Tracking Bodhidharma (44 page)

The Second Ancestor of Zen, Huike, is sometimes referred to as the First Ancestor of Zen in China. Since Bodhidharma was a foreigner, it follows that his most famous Chinese disciple, who received the Zen “mind to mind” transmission from him, was the first Chinese Ancestor. Legends about Huike are varied and obscure. Some claim that he once served as the abbot of Shaolin Temple, although that is unlikely. In any case, the big body of Zen historical texts called the
Lamp Records
relate that only Huike understood the essence, literally the “marrow,” of Bodhidharma's teaching. After that, he is said to have lived on one of the mountains that surround Shaolin Temple.

It's been several years since Shanli last visited the Second Ancestor's Hut, and he leads us up a trail hardly perceivable under the winter snow
now beginning to slushily melt in the midday sun. I notice that Hashlik is wearing sneakers, and his feet are almost immediately soaked from snow.

“There must be a better trail than this one. Are you sure there isn't an easier way?” I ask Shanli.

“This is it,” he says. “This is the trail.”

For about forty-five minutes, we climb steadily through the light forest and snowy slopes of the mountain. Hashlik, his feet growing wetter and colder with each step, frequently declares he is going to go back, but Shanli always dissuades him, assuring us all that we are almost at the top of the mountain. We pass the collapsed towers of a cable car that once served the mountain, the cables now winding through the low forest. The climb gets more difficult and the trail hard to follow in the heavy brush and snow. At last, after crossing an area of deep snow and reeds (“Be careful,” says Shanli, “I think there's a pond under the snow here”), we emerge at the top of the mountain.

The Second Ancestor's Hut is in a small compound. The gate is locked, and there's no one around. We walk another hundred yards or so to a lookout with an expansive view of Mount Song's peaks. Next to the railing, Shanli and Marc stop for a smoke.

Shanli takes a big drag on a “gaff” (what he calls a cigarette) and blows smoke into the clear mountain air. Behind him the snow-covered peaks of Mount Song shine radiantly in the winter sun. He looks like some bizarre advertisement for an Alpine cigarette.

Nearby, a simple statue of the Second Ancestor stands in the snow, portraying a scene from his legend.

Shanli points to a distant valley in the Song Mountains west of the peak where we stand. There appears to be a village nestled between the slopes of the snowy valley. Shanli says it's not a village, but a big mining operation that exists out of sight of the tourists and visitors. He says the pollution from the site has been a big issue, but it hasn't been closed down.

The pollution problem in China gets a lot of press but not much action. China's coal production is a huge source of pollution both because of mining activities and due to CO
₂
emissions. The poster child of China's pollution problem is probably Lake Tai, a huge body of water near the famous garden city of Suzhou. So many factories and cities
dumped waste into the lake that it erupted into a massive algae bloom, destroying its ancient fishing industry and causing a foul-smelling mess. Local politicians, protecting their industries and jobs, ignore national pollution laws, and the result is that one of China's most famous scenic areas is blighted. After central government officials praised local environmental activists that fought against Lake Tai's pollution, the local officials threw them in jail anyway.

Soon it's time to go back, as Marc and Hashlik need to catch a train that evening from Zhengzhou. Shanli leads us back toward where we emerged onto the mountaintop in the deep snow. Suddenly we notice there is a work crew working at the mountain's old cable car terminal building. We stop to learn that there's a plan to resurrect the easy way up the mountain. There are several workers standing around. I realize there must be a good path down the mountain, one used by the work crew to transport materials. Happily, this is the case. It's been too many years since Shanli climbed this mountain, and he didn't know about it. This is great news for Hashlik's feet, which are spared a further drenching in the wet snow. We find that the path down the mountain, though well-traveled, is compressed snow and pretty slick. For a while we slide along, grabbing tree branches and shrubs to keep from falling. Somehow the conversation turns to the poetry of Charles Bukowski. Despite our widely divergent backgrounds from four different countries, we've all read that poet. We're still swapping our favorite stories about him when we reach the base of the mountain.

THE NEXT DAY under a bright sun, Shanli and I depart the monastery for a final hike in the mountains.

The path to Bodhidharma's famous cave is well-constructed with stone and mortar. The problem is that it leads up a pretty steep mountain, so you should be in reasonable shape, or at least not be in a rush, to visit the place.

“As part of our
kong fu
training, we used to run up and down this mountain several times in one morning,” says Shanli. “Once when we were doing this, some members of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan were visiting. They were impressed when I ran up and down the mountain but were more impressed to see me light up a gaff when I finished.”

I guess Shanli's ability to do impressive physical feats while smoking has something to do with his study of Esoteric Buddhism. But I recommend against trying this at home.

The path from Shaolin Temple to Bodhidharma's cave takes us past a little temple compound called “Bodhidharma's Hermitage.” It's a place at the foot of the mountain where he is said to have lived. Now it's a small nunnery surrounded by a high wall. The gate at the front is open, so we enter to take a few photos in front of a small Buddha Hall that serves as a place of practice for the nuns. The building, built seven hundred years ago, is by far the oldest building still standing around Shaolin Temple. It is in a traditional Chinese style with fishtail eaves. Inside on the walls, barely visible in the darkness, are painted frescoes of the first six Zen Ancestors. The paintings are faded, and the characters that accompany them are hard to read. I ask a nun who is in the building how old the old paintings are, but she says she doesn't know.

