Bodhidharma

[xanthic]

OK I READ THE POST ON Bodhidharma I THINK IT,S TRUE IVE HEARD THE FULL STORY ON HO2W HE TOOK IN A DISCIPLE THAT CUT OFF I THINK ISRIGHT ARM AND THATS WHY THEY BOW TO BUHDDA WITH ONE HAND BUT THATS JUST ME.........BUT THE STORY I HEARD WAS VERY REAL SOUNDING..........WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK

[arhat]

I think...

...if you only look at the literalism in the story you miss out on it's beautiful metaphors, which to me, are the whole point of Damo, not whether he actually sat in meditation for 9 yrs in a cave...

[Maestro]

lol

lol xantic your post was funny..

love it when peeps write in all caps lol..

just imagine what you were doing when you wrote that..either you really wanted a response or...

WHO KNOWS!!

lol..

anyway, i doubt the story of bodhidarma was fake, or that he was fake, i mean its improbable imo..he came to shaolin in what 500 ad or something? thats only 1500 years ago, christ is a widely accepted known man and he walked on water and did lots of other crazy shit bodhidarma claims to have done..and christ was 500 years before bodhidarma..and i think the buddha was some 500 years before christ and hes widely accepted as a man..so

i mean why not? theres alot of more mysterious stuff in buddhism then the existence of 1 guy, and the effects he had on shaolin cant be denied..or whatever, the effects someone or something at that time had on shaolin cant be denied..because the effects were obviously massive

peace

[RJW]

What Abbot Yongxin has to say about Bodhidharma:
"In the third year of the Xiaochang Regime in the North Wei Dynasty (527 C.E.), Bodhidharma, the Senior Monk from ancient India, arrived in Guangzhou from the sea after a three-year journey and met with Emperor Liangwu of the South Dynasty in Jianye (an ancient name for Nanjing)."

"The Ancestral Master is worshipped as the first ancestor of Chan Buddhism, and the Shaolin Temple is so regarded as the ancestral court for Chan Buddhism". As for martial arts, Yongxin goes on to say, "Shaolin wushu has become well-known worldwide since Dharma, The Ancestral Master invented the Changing Tendons and Washing the Bone Marrow Eighteen Hands and the accumulations and summarization by the martial monks in generations."
This is what Shaolin believes.

We do know that Bodhidharma's successor was a monk named Hui Ke. According to Hui Ke's legend in order to get Damo's attention during his 9 year vigil at the wall, and prove that he was a serious student, he cut off his own arm before the great master. After this Damo took him as a disciple & at death made him the second Patriarch of Chan. The Chan Patriarchs of China:
1- Bodhidharma (c. 470-543) of Shaolin, Henan, 2- Hui Ke, 3- Seng Zan, 4- Dao Xin, 5- Hong Jen, 6- Hui Neng of Baolin, Guangdong.

A horribly graphic display of devotion but Zen is filled with such stories as cutting off a student's finger to awaken him. One then must ask, are these stories made to awaken the mind & not actual accounts of monks sworn to cause no suffering; or is the awakening of the mind a grater source of release from suffering than the loss of a digit or even a limb--a mall sacrifice to pay for a greater good? All Buddhist monks bow by placing their palms together before them, except at Shaolin. The monks there are the only Buddhists to bow with only one hand. This is in reverence to a one armed master deep in their past.

For those who do not believe the origins of wushu stem from Damo, there is another of Hui Ke being the actual proprietor. It was not an unusual thing for a man to "retire" from the world after a certain age, to leave worldly affairs behind and concentrate on the spiritual by becoming a monk; many soldiers, tired after years of battle, became monks to redeem their souls from the carnage they had instigated. Hui Ke was one such man; a retired General versed in wushu. It makes more logical sense for warrior arts to come to the temple from a warrior, not to mention the loss of a limb from battle rather than self-mutilation.

[arhat]

according to our story...

...passed on by Shi Yan Ming, Damo was never credited with the origin of CMA...neither was he the first to practice MA within the walls of Shaolin, but Bato's two disciples are said to have been the first- they were former generals of the kind RJW makes note of. Their names, for lack of an understanding of pinyin, are Wei Wong and Chin Chou.

In addition to the Yi Jin Jing and Xi Sui Jing, the Lohan Shi Ba Sho (18 hands of the Lohan) and the Wu Xing Chuan are credited to Damo.

The Lohan Shi Ba Sho gave rise to an entire system- Xiaolohan, Da Lohan, Lao Lohan, culminating in 18 sets from the original 18 'hands.' Each of these sets is supposed to contain 3 sections, and each of these sections further contains 3 subsections.

