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm neutral in this edit war. I just want to ask that you cut down on the amount of space that you take up with your comments. I've noticed that yours are several times larger than most editors. It will only be a short time before this page needs to be archived yet again. (Ghostexorcist 23:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC))

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establishment of Shaolin

Bakaman mentioned the establishment of Shaolin in reference to Bodhidharma[1] which, with all due respect to him, is incorrect.

Take a look at the Foreign influence on Chinese martial arts. The quote JFD so gleefully went to is not mentioned in the NYT citations.

Actually, it is.
Ctrl-F for "Pete Hessler".
It's currently footnote 50.
The quote I went to can be found there.

JFD tried to erase Batuo from the very history of the Shaolin, an act I did not allow him and such but I'll refrain from going into the details for now.

See for yourself the early edits I made to the Batuo article.[2]
I added sources, detail, even a sourced quotation which a subsequent editor deleted for some reason.

If insult would not have been inflicted on Bakaman, this would already have been finished.

Would this be the same Bakaman whose request for assistance[3] I fulfilled by standing up for him against those who would have him banned?[4]

I cannot stand it when someone of the cabal's agenda and standards of morality talks back.

If someone's going to make accusations against me that are demonstrably incorrect, then I feel I have no choice but to "talk back".
JFD 02:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Two entrances

any thoughts on my proposal about a second intro paragraph outlining the significance of Bodhidharma to Chan/Zen practitioners (i.e. a paragraph incorporating the basic concepts underlying the legendary material)?

The consensus among both Eastern and Western scholars is that the Two Entrances can be attributed to Bodhidharma.
The challenge is how to convey the significance of the Two Entrances to Zen without

1. retreading the articles on the Two Entrances and Zen
2. getting unnecessarily weighed down with "specialist crap"

The two entrances are the entrance of principle and the entrance of practice, but outlining their significance without getting bogged down in arcana is beyond me.

One could try to concisely distinguish Zen from other schools of Buddhism. Within the historical context of the times in which it arose, Zen was distinguished by its lack of emphasis on textual scholarship. Zen stories arose out of the need to explain practices and traditions and we can see this in the elements which first appear in the "Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall," such as the encounter with the Liang emperor. Bodhidharma pretty much tells the Liang emperor that his construction of monasteries and funding of translation are all for naught because they lack principle and practice, the elements of the Two Entrances.

An analogy could be drawn between Bodhidharma's emphasis on principle and practice and the Christian Protestant doctrine of "justification by faith alone" (as opposed to works).
JFD 03:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that trying to explicate (ouch! Bodhidharma and a whole slew of other eminent Zennists would kill me if they heard that word being bandied about) the Two Entrances without, as you eloquently put it, "getting bogged down in arcana" is a rather impossible endeavor.

However, for a second introductory paragraph, I wasn't thinking of putting anything so precise in. Rather, I was thinking more along the lines of broad concepts that are often viewed (from within the Chan/Zen tradition) as somewhat bound up with and/or largely initiated by Bodhidharma, such as the "lack of emphasis on textual scholarship" that you mention. In other words, things that Bodhidharma was (at least later) seen as having done and that eventually came to be considered especially "characteristic" of Chan/Zen: seated meditation or "wall-gazing" (the former of which, of course, was by no means exclusive to Bodhidharma at the time in China, though it was eventually co-opted by Chan/Zen, as it were); the emphasis on "special transmission" and "pointing directly to mind" (which is connected with the lack of emphasis on scriptures that you mention—though Bodhidharma himself, of course, seems to have had a real thing for the Lankavatara Sutra); and, connected with the "special transmission" schtick, the lineage of Bodhidharma going back to Gautama Buddha (fabricated as that probably is).

All this sort of stuff is, admittedly, largely just made up in later eras—except for the meditational emphasis, which is probably the most important part—but when we're dealing with religious figures who, to one extent or another, founded distinct traditions and whose actual lives are essentially unknown, then the legends and myths and all that brouhaha actually form an extremely important element, I think, in what there is to be said about that figure (e.g. Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Laozi—to move backwards in time and into increasing unknowability).

