Xuanzang and Bodhidharma:
Building Bridges Between China and India
Ian S. McIntosh
Abstract
In the study of pilgrimage and peace-building, case studies in which peoples of
different religions, cultures and walks of life come together with a common
purpose, are in the spotlight. A novel example is that between India and China
through Buddhism. Unlike so many other instances, the spread of this religion was
not linked to conquest – rather, it was linked to the uplifting of the human spirit,
the search for enlightenment, and the betterment of society. These bridges between
India and China would last right up to the onset of colonization. In this paper my
attention is focused on two astonishing figures from that period of cultural and
religious exchange – the Chinese monk Xuanzang and the Indian Monk
Bodhidharma. I examine both their lives and contributions, and also the work of
the bricoleurs or mythmakers who have transformed their earthly pilgrimages into
fantastic odysseys that have inspired generation after generation of pilgrims. My
goal is to elicit a deeper appreciation of peace-building through the legacy of
pilgrimage.
Key Words: Xuanzang, Bodhidharma, Zen, Buddhism, Emperor Wu, Faxian,
Kumarajiva,
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1. Introduction
I situate this comparative piece in three areas: studies of collective memory, the
idea of the hero’s journey, and pilgrimage literature. Pilgrimage is often viewed in
terms of a movement towards what might be termed the centre for some spiritual or
secular purpose. The goal is to attain or achieve something of great worth – like
purification, redemption or even re-birth - and then to return, sharing with others
these new understandings or pathways. These are journeys of personal
transformation, for strengthening of faith, and deepening one’s appreciation of the
transcendental. Pilgrims help bolster our sense of belonging within the imagined
community that defines us. Role models for such journeys are often described in
heroic terms. The prototypical hero figure as defined by Joseph Campbell (1949) in
his book ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ describes the hero setting forth on his
life-changing journey both for adventure and for the greater common good. The
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quest is filled with danger, excitement, accomplishment, and renewal, and these
same elements are also present in the myth-enhanced versions of the narratives of
Xuanzang and Bodhidharma. Both our heroes provide today’s pilgrims with not
just a site to visit to contemplate the past, but also an opportunity for
transformation - attaining those higher ideals that the heroes have come to
represent. So I look at each ‘hero’ in the light of both what is actually known
about them in the historical record, and what is known through the sacred lens of
mythology.
2. Monks as Heroes
Xuanzang was born in 602 CE and he is the most famous of the Chinese monks
who headed west to India– to the centre of the Buddhist world in search of deeper
understandings and better translations of the sutras. He was a self-described
pilgrim from central China and he was motivated by the fact that his people were,
he claimed, ignorant, knowing only greed, hedonism, promiscuity and sin. He was
to visit all the great Buddha pilgrimage sites in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Nepal – all that was then known as India. He didn’t go to Sri Lanka but from
southern India he claimed to have seen across the waters the glittering rays of the
precious gem that sits atop the Temple of the Buddha’s Tooth. Its appearance was
like that of a shining star in the midst of space, he said.
When he returned to China after a journey of 16 years, the Tang emperor built
the Great Wild Goose pagoda in Xian to house the sutras, the statues of the
Buddha, 150 or so Buddha relics, and other artefacts that he had brought back. This
pagoda became a great centre of learning, with pilgrims coming from all over East
Asia to study.
Bodhidharma, by contrast, traveling about 100 years before Xuanzang, brought
no sutras with him from India, only a meditation technique and philosophy that is
known as Zen. He is said to be from Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, the third son of
a Pallava king – but there are a numerous variations of this story. He wasn’t a
pilgrim in China like Xuanzang was in India. He was sent there to spread
Buddhism, and sites in China associated with him have become major pilgrimage
sites, including the cave where he meditated for 9 years. While he is virtually
unknown in India – apart from a controversial 2011 film called 7am Arivu,
Bodhidharma is arguably the most famous Indian ever to have set foot in China.
His legacy is very considerable there, as well as in Japan, and Vietnam. He is
honoured as the bringer of Chen Buddhism from India to China, and Zen thereafter
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to Japan. It is also claimed that he brought Kung Fu to the famous shaolin monks.
Their temple at Mt Song is a major pilgrimage destination.