[shaolinstylee]

Good posts guys, great points brought up. We must remember that a lot of this is legend. We must take from the stories what we will, learn the lesson, not just be able to recite, but understand what it is telling us. Too many take this all too literally. The idea of someone losing there arm, in battle, or self-inflicted, at that time surviving, tells of a strong individual who gained respect...etc.

[Maestro]

no

no

the point behind the story of hui ke is that he was ready to be awakened

respect..dignity..bla bla whatever have nothing to do with it

to a buddhist this mundane realm is not the 'big picture'

its actually the little picture..its an illusion, thats why he did what he did..or was said to have done

on the other hand shaolin monks bowing with 1 hand is a sign of respect for a great man..i mean obviously he would have to be to be bodhidarmas successor

and in response to arhats post about butao..i doubt very much his partners or students or whatever were the first to practice CMA or shaolin kung fu

its very unlikely, espcially since taoist temples had been around alot longer then shaolin temples, to think that these temples had no kind of security or that china had no organised fighting art since before butao is ..well a little unbelievable to me..

but no one will ever know anyway..unless someone finds some drawings on a cave wall or something

[arhat]

my bad...

a clarification...I was using Bato's 2 disciples to show that CMA existed well before Shaolin's founding, and to say they were the first to bring or practice gong fu inside Shaolin.

Our martial forebears are Chin Chou, Wei Wong, Damo (Hui Ke was also a martial artist) and Fu Yu.

Few of the monks I have met believe that gong fu originated in Shaolin.

[RJW]

Shaolin merely became a nexus for martial arts, not the place of origin. War & soldiers were around long before martial monks. And as Maestro said Daoist monks were experts in the sword and hand-to-hand combat before Buddhism arrived from India.

[shaolinstylee]

Maestro, I was making a point....


not saying that was the sole point of the story..... Like I said, look at what I was saying, not what was said...

the point behind the story of hui ke is that he was ready to be awakened

Thats fine, I won't argue that.... he was ready to be awakenend, but there are other lessons there as well..... I'm so ******* sorry that I didn't pick the point of the legend that YOU wanted to focus on to make a point that didn't matter to which example was used.

[Maestro]

i dont

hui ke's story was his legacy, he was the second patriarch, and the arm cutting off is symbolic of his devotion and intuitive understand of chan

i dont think anything else matters besides that

literall or not

its pretty black and white to me

if some peeps wanna read more into it then fine..i dont really care anyway

but its just a story

[shaolinstylee]

hui ke's story was his legacy, he was the second patriarch, and the arm cutting off is symbolic of his devotion and intuitive understand of chan

Why don't you say that again..... I wasn't contesting that.

i dont think anything else matters besides that

Overall, maybe not, didn't really matter before, just using the story as an example.

its pretty black and white to me

Thats unfortunate, it's great you get the point though, I guess, understand that I was never saying that you were wrong, or that the one and only point was this or that.....

if some peeps wanna read more into it then fine..i dont really care anyway

I was never talking of the point of the legend in specific, just that it had one, can I say this again.

Glad you don't care, as you shouldn't...... you read too far into it....

[pazman]

a couple points, one relevent and one not so relevent,

relevent,
yeah, i think people kind of miss out on a lot of the fun when they dig down into history to justify what they believe now. history is just facts....and lets face it, the type of historical data we have concerning bodhidharma or jesus or anything like that just isnt up the same standards that we'd apply to wars happening, kings dying, and on and on. with those things, there's usually lots of recorded testimony and lots of physical evidence. concerning religious figures and the like, there is usually very little testimony (the bible has only four gospels (each different)...and jesus is hardy known outside of scripture. and with bodhidharma, probably even less, though i dont think there's been close to the same amount of research as with jesus, so who knows. now, does that make them irrelevent? geez, i hope not. what if there was some sort of discovery that exposed jesus to be a charlatan? would every christian stop being christian? i really doubt it. now the fun part...if the world is so damned illusionary to a buddhist, how would a trite thing like history be any less illusionary than the present moment...

irrelevent, because it's just history,
concerning daoists before buddhism, there was no monastic system at all in china. okay, you had mountain hermits and ascetics and such, but not daoist monks. daoist monastic systems didnt evolve until buddhism came into china and had established its own monastic systems...i supposed the daoists kind of felt a little competition. amazingly though, the daoists right around the time of bodhidarma were surprisingly accepting of the foriegn religion, as many daoists tried to bridge the philosophies of daoism and buddhism by translating sutra into chinese and correlating different terms and concepts. i suppose that's why daoism has a little taste of buddhism, and chan has a big taste of daoism. yeah, fun stuff.

-paz

[shaolinstylee]

good post pazman....

Taoism is an interesting thing to read into, especialy after reading some buddhist scriptures, and writings. There are many similar ideas, just going about it in some very different ways.

[doc]

RJW had an excellent reply which I've moved here: http://x.russbo.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=484

It is deserving of its own thread.

doc