ZenExperience-obooko-rel0025

CHAPTER ONE
BODHIDHARMA: FIRST PATRIARCH OF ZEN
There is a Zen legend that a bearded Indian monk named
Bodhidharma (ca. 470-532), son of a South Indian Brahmin king,
appeared one day at the southern Chinese port city of Canton,
sometime around the year 520. From there he traveled northeast
to Nanking, near the mouth of the Yangtze River, to honor an
invitation from China's most devout Buddhist, Emperor Wu of the
Liang Dynasty. After a famous interview in which his irreverence
left the emperor dismayed, Bodhidharma pressed onward to the
Buddhist centers of the north, finally settling in at the Shao-lin
monastery on Mt. Sung for nine years of meditation staring at a
wall. He then transmitted his insights and a copy of the
Lankavatara sutra to a successor and passed on—either
physically, spiritually, or both. His devotion to meditation and to
the aforementioned sutra were his legacies to China. He was later