Bodhidharma
? · Mount Song (Shaolin)
trad. fl. c. 5th–6th c. CE; arrival in China trad. c. 520; life largely legendary
Bodhidharma is the traditional first patriarch of Chan (Zen) in China, said to have brought a wordless, meditation-centered transmission 'outside the scriptures' from India. The historical kernel is extremely thin: only two brief early notices mention him, and they conflict even on his origin (South Indian brahmin versus Central Asian Persian) and his age. Almost everything else—the meeting with Emperor Wu, nine years of wall-gazing at Shaolin, the patriarch lineage running back through Mahākāśyapa—is retrospective Chan construction of later centuries. He is presented here as a figure of tradition: a name around which the Chan founding-legend crystallized, with the documented kernel and the hagiography kept distinct.
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Mount Song (Shaolin)
What they did here
TRADITION: said to have come to China (trad. c. 520) and settled near the Shaolin monastery on Mount Song; the famous wall-gazing meditation and the Shaolin associations are legendary embellishment.
About Mount Song (Shaolin)
Mount Song, in Henan province, China, is one of the sacred mountains of China and the site of the Shaolin Monastery. By Chan tradition the semi-legendary Indian monk Bodhidharma, regarded as the first patriarch of Chinese Chan, settled at Shaolin on Mount Song, where he is said to have meditated facing a wall for nine years.
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