Now there were many Chinese monks who travelled to India to learn about
Buddhism and gather sutras. Two hundred years before Xuanzang, the monk
Faxian had made his extended pilgrimage to India. Indian colleagues tell me that
Faxian’s journey is a topic of interest in Indian school curriculums, as with
Xuanzang. But there is no mythology associated with Faxian like there is with
Xuanzang, and no hagiographies.
It is the same with Bodhidharma. There were many Indian monks who
journeyed to China beginning in the first century of the Common Era, if not earlier.
A good number were sent for by Chinese emperors. The most famous story
regarding the introduction of Buddhism to China comes from the Han Dynasty
Emperor Ming who saw in a dream a flying god whose body had the brilliance of a
sun. When he asked what God is this, he was told that there was a man in India
who had achieved the Dao. The Emperor sent envoys to India to make inquiries
and sutras were returned on the backs of white horses to the then capital of
Luoyang where the first Buddhist temple was built. Two Indian monks came along
- Dharmaratna and Kasyapa Matanga. Another famous Indian monk was
Kumarajiva, whose father – a monk - had come from Kashmir as a missionary with
the goal of converting all the peoples of China to Buddhism. Kumarajiva lived
about 200 years before Bodhidharma and is credited with being one of the four
great translators of the Buddhist sutras in China. But there is little or no mythology,
and no hagiographies about him or these other monks. Only Xuanzang and
Bodhidharma.
We have very detailed accounts by Xuanzang about his travels in India in the 7 th
century. He was meticulous in his record keeping and indeed some of his accounts
in the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions are the only records that exist
describing what South Asia was like 1400 years ago before the coming of Islam –
in particular the peaceful and prosperous cosmopolitan court of King Harsha of
northern India, or Xuanzang’s meeting with the King of Assam. He was also the
first to record the ritual behaviour of pilgrims at Allahabad on the place where the
Kumbh Mela pilgrimage is located, albeit in negative terms. He speaks of the
naked Jains and of Brahmans, and of immense Buddhist centres of learning with
tens of thousands of young men. For Xuanzang, India was a true paradise – China
was on the periphery of the world, and India its very centre.
However, in his book we do see the beginning of this sort of myth-making that
would flourish later on. For example, Xuanzang spent a number of years at the
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ancient university of Nalanda studying logic, grammar, Sanskrit, and the Yogakara
– the yoga based school of Buddhism for which he would become identified. Here
he met his guru, the venerable Silabhadra, then the most prominent monk in all of
India, Silabadra had dreamed of Xuanzang’s arrival, and predicted how they would
help to spread Buddhism far and wide.
This story is worth looking at in more detail. Silabhadra was old and had been
ill for some time and wanted to leave the mortal realm, but in a dream he was
visited by 3 bodhisattvas who told him that he could not die yet. Rather, he should
await the arrival of a Chinese monk. And as the story goes, Xuanzang had a dream
at that very same point in time that convinced him to travel to India. And when he
arrived in Nalanda – and this part is true - 10,000 monks greeted him and a
delegation led him, all crawling on hands and knees, for a meeting with Silabhadra.
By contrast, with Bodhidharma, there are virtually no records – and what we
lose by way of fact is made up by a wealth of invention. In Guangzhou where he is
said to have landed in either the Liu Song Dynasty (420-479) or the Liang Dynasty
(502-557CE) there is a great gateway that identifies the exact spot where he
stepped ashore from the Pearl River. He had traveled on the maritime silk route via
Sumatra, and the Hualin Temple in Guangzhou marks where he began his teaching.
His journey north to meet the Boddhisatva Emporer Wu and their conversation –
which I shall return to – is legendary. The story says that after this meeting he
sailed across the Yangzi River and a blade of bamboo grass and sat in a cave for 9
years practicing the meditation technique of wall gazing – or emptying one’s mind.
More on this later.
As I noted earlier, both the Xuangzang and Bodhidharma narratives have
benefited from generations of input by myth-makers. They have transformed
simple albeit heroic journeys into odysseys. China embraced the methodologies of
Bodhidharma and his life story was crafted by Chinese myth-makers in such a way
that it came to resemble that of the Buddha himself i.e. the son of a king who
leaves a life of wealth and privilege to become a monk, and so on. But more than
that, in order to lend legitimacy to the reign of various Chinese emperors, it was
decreed that Bodhidharma was a reincarnation of the Buddha, the 28 th ancestor or
patriarch. So in China this humble Indian would become known as the first
ancestor of Buddhism.
