Part 1
https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/i9cr10/a_zen_joke_part_1/
“So you’re not dead after all! My students believed you to be long gone when we found you in that cave, but I knew Zen monks are far too stubborn to die that easily. I am surprised you know our language – though your word choice is a bit archaic and you need some practice with your tones! I am not Mara, I don’t think – that is your name for some supernatural being that tempts men with delusions? I have heard of the concept, but not that name…nor did I know that Zen masters still believed in such nonsense. I’m a bit disappointed, to be honest.
Still, I give you credit. You have your ways, and we have ours. I will admit that when I was younger, I thought of your kind as the worst devils as well. In fact, back then, had I found you in that cave, I probably would have killed you myself, even knowing that I was breaking one of the Ten Grave Precepts. But here I am, and here you are. I have an idea of who you are, but tell me, old man. What is your name? My students and I did go through the trouble of pulling you out and nursing you back to health, after all. I think you owe me that much.”
Bodhidharma squinted. “So you are human? I thought so at first, but appearances can be deceiving…”
The monk chuckled, though this time there was some sadness and weariness in his own voice. “Sadly, yes, I am human, and an old man myself. Not quite as old as you, but one day soon the end will come for me. I hope I will meet it with the fortitude and courage you showed when you thought the end was near, though I also hope I will not be as stubborn and foolish”.
Bodhidharma considered his reply.
“Very well, then. I will not thank you for pulling me back to this realm, however. The Chinese call me Bodhidharma, though that is not my birth name, and I will not tell that to you, stranger. I was born on a distant forest island and as a young man I embarked on a long journey to escape war and spread the Dharma to new lands. I passed through your country as part of that journey and learned your language and many others.
Eventually I settled in China, in a land that was wondrous and new to me but grew to be old and commonplace. For a long time, I was angry and lonely, and I left my companions to live alone on a mountain, promising myself never to teach any student this foolish religion that had carried me away from my family and ruined my life. I burned all of the books I had cherished and sworn to protect, and I learned the ways of nature.
Somehow others sought me out and found me, either noticing my tracks or being sent to me by my old friends, when they could not agree with a student or teach them anymore. I turned them all away, even if I had to frighten or injure them, until at last one young Chinese man tried to cut off his own arm to demonstrate his devotion and desperation. I took pity on that boy, who reminded me of my own young self, and though I should not have, I nursed him back to life as you did me, and I taught him what I knew, even though it would have been better for both of us if I had left him to die.
I trained him for many years, and he became my son and closest friend, until one day we had a terrible argument and he left the mountain, never to return. He would send other students to me, though, over the years, sometimes nobles, sometimes illiterate peasants, and I taught them what I could, and learned from them as well. The Chinese came to call my teachings Ch’an, and spoke of temples that my student had helped build, but that is not the true name of my order, and it is not our way to build temples, so I must have failed him as a teacher.
Eventually I became sick and tired of teaching and had nothing left to offer that could not be gained from others. I left that mountain and settled on the one you found me on, and this time I took care that no student or ruler would find me. My only friends were the animals on that mountain, who are better than people because they care not for doctrines and words. But eventually I grew tired of even them, and I grew tired of myself. And I tried to die. So let me now ask you, stranger. Why did you stop me? What right do you have to question me about my life? And why would you, a monk of the forest who needs little and cares little for the affairs of others, exert such effort to save an old man who is tired of living?”
The man had his own story, and it was just as interesting, and just as mundane.
“Actually, Bodhidharma, I have long been seeking you. It wasn’t easy, and it took me several years to track you down even once I had reached China, but you are not as crafty as you think you are. Or at least, not as crafty as me. You have lived in the forest and mountains for years. I was born in them. You took pity and comfort in the animals. I fought with and learned from them. And still you are lying. You say you cared not for books or for the Dharma, but you wrote many texts, and took care in making sure they would be widely distributed. They are now read throughout China, and even in foreign lands, enlightening many, confusing many others, as I’m sure you intended. I read several of them myself, and I came to hate you, and to see you as my nemesis.
I am what you would call an Arhat, a disciple of the Lesser Vehicle or the Hinayana, of those who prefer careful study and moral conduct over reckless action and chaotic ways, a descendant of those who follow the teachings recorded and preserved by Ananda, those ponderous volumes of sayings and rules that you considered arcane and wearying to the eyes. You said some unkind things about people like me in those texts you wrote – that we cared not for others, that we only sought our own enlightenment, even that we perverted and slandered the Buddha and his Dharma by studying only his words and the rules that he laid down, things that were particular only to his time and place and meant nothing in other contexts. I think you even wrote that it would not be wrong to kill people like us, if it came to that, although I may be misremembering – I read it long ago, and my eyes are too poor for reading anymore.”
Bodhidharma did not expect this. He felt every emotion that he thought he had once mastered – fear, anger, surprise, hatred, love, curiosity, confusion. He felt the desire to kill this foolish man, and he felt the desire to bow down and ask to become his student. He took a long time to breathe deeply and calm his beating heart, and at last he spoke for what he thought would be the last time.
“So that’s what you want, then, revenge? You tracked me all this way, and brought me back from the brink of death, just to kill me yourself? I do not repent of my words. I was right about your kind – you understand nothing of what the Buddha taught. What kind of monk are you, who spends his years pursuing vengeance, who hunts down old men through foreign countries to torment and kill them over some petty literary quarrel? I do not fear you. I feel nothing for you, except pity. You are no Buddhist, and your teachers were charlatans who preserve books of intricate lies and preach the words of Mara herself.
Kill me, if that is what you desire. Give in to your anger, and taste your long-sought revenge. But know that you kill the First Patriarch of Ch’an, the greatest living disciple of the Buddha’s greatest student, and let my death be a lesson to you, your first lesson. Know that I am the first real teacher that you have ever met, and that when you murder me, it will be the first true act of devotion you have ever undertaken in service to the Buddha”.
___
This is Part 2 of a 3 part story. I will post the final section tomorrow. The first part is posted in the link at the top. Thanks for reading this much! I promise you, if you've come this far, it will be worth finishing.
Gassho
Submitted August 14, 2020 at 07:14PM by mousekeeping https://ift.tt/3awf2HF
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