Outside near the front door is a tall cypress tree. A sign next to it says it was planted by the Sixth Zen ancestor, Huineng, when he came to visit this famous place connected to Bodhidharma. Behind the little Buddha
Hall on an elevated area is a living compound for the nuns. In several visits here over the years, I've found the nuns to be very friendly and happy to meet foreigners. However, their director discourages such contact, and people aren't allowed to venture near their living quarters.

Big icicles hanging from the edge of the roof are glistening and dripping in bright sunlight. The day is warming rapidly. We exit the Bodhidharma hermitage and continue our walk to the cave.

On the new steps up the mountain, there are places to stop and enjoy the view. The general landscape, which includes a view of Shaolin Temple tucked between Big House Mountain and Little House Mountain, is about the same as what Bodhidharma saw when he stayed here fifteen hundred years ago. Of course the rest of the world is entirely different. Still, the world offers a lot of reasons why leaving it behind and moving onto this quiet mountain could be appealing. Before too long, but with some effort, we reach the level terrace constructed in front of Bodhidharma's cave. It measures about ten by thirty feet or so, and is partly covered in snow. The sun, low in the winter sky, casts long shadows over the quiet mountains. The silence and light plus the space and snow all support the timeless feeling of the place. Behind the
paifang
that marks the small cave is an alcove where some old monuments rest. Looking into the cave itself, I see that the nun who usually comes up the mountain to guard against taking pictures inside the place is gone today. We take advantage of this opportunity to photograph each other in the cave next to a statue of its famous inhabitant's likeness.

The traditional Zen story of how Bodhidharma instructed his famous disciple Huike about the “no-self-nature” of mind describes an event that allegedly happened in front of this cave.

According to the story, which appears in various late texts including the late-thirteenth-century
Compendium of Five Lamps
, which tells the “official story” of Bodhidharma, Bodhidharma practiced meditation within the walls of this cave every day. Huike, an earnest seeker of the Dharma, stood outside the cave in the snow, waiting for Bodhidharma to emerge. Finally, Bodhidharma emerged from the cave, and Huike seized his chance, saying, “My mind is troubled. Please pacify it!”

Bodhidharma then replied, “Bring me your mind, and I'll pacify it.”

This answer gave Huike pause, and he finally said, “Although I've looked for my mind, I can't find it.”

 

FIGURE 20. Bodbidharma's Cave near Shaolin Temple.

Bodhidharma then said, “There! I've pacified it!”

You might think Bodhidharma was trying to be cute. His point was that an individual's mind does not exist as an entity that can be separated from external experience. Bodhidharma was pointing out that no matter how hard Huike would try to find something that could uniquely be called his personal “mind” or “soul,” he would never be able to do so. The perceptions of the mind cannot be divorced from perceptions and memories that originate “outside.” What is mistakenly thought to be a genuinely existent, some sort of separate “self” may be sought for a lifetime or more. But no such “self” will ever be found. There is, in this Buddhist view, no soul. There is no individually existing mind that exists outside of the arising of the “other.”

I examine the cave. I think Bodhidharma may have really sat here. But my view is that he did so sometime during the years 475 to 494, when Shaolin Temple did not yet exist, or at least was not yet a formally established temple. The Bodhidharma hermitage down at the base of this mountain is a mile or so away from Shaolin. Bodhidharma may have lived at the place where the hermitage now sits at a time predating the temple's establishment or, if after the temple was established, with only a tenuous connection to the temple itself. He “avoided places of imperial sway,” and he likely regarded Shaolin as just such a place after it was officially established by imperial decree. Anyway, that Bodhidharma sat in a freezing cave and not in the warm temple attests to his avoidance of the place.

Back on the terrace in front of the cave, Shanli starts doing a set of
kong fu
movements to the entertainment of a handful of tourists. He's obviously a real master of this “Chinese boxing.” He does a martial form of the exercises, not the slow meditative form that is better known. His arms and legs move so fast that they seem little more than a blur in the crisp mountain air.

We hike past the cave and climb the final fifty yards or so to the top of the peak. There, a large white statue of Bodhidharma gazes out over peaks and valleys of Mount Song. In the other direction, the view from the back side of the mountain stretches toward Luoyang City, just out of view behind hills in the west. Shanli does more
kong fu
movements, and I snap his picture with the big Bodhidharma, the purported First Ancestor of
kong fu
, in the background. As the sun begins to set, we turn to go back.

WHILE SHAOLIN IS the most famous, it certainly is not the only important Buddhist temple on ancient Mount Song. Huishan Temple, which sits at the base of Big House Mountain—Mount Song's highest and most prominent peak—was originally a mountain palace retreat for the Wei emperor Xiao Wen, the same emperor who moved his capital to Luoyang from the north of China and may have forced Bodhidharma to leave the Mount Song area. As I described previously, Emperor Xiao Wen was of the Tuoba people, a “barbarian” nationality that conquered Northern China. He wanted his foreign Wei dynasty to not only rule and control all of China but also to fully accept and embrace China's superior civilization. Both his Tuoba people and the Han Chinese they conquered were dubious about this fusing of cultures. By moving his capital to Luoyang from the cold north, Xiao Wen enhanced his Chinese bona fides by occupying the imperial grounds of many ancient Chinese dynasties. With this move he took control of the sacred center, the symbolic location from which emperors who had received heaven's mandate should properly rule. By building a branch palace on Mount Song itself, which subsequently became Huishan Temple, he presented himself to the Tuoba and Chinese people alike as the true and rightful ruler of the Middle Kingdom. Appearances and symbols mattered, and Emperor Xiao Wen did his best to appropriate the key symbols of Chinese culture. He then leavened his political authority, like Emperor Wu who came later, with Buddhist doctrines, so that he would appear to occupy the moral high ground.