Anyhow ... let me know whatcha think. Cheers. —Saposcat 19:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Again

I was in the process of collecting citations to reply for JFD's little "If someone's going to make accusations against me that are demonstrably incorrect, then I feel I have no choice but to "talk back"." line.

I came across this:-

I'm neutral in this edit war. I just want to ask that you cut down on the amount of space that you take up with your comments. I've noticed that yours are several times larger than most editors. It will only be a short time before this page needs to be archived yet again.

Y'know. What I came here to do has been done.

In response to "IMO, None of the conversations on this Talk page since the article was unprotected have contributed to anything except inflamed passions.":

I'm going to save myself the trouble of writing another very lengthy post with citations about the cabal in response to a flamebait post which "will take up space" and "get the article archived again" and "will contribute to nothing except inflamed passions."

This thing is over. The lines pointing Bodhidharma non-existent in the very second para are gone.

No use squabbling when it's done. Time to live with it.

Freedom skies (send a message to Freedom skies) 09:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Dude. Take a chill pill. 81.98.250.180 (talk) 23:03, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Reference

Does anyone know the actual name for the reference source called "Ibid"? The reason I ask is because I created a page on the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution a while ago and the source "Ibid" is also used in an online transcription of a book that I got the info from. However, only part of the book was transcribed and the bibliography was never listed. (Ghostexorcist 18:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC))

Ibid. is an abbreviation for the Latin term ibidem, meaning "the same place". In practice, it means the reference in question is the same as the previous reference; that is, if note 20 was "Johnson 1992, p. 27" and note 21 is "Ibid.", it means that note 21 is also referring the reader to "Johnson 1992, p. 27". —Saposcat 19:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. You learn something new everyday. (Ghostexorcist 19:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC))

The reed? ...

Hey all. I removed the bit about crossing the Yangtze on a reed from the Daoxuan bio section, inasmuch as it directly mentions neither reeds nor the Yangtze—the latter being Broughton's sensible and correct inference from Daoxuan's text—and I wore my eyes out checking the original text here. Anyone have any idea when the reed bit—surely an important part of the bio/legend—first entered the story? I have a feeling it's in the Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall, but I haven't found that text yet. Cheers, and thanks in advance for any assistance. —Saposcat 22:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Ha! Found it (secondarily, that is). According to Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850–1850, p. 395–396, the reed business first came up when someone in the 13th century altered the verse accompanying case 1 of the Blue Cliff Record, changing "Thus he escapes secretly across the river" to, effectively, "Thus he escapes by breaking off a reed and crossing the river". (If anyone's interested ... ) —Saposcat 05:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

kanchipuram

If anyone wants to know, I really care less about Bodhidharma, Buddhabhadra, etc. What piqued my interest was the gesture of goodwill made by the Chinese government in 2002 to invite Jayendra Saraswati (Kanchi Shankaracharya) to China where the Chinese govt really treated Shankaracharyaji very well. This same shankaracharya was jailed by the Indian govt on a large sheet of political lies and anti-Hindu nonsense. Shankaracharya in the rediff interview noted bodhi and the times of india (a mainsream paper in India, very mainstream) was discussing a movie on him. JSTOR is academic. Also the category Buddhists and then Zen patriarchs is redundant. Zen patriarch implies buddhism, but I kept the cat in my last edit.Bakaman 03:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem is not (necessarily) with the sources; it's with what they say (I can't speak about Zvelebil's article, however, since I can't access JSTOR). The rediff article has Saraswati hinting at one thing (Bodhidharma "went from Kanchipuram to China") and the interviewer, Srinivasan, saying another ("Bodhidharma was originally from Kodungalloor, Kerala"); that's not entirely a contradiction, since Srinivasan also notes that Bodhidharma "was ... a monk at Kanchipuram", but it also undermines the article's authority as a definitive source, because the ultimate conclusion could be that he was not from Kanchipuram but Kodungalloor, insofar as Saraswati only says Bodhidharma "went from Kanchipuram". As for the Times of India source, all we have here is a brief introduction to a play, with the authority thus being vested in an imaginative work (i.e., the play has to be set somewhere, as imaginative narratives must). I admit that "imaginative" is not "imaginary" ... however, it's also not reliable.

