What was being practiced was Confuscianism and Taoism. Confuscianism is a philosophy that was developed in the courts of China and is therefore focused on the affairs of rulers and etiquette. Taosim, on the other hand, is much more fundamental and is based on attaining righteous and natural living by following what is referred to as The Path, the Tao (pronounced dow as in cow).
Bodhidharma was intelligent enough to see the amazingly strong parallels between Buddha's teachings and the Tao He made one attempt to convey his beliefs to an Emperor, realized the fruitlessness of expressing them, and went off to live in a cave and meditate for nine years. (It is said he cut off his eyelids when his need for sleep interrupted his meditaiton. Where the blood fell to the ground, the first tea leaves sprang up. Thus the bulging eyes. And thus more mythos.)
(The emperor was Emperor Wu, a great philanthropist. The entire conversation, after the ammenities, consisted of Emperor Wu questioning Bodhidharma whether he, Wu, had accumulated sufficient goodness through his actions to attain enlightenment. Bodhidharma explained that it wasn't a game where you get points, to paraphrase. Shocked at the impudence, the Emperor asked Bodhidharma, "Who do you think you are?" Bodhidharma's reply was, "I have no idea," and walked away. This, the first of great Zen moments, was a point of possible enlightenment on the part of the Emperor, but he let it slip away.)
Bodhidharma's extended meditation near the Shaolin Temple (yes, the kung-fu temple) is the root of Zen Buddhism. He felt that enlightenment can be achieved by meditating, as did the Buddha beneath the Bodhi Tree. The end result of Bodhidharma's meditation was a blending of Taoism and Buddhism called Ch'an in China and from there it flowed into Korea and on into Japan where it was called Zen.
Little is known of Bodhidharma and the question has arisen whether he existed at all, as it has arisen as to whether the founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu, existed as one person. So many wondrous tales have sprung up concerning his life and even his resurrection from the dead that it is hard if not impossible to determine anything positively. The fact that he appears in both Indian and Chinese accounts leads one to presume existence.
(The story of his first disciple of three, is that Hui-k'o sat outside of Bodhidharma's cave begging him to be his student. Bodhidharma ignored Hui-k'o. Finally Hui-k'o cut of his own arm to show his conviction and Bodhidharma finally accepted him. Whether this ghastly tidbit is true or not, it shows the desperate Path Hui-k'o followed to obtain what Emperor Wu cast aside as an affrontery because of his ego. The ego is our largest stumbling block preventing our enlightenment. This does not mean that we should not have individuality or ego, but that we should clearly see our ego in terms of the whole--the whole of ourselves, the whole of our community, the whole of our planet, the whole of our universe.)
Zen, in its simpler form, is taught, not so much through dogmatic scripture, as it is through simply waiting for the student to realize the Truth. This does not mean that the Master is not an authority figure; tales are told of students receiving harsh beatings by their teacher, not out of the loss of control of the teacher, but in an attempt to shock the student's preconceptions out of him. This has down-graded to a modern smack with a stick or fan, but the message and intent are the same. The Master, the supreme ruler of the monastery, does, however, look at his own life as harshly as he does that of his students and has been known to go off in search of his own enlightenment which he may feel he has mislaid or if he is confronted by a problem which points to his lack of understanding. .
While stressing the common family of which all sentient beings are members, Zen understands that we are individuals with our own path to enlightenment and it is only through our own acceptance and understanding based on our experience that we shall attain enlightenment. It is not through lecture and reading, for the mind is considered to be as guilty of leading us astray from the Truth as is society.
The precepts of Zen are expressed to the student through considerable meditation, work in the monastery or in the community (as is very popular in American Zen), the telling of classic parables illustrating points of enlightenment, and the telling of koans, the unsolvable riddles used to illustrate the unsolvable riddle of life of which "the sound of one hand clapping" is the most famous.
Much is made of Zen's apparent obscurities and riddles. These are not meant to be clever dialogue or competitive games of wit and one-upmanship. These are the shaking of the student's reality in the hopes that the fruit of clarity will fall upon the student and he will at last see Truth. Enlightenment comes through realization. The work a student does is to prepare for the realization--to prepare the ground so that when the seed of enlightenment falls, it has fertile ground in which it will take root. The realization comes in spite of the work, not because of it.
Dialogues between students and Masters may seem like a game of semantics but it is not. The Master tests the student to see if her answers see beyond the words spoken or the ideas expressed. The student's answers are to reflect her understanding that words are a stumbling block to satori. How else do you express ideas when the ideas themselves are illusions? And thus the dialogue takes on the appearance of a Cubistic fencing match. It is up to the Master's experience and understanding to determine how far the student has progresssed -- even if the student feels she has attrained enlightenment, as this in itself could be an illusion.
Rather than as an obscure game, Zen should be seen as the pure simplicity for which it is also noted: a simplicity that can take a lifetime to achieve. Living completely in the moment with total clarity and compassion. Living completely in the moment, free of the hungers instilled in us to further an economy and to subjugate us. Living completely in the moment, unchained from the self-righteous ego of illusion. Living completely in the moment, aware of the total interconnectedness of all life. |
