on Bodhidharma

bohiruci SG

Then Bodhidharma sang a hymn of praise, "When he beheld how the golden dome sparkled in the sun, how its light reflected upon the surfaces of the clouds, how the precious bell housed the wind within itself and how its voice rang beyond the heavens." This hymn means that the upper realm or reality which is the Pure Mind Essence, or figuratively the golden dome of the temple, was in harmony with the Karmic forces of Creation or Manifestation, or figuratively the Sun, and the illumination of the golden dome or the Pure Mind Essence reflected Sentiency, or figuratively "its light reflected upon the surfaces of the clouds

.http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bodhidharma.htm

bohiruci SG

In fact, the realization that the Bodhi or Buddha Nature is an immanent reality, and the idea that the Manifestation and Dissolution of the Cosmos is merely an assumption of our conditioned minds, led to the pronouncement of the now famous four-line eulogy on Ch'an or Zen:

"A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not founded upon words and letters;
By pointing directly to Mind.
It lets one see into nature and attain Buddhahood."

bohiruci SG

"Bodhidharma was a teacher of the Dharma who came from South India in the Westem Regions, and was the third son of a Brahmin king; possessed of amazing wisdom and penetrating clarity and thoroughly understood everything he heard."

In fact, the main corpus of this text is the same as the Tao-Hsuan narrative. However, the variations like the above phrase that Bodhidharma was the third son of a Brahmin king offer further information. As explained in the topic on Asanga [vide "Third Eye of the Buddhist"], the term king denotes the notion of materiality or the phenomenological reality. Thus a Brahmin king in fact only denotes that the Mind is essentially of this world realm. This phrase merely highlights the Mind Nature within this world, to better illustrate the Immanent nature of the Bodhi Essence or Buddha Nature. [However, like all Chinese texts this text also allows for a Transcendentalist interpretation.] Thus, there is not any caste or parentage of an Indian person in these texts.