The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma: A Bilingual Edition (Paperback)

by Bodhidharma (Author), Red Pine (Translator) "MANY roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice..." (more)
Key Phrases: poisoned states, invoking buddhas, reward body, Twelvefold Canon (more...)

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Product Description
A fifth-century Indian Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma is credited with bringing Zen to China. Although the tradition that traces its ancestry back to him did not flourish until nearly two hundred years after his death, today millions of Zen Buddhists and students of kung fu claim him as their spiritual father.

While others viewed Zen practice as a purification of the mind or a stage on the way to perfect enlightenment, Bodhidharma equated Zen with buddhahood and believed that it had a place in everyday life. Instead of telling his disciples to purify their minds, he pointed them to rock walls, to the movements of tigers and cranes, to a hollow reed floating across the Yangtze.

This bilingual edition, the only volume of the great teacher's work currently available in English, presents four teachings in their entirety. "Outline of Practice" describes the four all-inclusive habits that lead to enlightenment, the "Bloodstream Sermon" exhorts students to seek the Buddha by seeing their own nature, the "Wake-up Sermon" defends his premise that the most essential method for reaching enlightenment is beholding the mind. The original Chinese test, presented on facing pages, is taken from a Ch'ing dynasty woodblock edition.


Language Notes
Text: Chinese, English

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Product Details

• Paperback: 126 pages
• Publisher: North Point Press (November 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865473994
• ISBN-13: 978-0865473997
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #80,098 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "Must Have" for any reader of Zen, July 24, 2005

By	Andrew Beaulac (Whidbey Island, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I first began researching Zen in the secondary sources: inspiring and thoughtful and informative authors like D.T. Suzuki who cited the patriarchs. At some point one realized that it's going to be essential to read the primary sources themselves. This is one of them. Here is a first rate translation of the First Patriarch of Zen. Red Pine gives a nine page introduction to Bodhidharma, facts separated from lore, providing the reader a concise introduction to what one should know about the First Patriarch of Zen, who arrived in China from India about 2000 years ago. The divisions of the book are four teachings traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma:
Outline of Practice
Bloodstream Sermon
Wake-up Sermon
Breakthrough Sermon

As usual, Mr. Pine offers you the original Chinese text throughout, and provides extensive and very helpful explanatory notes, this time offered as endnotes to keep the texts of the four teachings unencumbered.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Do not doubt that your mind is basically pure.", July 23, 2001

By	Algernon D'Ammassa (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Red Pine (aka Bill Porter, author of ROAD TO HEAVEN and a celebrated translator of Buddhist poetry and scripture) gives us a spirited translation of four talks attributed to Bodhidharma even though debates over authorship, and even the existence of Bodhidharma as more than a legend, have not rested.

Bodhidharma's "Outline of Practice" outlines the dharma as this Brahman-born monk taught it in China after being sent there by his teacher, Prajnatara. A confusing distinction made in these talks, especially the "Outline," has to do with what Bodhidharma calls "reason" (again, in this translation) and meditation practice. They are presented as two avenues to "zen," but the definitions make it hard to distinguish them. Throughout, there is an inside/outside (or mind/body) kind of thinking which may be expedient thinking for the sake of his students, or his own enduring mind-habit.

Otherwise, his teaching is very clear: attain your true self, attain what the Heart Sutra is talking about; and at that point, what is there to do? Realizing the paramitas without a trace of actor or action, the student can use form with a clear mind and help others.

In the "Bloodstream Sermon," there are questions and answers, as Bodhidharma teaches and occasionally spars with monks in China (at a time when Buddhism in China was heavily philosophical). Bodhidharma has mastered the philosophy enough to turn it on its ear and make it point these sleepy students to "just doing it." If you do not find your true self, he says, all invocations, offerings and precepts are useless. "The thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind."

With the "Breakthrough Sermon," the conceptualizing gets pretty convoluted. Dharma speeches are like acupuncture needles, and what may have pointed directly 1,500 years ago becomes mysterious. This talk refers to the Nirvana Sutra and the Sutra of the Ten Stages, which were revolutionizing Buddhism in China.

It is interesting to watch how Bodhidharma intercepts questions which are often reverently Buddhist and spin them around to the three poisons (anger, greed, delusion) and their need to practice just now. And yet one might wonder that even as he criticizes external devotions, he seems to be making something special about "inner" work and enlightenment. Is there such thing as practice without inside and outside?

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear as a bell., October 9, 2005

By	Mike Stiler "nobody" (Monhegan, Maine USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is a little jewel. Every time I open it I am impressed anew with its clarity and immediacy. This is due,I think, not only to the timelessness of the teachings themselves, but to Red Pine's intelligence & sensitivity. Many thanks, Red Pine.