Moreover, the introductory paragraph as it originally stood does not entirely deny origins in Kanchipuram; it simply states that there is doubt as to the issue, which there most certainly is. In fact, the paragraph as it originally stood—which was accepted after a long battle of sorts on this very issue—is saying effectively the same thing that Bakasuprman's revision is, but without introducing fairly unreliable sources. For all of the above reasons, I'm going to change it back. Cheers. —Saposcat 05:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think it's best and cleanest to just remove the highly speculative "Kanchipuram" from the intro entirely ... and I've done so. Cheers. —Saposcat 11:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the account above is missing parts of the recorded legend, which reconcile the apparent disparity of where Bodhidharma was actually from. The kindgom of Kanchipuram was heavily flooded and many of the citizens were forced to relocate and many moved to Kerala (the two kindgoms probably shared an alliance).

Bodhidharma in Korean

The article states that in Korea, Bodhidharma is called "보리달마 (Boridalma)". Can this be verified in text? I have not once heard a Korean refer to Bodhidharma as the article claims. All Korean accounts I have witnessed have refered to him as simply "달마 (Dalma)". Even Korean monks, although they know of his Sanskrit name, call him "달마 (Dalma)". --Bentonia School 05:19, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

It's been months, no response, and I have not come across anything to support that Bodhidharma is referred to as 보리달마 in Korean. Therefore, I've changed the listing to what Koreans actually refer to him as - 달마. --Bentonia School 10:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Why was this reverted? No one countered my initial point; I waited a very long time, then changed it. Why change it back without indicating a citation that would show any mistake on my part? Is this what Wikipedia is? --Bentonia School 05:44, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I can't say much about the revert (though the reverter—and you as well, incidentally—should have provided an edit summary), though it did seem perhaps slightly unfair (and yes, in large part Wikipedia is unfair, which is why I've more or less opted out of it).

Now, I don't know any Korean, and I know that Googling stuff is not necessarily reliable, but Googling "보리달마" does come up with 24,500 hits [5] (admittedly much less than Googling "달마" without the "보리" [6], but still perhaps significant). Problem is, since—as I said—I know no Korean, I can't immediately verify the reliability of any of the pages, though the ones that top the list seem fairly reliable at a glance. Any comments? —Saposcat 14:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I too know no Korean, but clearly "dalma" is just the transliteration of the Sanskrit word "dharma" and "bori" of "bodhi". Also here are a few pages referring to Bodhidharma as Boridalma: [7] [8] [9]. But as for Koreans it is a transliterated word without meaning, it's possible that they shorten it as "Dalma". The webpages suggested a similar phenomenon with his name in China. --Knverma 21:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

In Chinese, Bodhidharma is often referred to as "Damo," an abbreviation of "Putidamo," and in Japan as "Daruma," an abbreviation of "Bodaidaruma" so it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Koreans did something similar. JFD 22:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I did a bit more research and found that yes Koreans sometimes refer to Bodhidharma as 보리달마, however it is a more common practice to refer to him as 달마; some people don't even know what I'm talking about when I say 보리달마. Even monks that I speak with refer to him as 달마. Braclets or other Buddhist trinkets that have representations of Bodhidharma on them all say 달마. I'm not content with keeping it as 보리달마, but majority rules, I suppose, truth or not. --Bentonia School 09:04, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Gazing at the Wall

Why exactly did Bodhidharma gaze at the wall in the cave for nine years? Was it to discover some sort of method of convincing the southern regions of China to accept Buddhism? The article is not clear on this. --Bentonia School 09:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

The reason the article is not clear is simple: nobody knows the answer. We certainly don't (and probably can't) know why it was done. In fact, we don't even know exactly what the "wall-gazing" (壁觀 bìguān) consisted of. —Saposcat 12:47, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

He gazed at the wall wakefully sitting, accepting truth as truth would come, contemplating the meaning of life, and dreaming up the perfect tea. See the bit about him falling asleep? The legend continues on saying that where they landed, two tea trees sprouted. Interesting tidbit, utter nonsense though.... --24.107.9.33 22:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?

