1. BODHIDARMA
AN
UNKNOWN STORY
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2. Third son of a Tamil king of the
Pallava Dynasty
Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk
who lived during the 5th/6th
century and is traditionally
credited as the leading patriarch
and transmitter of Zen (Chinese:
Chan, Sanskrit: Dhyana) to
China. He was the third son of a
Tamil king of the Pallava Dynasty.
According to Chinese legend, he
also began the physical training
of the Shaolin monks that led to
the creation of Shaolinquan.
However, martial arts historians
have shown this legend stems
from a 17th century qigong
manual known as the Yijin Jing.
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3. Kshatriya warrior
Little contemporary biographical
information on Bodhidharma is
extant, and subsequent accounts
became layered with legend, but some
accounts state that he was from a
Brahman family in southern India and
possibly of royal lineage.However
Broughton (1999:2) notes that
Bodhidharma's royal pedigree implies
that he was of the Kshatriya warrior
caste. Mahajan (1972:705–707)
argued that the Pallava dynasty was a
Tamilian dynasty and Zvelebil (1987)
proposed that Bodhidharma was born
a prince of the Pallava dynasty in
their capital of Kanchipuram[4]
Scholars have concluded his place of
birth to be Kanchipuram in Tamil
Nadu, India.
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4. "The Blue-Eyed Barbarian"
After becoming a Buddhist monk,
Bodhidharma traveled to China. The
accounts differ on the date of his
arrival, with one early account
claiming that he arrived during the
Liú Sòng Dynasty (420–479) and
later accounts dating his arrival to
the Liáng Dynasty (502–557).
Bodhidharma was primarily active in
the lands of the Northern Wèi
Dynasty (386–534). Modern
scholarship dates him to about the
early 5th century.Throughout
Buddhist art, Bodhidharma is
depicted as a rather ill-tempered,
profusely bearded and wide-eyed
barbarian. He is described as "The
Blue-Eyed Barbarian" in Chinese
texts.
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5. Bodhidharma the 28th patriarch of Buddhism
The Anthology of the Patriarchal
Hall (952) identifies
Bodhidharma as the 28th
Patriarch of Buddhism in an
uninterrupted line that extends all
the way back to the Buddha
himself. D.T. Suzuki contends that
Chán's growth in popularity
during the 7th and 8th centuries
attracted criticism that it had "no
authorized records of its direct
transmission from the founder of
Buddhism" and that Chán
historians made Bodhidharma the
28th patriarch of Buddhism in
response to such attacks.
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6. QUOTES
“Not thinking about anything is
Zen. Once you know this,
walking, sitting, or lying down,
everything you do is Zen.”
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7. QUOTES
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8. True Understanding
“When your mind doesn’t
stir inside, the world
doesn’t arise outside.
When the world and the
mind are both
transparent, this is true
vision. And such
understanding is true
understanding.”
Bodhidharma
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9. Your Nature is the Buddha
“Your nature is
the Buddha.”
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10. NIRVANA
“Your
mind is
nirvana.”
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11. RECOVERING YOUR REALSELF
“Worship means
reverence and
humility it means
revering your
real self and
humbling
delusions.”
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12. Understanding the Language
of
Buddhas
“Whoever realizes that the
six senses aren’t real,
that the five aggregates
are fictions, that no such
things can be located
anywhere in the body,
understands the
language of Buddhas.”
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