At First Thanks to AR MURUGADOSS and his TEAM, bringing BODHIDHARMA into picture.
Bodhidharma is thought to have been born in Kanchipuram, near Madras, fourteen centuries ago as a son of a king in the south of India. There was a big empire, the empire of Pallavas. He was the third son of his father, but seeing everything -- he was a man of tremendous intelligence -- he renounced the kingdom. He was not against the world, but he was not ready to waste his time in mundane affairs, in trivia. His whole concern was to know his self-nature, because without knowing it you have to accept death as the end.
And the second thing that I would like you to remember is that although he was a follower of Gautam the Buddha, in some instances he shows higher flights than Gautam the Buddha himself. At the age of seven he purportedly began making observations of precocious wisdom.
Bodhidharma got initiated by a woman who was enlightened. Her name was Pragyatara. His teacher, Prajnatara, changed the boy's name from Bodhitara to Bodhidharma. Following his father's death, Bodhidharma served Prajnatara for many years spreading Buddhism. Bodhidharma left his monastery in India to follow his master's last wish that he go to China and spread the teaching.
People who had reached there China before him had made a great impact, although none of them were enlightened. They were great scholars, very disciplined people, very loving and peaceful and compassionate, but none of them were enlightened. And now China needed another Gautam Buddha. The ground was ready. Bodhidharma was the first enlightened man to reach China.
He looked very ferocious. He had very big eyes, but he had a very soft heart -- just a lotus flower in his heart. But his face was almost as dangerous as you can conceive. Just the sunglasses were missing; otherwise he was a mafia guy!
He lived on the mountain whose name was Tai... Bodhidharma was the first man who created tea -- the name `tea' comes from the name TAI, because it was created on the mountain Tai. And all the words for tea in any language, are derived from the same source, tai. In English it is tea, in Hindi it is CHAI. That Chinese word tai can also be pronounced as CHA. The Marathi word is exactly CHA.
The way Bodhidharma created tea cannot be historical but is significant. He was meditating almost all the time, and sometimes in the night he would start falling asleep. So, just not to fall asleep, just to teach a lesson to his eyes, he took out all his eyebrow hairs and threw them in the temple ground. The story is that out of those eyebrows, the tea bushes grew. Those were the first tea bushes. That's why when you drink tea, you cannot sleep. And in Buddhism it became a routine that for meditation, tea is immensely helpful. So the whole Buddhist world drinks tea as part of meditation, because it keeps you alert and awake.
In the history of martial arts, Bodhidharma holds a special place. Suitably impressed with his great spiritual power and discipline, the monks asked him to teach them his methods for gaining enlightenment. He began to teach them the Chan (later Zen) method of seated meditation. The monks at the time, often falling asleep during protracted sessions of seated meditation considered necessary for gaining enlightenment.
To improve the monk’s physical and mental health, Bodhidharma devised and taught them a series of static and moving yoga-like exercises that are now usually called 18 Monks Boxing, the Sinew Change Classic and the Marrow Washing Classic. Although many variations exist, posturally, these ancient exercises show the influence of classical Hatha Yoga and even Kalaripayat (a complex fighting art from ancient India).
Bodhidharma created an exercise program for the monks which involved physical techniques that were efficient, strengthened the body, and eventually, could be used practically in self-defense. When Bodhidharma instituted these practices, his primary concern was to make the monks physically strong enough to withstand both their isolated lifestyle and the deceptively demanding training that meditation requires. It turned out that the techniques served a dual purpose as a very efficient fighting system, which evolved into a marital arts style.
Bodhidharma was poisoned by some disciple as a revenge, because he had not been chosen as the successor. So they buried him. We have heard so much about Jesus' resurrection. But nobody has talked much of the resurrection of Bodhidharma. Perhaps he was only in a coma when they buried him, and then he came to his senses, slipped out of the tomb, left one sandal there and put another sandal on his staff, and according to the plan, he left.
He wanted to die in the eternal snows of the Himalayas. He wanted that there should be no tomb, no temple, no statue of him. He did not want to leave any footprints behind him to be worshiped; those who love him should enter into their own being -- "I am not going to be worshiped." And he disappeared almost in thin air. Nobody heard anything about him -- what happened, where he died. He must be buried in the eternal snows of the Himalayas somewhere.
Not everyone, of course, accepts these legends. (Debates usually center on when Bodhidharma actually lived, what he actually taught the monks at Shaolin and what historical accounts recounting his life and teachings can be said to be accurate.) Although the historicity of the account given above has been called into question, there is little doubt that the figure of Bodhidharma casts a long shadow in terms of his influence on both Buddhist thought and Shaolin Boxing. Still, less discussed is the monk’s importation and propagation of certain yogic principles and ideas that seem to have been influenced in their character by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the foundational work of Raja Yoga.
- Compiled By Sarveswaran.
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