Xuanzang’s travels, perhaps 100 years later, also drew the attention of mythmakers. They accredited his towering achievements in India to no less than the
intersession of heavenly beings. His visits to 100 kingdoms, evading robbers and
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pirates, meeting the great Khan of the Turks, crossing the deserts of Samarkand,
and so on, resembles the journey of Sinbad the Sailor.
So the story of Xuanzang that became popular after his death was not that of
scholarly monk but rather a hero. The mythical version is encapsulated in one of
China’s four classic novels – The Journey to West – which was written in the 16th
century during the Ming Dynasty. In English this story is known as Monkey. It’s a
comedic adventure with deeply spiritual insights – an extended allegory in which
pilgrims journey towards their own enlightenment by way of India. It has been the
subject of popular television programs in China and Japan, and of movies and stage
plays. The central character, the young Xuanzang, is a reincarnation of the Golden
Cicada. He is chosen by the Boddhisatva Guanyin to travel to India to bring back
the sutras.1 And to help him would be a stone monkey God – Sun Wukong, a fish
spirit, a pig spirit and a dragon horse. Their journey is filled with constant terrors
and untold dangers and they were challenged 81 times in accordance with the
Buddha’s wish. In the end, Xuanxang succeeds, fetches the sutras, and becomes a
Buddha in the process, but only because the rebellious stone monkey saved his life
time and time again.
The role of the anti-social monkey has been the subject of much deliberation.
As one screen rendition describes it – the monkey was the most powerful force in
the universe – apart from the Buddha within each of us. And he was able to
conquer his animal spirit - as we all do through a process of enculturation - to also
become a Buddha.
This revelation helps us understand the reasons behind the myth-making in the
Bodhidharma stories.
Bodhidharma has not been the subject of popular films or theater like Xuanzang
though he is immortalized in Chinese popular novels where he is known as Damo –
the blue eyed barbarian. As I mentioned, legend says that he sat in a cave near the
Shaolin monastery for 9 years. After 7 years, he fell asleep and was so disturbed by
this that he cut off his eyelids so it wouldn’t happen again. Those eyelids fell to the
ground and became the first tea leaves. Apparently, there are no other origin myths
for tea leaves in China. So monks today drink tea in order to stay awake during
their meditation.
Bodhidharma’s cave is a major pilgrimage site. In one account he stared a hole
right through the wall of that cave with the power of his gaze. In another story, he
cast his shadow on a rock and his image is imprinted upon it. That rock is one of
the holy relics in the Shaolin monastery. Another holy relic of the Indian monk
relates to another bizarre tale.
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At an advanced age Bodhidharma wanted to return to India but before he could
do so, he was poisoned to death. But like Jesus, the myths insist that he conquered
death. He would not be denied passage home to India. On his way back– barefoot
and carrying a single sandal – he encountered a young Chinese merchant coming
from India. Now if I was the myth-maker I would have made sure that it was
Xuanzang coming the other way. It’s not too far fetched to think that Xuanzang
and Bodhidharma might have met, as Bodhidharma is said to have lived for 150
years. But in the story we have, the Chinese envoy Song Yunfeng greeted
Bodhidharma and asked who he was and why he was carrying a single sandal. The
Indian identified himself but would not explain the sandal. The young Chinese
merchant finally reached the royal court and relayed the story of the old Indian
monk and he was denounced as a liar because Bodhidharma was buried nearby.
The order was given to exhume the body– but in so doing they found only a single
sandal in the grave. That sandal was venerated as a holy relic in the Shaolin
monastery for many centuries but its present location is unknown.
Xuanxang lived a long life and he dedicated himself to translating the sutras
into Chinese. Some of his translations, like the Heart Sutra, are still in use today.
He also started the Faxian School of Buddhism which was short-lived. He refused
all offers by the emperor of higher service but such was his aura, his mystique and
great learning, his closeness to the Tang emperor, that following his death, various
pieces of his body were considered holy relics. His skull, for example, was held in
the Temple of Great Compassion in Tianjin until 1956 but is now in Nalanda in
India. Other pieces of his body are said to be elsewhere in China and also in Japan.