If you're looking for pat answers, Zen hagiography is not the place to find them. JFD 11:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Bodhidharma and martial arts

The article seems like it isn't NPOV because its striving towards a position rather than just discussing different views and the historiography of those views. It seems like it's really trying to say that martial arts in China is indigenous and no one contributed to it from a foreign place. It seems clearly bigoted. Because it discredits information that supports the view that martial arts in China had a foreign influence, while it fails to apply that same logic to information that supports the view that martial arts in China is totally indigenous. For example, one author seems to be claiming that because a text has been discredited that means Bodhidharma could not have contributed to Shaolin Kung Fu. A Daoist priest forges the prefaces according to the information submitted by the author. The priest claims "the monks selfishly coveted it, practicing the skills therein, falling into heterodox ways, and losing the correct purpose of cultivating the Real." Why would a text used to discredit the monks be used by the monks themselves to define their history? The monks themselves are claiming the origin of martial arts from Bodhidharma, and the author claims that this has been from the forgery of the text. It seems spurious that anyone would take a myth denigrating them as fact when up till then they did not believe the myth. Arch7 (talk) 08:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It should also cover published material by individuals who believe he did contribute to asian martial arts. I know his connection to martial arts has been debunked (via study of the 17th century Yi Jin Jing), but the page needs to be balanced with the addition of said material. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 01:41, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Ghostexorcist,

I respect your knowledge of the subject, and trust your honesty.

It was Freedom skies' brazen POV-pushing and edit-warring that I took exception to.

JFD (talk) 04:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Zen's Chinese Heritage -- The Masters & Their Teachings (Wisdom Publications, 2000) by Andrew Ferguson states that there are no records linking Bodhidharma to martial arts until a millennium after his first appearance in historical evidence. --Nio-guardian (talk) 11:33, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Some information about Bodhidharma to be inserted

• WOMEN IN ZEN BUDDHISM: Chinese Bhiksunis in the Ch'an Tradition I'm going to do it sooner or later, if nobody else does.

Austerlitz -- 88.72.20.158 (talk) 14:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Outside China

First of all, regardless of any evidence and personal beliefs most accounts say that Bodhidharma is Indian and not Persian. Anyway I actually wanted to say that the information in this article seems restricted to Chinese legends. In the Malay archipelago, Bodhidharma is known as Dharuma and is believed to have been a south Indian Buddhist priest who travelled from Palembang in Indonesia northward into mainland Southeast Asia. I don't know if this has been written down anywhere besides contemporary accounts but it has been passed down orally. Morinae (talk) 10:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It was briefly mentioned in the glossary of Silat Tua: The Malay Art Of Life —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.111.221.149 (talk) 09:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Indian by most accounts

I wasn't trying to push any POV since I personally am not even sure if Bodhidharma existed. But the article says "most accounts agree that he was either a South Indian or Persian monk". This isn't true. Most accounts say that Bodhidharma was Indian. Even though he is sometimes said to have been Persian, he could have just as easily have been Tibetan or Central Asian. And none of this changes the fact that he is Indian according to most accounts. This article already mentions how Yang Xuanzhi wrote that Bodhidharma was Persian so there's no need to reiterate the fact unless I'm seeing someone else pushing a POV. If it must be noted that Bodhidharma was once said to be Persian, the aforementioned sentence should be rephrased.Morinae (talk) 09:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Seeing as no one has responded to this, I will do the same as before. It is not an opinion but a fact that most accounts say Bodhidharma was Indian. There has only been one source where he was referred to as a Persian and others say he might have been from areas like Xinjiang or Tibet. But these are in the minority. Pick up any book, ask anyone who has heard of Bodhidharma (especially in Asia) and they all say he was Indian. Whether this is true or not is beside the point. I don't think it's necessary to mention Bodhidharma's possible Persian origins in the first paragraph since it's already written in the article where it pertains to history. Any more than that and it just shows someone's POV that Bodhidharma must have been Persian. To prove this, a certain user changed the sentence to "most accounts agree that he was a Persian or South Indian" when it should have been the other way around. Morinae (talk) 11:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

His name/identity

• [10] Here it is said that Bodhidharma was Kamalashila. "According to legendary accounts, Kamalashila paid seven visits to Tibet, and on one occasion was miraculously transported to China. In China he is known as Bodhidharma."

