B O D H I D H A R M A

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"Ta Mo" to the Chinese and "Daruma" to the Japanese, the Bodhidharms was the first Chinese Patriarch of the Buddhist Church. He reached Canton after a three year voyage from India. In 526 C.E., when Wu Ti of the Liang Dynasty was on the throne, son of an Indian king, Ta Mo become a monk, rose to become the twenty-eighth Patriarch of Buddhism by succession of the great Kasyapa, and then left his country as a missionary. Unpopular at home as a sectarian who aroused the enmity of his fellow Buddhists, the pious Teacher went abroad to found the "Ch'an", or "Contemplative", School, whose doctrine is called "The thought Transmitted by the Thought," meaning transmitted without words, either spoken or written. In this tradition, believers are to see the "key to the thought of Buddha", or "nature of Buddha", directly by their own meditation.

t h e   n a t u r e   o f   C h' a n 

 Legend says:

"When the Buddha was preaching upon the Vulture Peak, there suddenly appeared before him the great Brahma who presented a gold-colored flower to the Blessed One, and therewith besought him to preach the Law. The Blessed One accepted the Heavenly Flower, and held it in his hand but spoke no word. Then the great Assembly wondered at the silence of the Blessed One. But the venerable Kasyapa smiled. And the Blessed One said to the venerable Kasyapa: "I have the wonderful thought of Nirvana, the Eye of the True Law, which I now shall give you . . . ." By thought alone the doctrine was transmitted to Kasyapa, and by thought alone Kasyapa transmitted it to Ananda, and thereafter by thought alone it was transmitted from patriarch to patriarch even to the time of Bodhidharma who communicated it to his successor, the second Chinese patriarch of the sect."

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Once, Emperor Wu Ti summoned Ta Mo and said, "Since my accession,

I have built many temples and written many holy inscriptions; what has it profited me?" -"Nothing", replied the Sage, "because . . .

 all such things are like little drops of water that have dripped into a room, or like the shadows of clouds that follow an object, symbols without reality, shadows without substance."

With more patience than we might expect, the Sovereign again inquired "What then is real?" to which he received the answer: to give away all that thou hast and perceive the gem of the Holy One within thyself."  The Emperor "remained unenlightened."  

As a matter of fact, Wu Ti, "who loved the formalities of worships, had little sympathy with a sage who condemned them and bade him look for Buddha neither in holy books nor ceremonies, but in his own heart."

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Equally unsatisfied with the interview, Ta Mo left the Court, floated across the Ynagtze on a reed, and departed for the Wei Kingdom, where he had reason to think his doctrine of the non-reality of material things might be more acceptable.

He he entered a monastery at Lo Yang, and sat for nine years in uninterrupted meditation with his face to the wall, reminding us of Simon Stylites and other Christian saints who sought salvation through silent contemplation in extraordinary attitudes. During this vigil, legend says, the legs of the "Wall Gazing Brahman", as the people called him, fell off. To this day in Japan, images of Ta Mo, there known as Daruma, are made without legs. Such images, wearing a red gown with a hood reminiscent of Indian draperies, may be seen on the toy-stalls of Tokyo bazaars so made that, however the little figure be thrown down, it will always bob up again into a sitting posture. "The Getting Up Little Priest" was originally modeled, or remodeled, after a Chinese toy made on the same principle, and called the "Not Falling Down Old Man."

Legends about Ta Mo's life are favorite themes of Chinese artists, who generally represent him with a dark face and a curly beard, both decidedly non-Chinese, a shock of hair and a single slipper. Tradition says that, when he lay in his coffin, a disciple who came to inspect his body found the dead man with one shoe in his hand.

When asked whither he was going,

the corpse replied:

"TO THE WESTERN HEAVEN,"

and sure enough, a few days later, when the coffin was opened, it was empty save for the slipper which the Saint had dropped.