207-Bodhidharma - Buddhism in daily life

Bodhidharma

Who was Bodhidharma?

Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk and the founder of the Shaolin Temple; for this reason, he will be told about it here. As with all historical figures, stories continue to be "embellished" and "made more vivid" from generation to generation.

Bodhidharma (short: Damo) lived approximately from 444 to 529 AD; he was born in India or Persia and is said to have had blue eyes, which is why Chinese chronicles called him the "blue-eyed devil". He was also trained in martial arts, such as Vajramushti (Indian style) or Pahlavani (Persian style), which subsequently had a great influence on Shaolin Kung Fu.

How Damo came into contact with the philosophy of Buddha is not known. At that time, countless monks and itinerant preachers were traveling throughout Asia to spread their teachings, but of course also to make a living. Probably Damo met a follower of Buddha, who trained him to become a Buddhist monk.

According to the understanding of that time, a monk had to live ascetic and abstemious, preach, and wander (wandering monk). Certainly, there were monasteries already at that time, but the majority of the various scholars did not find shelter in a temple. Thus, they had no choice but to earn their living by "itinerant preaching".

Damo, however, traveled much further than other Buddhist monks. He traveled across the Himalayas to China to the court of the Chinese emperor Wu-Di. The latter led China into a "golden age". Unimaginable wealth and sensational splendorous buildings made the imperial court the center of the world at that time ("China", in Chinese, means "the land of the middle").

At the emperor's court, a tradition had developed whereby Indian monks spread the teachings of Buddha in a missionary manner. Itinerant preachers had become a kind of "normality".

Standing out from this crowd was guaranteed not to be easy. Especially since the Chinese emperor was firmly anchored in Confucianism, and may have rejected Buddhist ideas. But Damo managed to reach the emperor Wu-Di with his views.

Here he seems to have succeeded in explaining to the emperor, who had distinguished himself by particularly much "good", that the doing of good works does not necessarily entail "salvation" or even "enlightenment".

Those who do positive things, because he expects advantages from them, achieve exactly the opposite. "Do good and talk about it" is said today, but the philosophy founded by Damo, his further development of Buddha's teachings, show that doing good things just to take credit for them is wrong and dishonorable.

Emperor Wu-Di is said to have given Damo the site of the present Shaolin Temple in the Song Shan Mountains, one of the five sacred mountains of China, for the propagation of his view of life. There he meditated in a cave for nine years. A practice is common in the philosophy of self-reflection derived from Mahayana Buddhism. During this time, Damo developed a subspecies of Buddhism called Chan Buddhism (better known by the Japanese term Zen). The core message of Chan is that the desired enlightenment can be achieved by sinking into meditation all by itself.

Words are illusions

- Bodhidharma (short: Damo) - original quote

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