Austerlitz -- 88.75.215.171 (talk) 13:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

• [11] Here is said: "Bodhidharma's Buddhist Master, Prajnatara, was the 27th Patriarch of Indian Buddhism, taught Bodhidharma for many years, gave him Mind Transmission, made him the 28th Patriarch, and gave him the name Bodhidharma."

Austerlitz -- 88.75.215.171 (talk) 13:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

His disciples

Here WOMEN IN ZEN BUDDHISM: Chinese Bhiksunis in the Ch'an Tradition it is said by Heng-Ching Shih : "The first `bhiksuni` mentioned in the Ch'an literature was a disciple of the First Patriarch of of Chinese Ch'an Bodhidharma, known as Tsung-chih." Tsung-chih As far as I identify the names of disciples given on the wikisite, she is not mentioned.

Austerlitz -- 88.75.74.108 (talk) 15:13, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Heng-ching Shih also says: "Most of the records of the Ch'an Bhiksuni masters are found in the collections of biographies of the Ch'an masters, such as the Cheng-te ch'uan-teng lu, Hsu-ch'uan-teng lu (the Sequal of the Transmission of Lamp), Wu-teng-huei-yuan (the Collection of the Five Lamps), Wu-teng ch'uan shu (the Complete Collection of the Five Lamps), and many others." She says that the story about Bodhidharma testing the realization of four of his disciples -Tao-fu, Bhiksuni Tsung-chih, Tao-yu and Hui-k'o- before going back to India is to be found in the Ching-te chuan-teng lu.

In section Bodhidharma and his disciples the names of the disciples are: "Daofu, who attains Bodhidharma's skin; the nun Dharani,[57] who attains Bodhidharma's flesh; Daoyu, who attains Bodhidharma's bone; and Huike, who attains Bodhidharma's marrow." Tao-fu/Daofu, Taoyu/Daoyu, Hui-k'o/Huike sound similar, it is more difficult to identify "the nun Dharani" with "Bhiksuni Tsung-chih", at least for me. In footnote 57 the wikiauthor adds: "In the Jingde Records of the Transmission of the Lamp, Dharani repeats the words said by the nun Yuanji in the Two Entrances and Four Acts, possibly identifying the two with each other (Broughton 1999:132)."

• Honen's Establishment of a Chinese Lineage
• "Mama" Moshan, Zen Master
• THE TRANSMISSION OF THE LAMP: Early Masters.
• Ching-te ch'uan-teng-lu
• CHING-TE CH'UAN TENG-LU
• See more articles from A+Dictionary+of+Buddhism Ching-te ch'uan-teng-lu
• Ching

Most probably the author by "Jingde Records of the Transmission of the Lamp" refers to the "Ching-te chuan-teng lu", informing us that there is another nun called Yuanji speaking the same words. But: where has he got the name "Dharani" from? I cannot see.

I would like to add the name of the woman monk given by Heng-ching Shih, referring to her work as a source, but, some wikipedia sites (some of the authors) do not accept that link. Some said, that it has been put on their "black list" or something like that. Why is it? I still do not understand.

As far as Bodhidharmas name is concerned: [12] in this german language source the names given are: "chin. P'u-t'i-ta-mo oder Tamo, jap. Bodaidaruma oder Daruma ". The name of his master is given as "Prajnadhara" instead of "Prajnatara".

Austerlitz -- 88.75.74.108 (talk) 16:41, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking for Myoren etc.

• [13] there is a story about Myoren being a monk and his elder sister whose name is not mentioned.
• Our great matriarchs see "Great Zen Mother Ancestors", Zongchi:"(She is also known as Ts'ung-ch'ih, by her title, Soji, and as Myoren, her nun name.) [early-mid 500s]” (Tisdale) "
• [14] page 4, Myoren, a mendicant monk

Austerlitz -- 88.75.79.37 (talk) 14:42, 12 March 2009 (UTC)