“I seek the heart; I do not seek Buddha. For I have learnt to know that the outer world is empty and untenanted.”
Such was the teaching of Bodhidharma. It was Vedantic[3] rather than Buddhist. The terms “thought,” “Buddha,” etc., used by Bodhidharma correspond exactly to the brahman of the Upanishads. Mystic contemplation or yoga had been used by the Brahmins and was not unknown to the early Buddhists. But Bodhidharma was the first to insist upon it as the sole means of salvation.
Yet though his whole teaching turned on this “meditation” or “Zen,” he left behind him no exact directions for the practice of it. Having shown the end, he left it to each individual to find his own means. Rules, dogmas and definitions were precisely what he set out to destroy.
Less than a hundred years after his death another Indian, Buddhapriya, came to China and there defined with exactitude and blunt materiality the various forms of meditation.
The transition from the spirituality of Bodhidharma to the grossness of his follower is, however, typical of religious history. The poetry of Christ turns into the theology of Paul; the hovel of Saint Francis into the mansion of Brother Elias.
BUDDHAPRIYA.
He first describes the different attitudes in which Zen may be practised, with an exact account of the correct position for hands, feet, head, etc. The normal attitude of meditation, cross-legged, with upright back and hands locked over the knees is familiar to every one.
Zen could also be practised while walking and, in cases of sickness, while lying down. Buddhapriya’s instructions are in the form of question and answer.
Question.—How does the Zen practised by heretics and by the other schools of Buddhism differ from our Zen?
Answer.—The Zen of the heretics is not impersonal. The Zen of the Lesser Vehicle is material. The Zen of the Greater Vehicle only abstracts man and phenomena.