Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma East Asia
Ta-mo of China, Daruma of Japan–the founder of the Ch'an Tsung, or ‘inner-light school’ of Buddhism. This sect was one of the most distinctive and original products of the Chinese mind, while its culmination as Zen in Japan has had a profound influence not only on East Asia, but even on the West.

Bodhidharma reached Nanking from South India about 520. Legend has been thickly woven around this enigmatic man, who soon acquired an outstanding fame. An inkling of the strength of his personality can still be gauged from the following account of his interview with the Chinese Emperor. The audience was brief and abrupt, for when the Emperor described all that he had done to promote the faith, such as founding monasteries, supporting translators, and undertaking charitable deeds, and asked what merit he had obtained in so doing, a reasonable question in terms of gradualist Mahayana doctrine, Bodhidharma replied, ‘No merit...

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