There are many accounts of Bodhidharma in places like Guangzhou and
Nanjing, though many of the commemorative sites did not survive the Japanese
invasion or the Cultural Revolution. Some stories emanating from Japan say that
after 9 years of meditation in the Shaolin cave his arms and legs fell off, and that is
why he is depicted as a Daruma (Bodhidaruma) wishing doll. Indeed, one young
Chinese monk wished to learn from Bodhidharma but was repeatedly rejected. He
would stand outside Bodhidharma’s cave in the snow day after day and then one
day he decided cut off his own arm as a show of his utmost dedication to the search
for enlightenment. Bodhidharma took him on as his pupil. This man was named
Hway Kwa and he is recognized as the second ancestor of Chinese Buddhism.
How much of all this is truth and how much is fiction? What is known is that
Xuanzang and Bodhidharma came from two separate sects of Buddhism in China.
One believed in gradual enlightenment, and the latter in sudden enlightenment.
Furthermore, they were also divided in their attachment to the imperial court.
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Xuanzang belonged to the Imperial Way School of Zen, whereas Bodhidharma
completely avoided the royal court except for his famed meeting with Emperor
Wu.
Now you need to know that this emperor had modelled himself after the great
Indian emperor Asoka who spread Buddhism across India. Like Ashoka, Emperor
Wu built many sacred temples and instituted Buddhism as the state religion. The
so-called Bodhisattva emperor had summoned the Indian monk who was already
famous because of his austere practices and powerful teachings. The interaction is
very significant in the history of Zen and says much about the nature of our guru.
It was around the year 520CE. The emperor told Bodhidharma that he had built
many temples and given financial support to monastic communities across China,
and he asked the monk how much karmic merit had he gained by these actions.
Bodhidharma replied, "None whatsoever," adding that it would be like a shadow
seeking form. Perplexed, the emperor then asked the eminent monk who he was to
tell him such things, to which Bodhidharma answered, ‘I don't know’.
3. Myth and History
What are we to make of these various accounts of our ambassadors of peace?
The mythologized accounts elevate what are already powerful stories onto a higher
plane, allowing us to appreciate more fully the teachings of Buddha and the
magnitude of our heroes’ devotion and contributions.
The academic study of myth reveals how we apprehend the unknowable whole
by reference to the part. Christians might say that they can understand the majesty
of God only through the life of Jesus and the saints. Consider how the Catholic
Church puts their saints to work for the greater good. Saint Maria Goretti, for
example, is the patron saint of forgiveness. She was murdered at a young age but
continues to spread her words of mercy and compassion today thanks to the
intercession of the catholic establishment. Devoted pilgrims will see their God
reflected in her example and will be uplifted by contact with the casket containing
her skeletal remains encased in a wax figurine. She helps pilgrims on their journey
today, as in the past.
We comprehend the infinite realm by reference to these what helpers or saints,
who are like gateways to the liminal. These helpers may be heroes or fantasy
images, a prayer, chant, or mantra. They can also be a gesture, an icon, or statue, or
a physical action like counting beads. Talismans or similar objects kept in one’s
pocket also function as helpers. (See Senn 139) And pilgrims need this help to
succeed in their journeys of transformation. Their experience is often very
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challenging for faith, beliefs, life’s purpose or reason for living are necessarily
called into question during a pilgrimage. We are made vulnerable in the public
realm and seek verification and empowerment through our actions. (Senn 132)
This is why the hero’s narrative is so important for pilgrims.
The mythologized accounts make the monks’ lives immediate, accessible and
relevant for each generations. Through the work of the bricoleur, Xuanzang and
Bodhidharma have become instruments of a greater purpose – the turning wheel of
dharma – saints and heroes who are spreading the Buddhist faith. Bodhidharma, for
example, is said to have expounded the wordless truth like a bright candle in a dark
room, like the bright moon when the clouds open.
Pilgrims yearning for the divine seek, through these narratives and the task of
pilgrimage, to become part of something larger than themselves, where they have
the opportunity to envision, with a little more clarity, the unknowable whole. In so
doing, they have spread the message peace.
Bibliography
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. New York: Bollington
Series. Pantheon Books. Inc.
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1941. The Legendary Topography of the Gospels. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France.
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1950. Collective Memory. Ed. Mary Douglas. New York:
Harper & Row.
Senn, Corelyn. 2002. Journeying as Religious Education: The Shaman, The Hero,
The Pilgrim, and the Labyrinth Walker. Religious Education. 97: 2 124-140.
West, Brad. 2008. ‘Enchanting Pasts: The Role of International Civil Religious
Pilgrimage in Reimagining National Collective Memory.’
Sociological Theory 26:3 258-2