Deities
Bodhidharma
boh-dih-DAR-mah
Buddhist Deities
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Bodhidharma is the monk from the west held to have brought Chan to China in the fifth or sixth century, who met Emperor Wu of Liang and told him his temple-building had earned no merit at all, then crossed the Yangtze and sat facing a wall at Shaolin for nine years. He is shown glaring, bearded and hooded, with enormous eyes, and is said to have cut off his eyelids to stop himself sleeping. The historical man is barely documented; the encounter with the emperor appears only in much later Chan literature, and the association with Shaolin martial arts is later still and has no early support. In Japan he is Daruma, and his weighted round figure is sold for setting goals.
Facts
Function
Domain / FunctionAwakening and liberation 1 Disputed
HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 2 Chan Buddhist tradition names Bodhidharma as the founder who brought the teaching from India to China. John McRae's Seeing Through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism (2003) documents that the traditional biography, including the nine years facing a wall at Shaolin and the transmission to Huike, was assembled in stages across several centuries of later Chan hagiographical writing rather than recorded at the time. McRae's method is historical and text-critical, tracing how successive Chan lineage histories added, revised and dramatized episodes to serve the lineage claims of later Chan schools, a pattern his book treats as a defining feature of how Chan constructs its own history. Working from that layered textual record rather than from any contemporary fifth or sixth century source, McRae and other historians of Chan cannot establish whether a single historical founder lies behind the composite figure, which is why the question remains genuinely open in the field rather than settled either way. Worship and PracticeBodhidharma is venerated at the Shaolin Monastery on Mount Song, where later tradition credits him with founding both the monastery's Chan meditation lineage and its distinctive martial arts training regimen. The tradition crediting him with founding Shaolin martial arts has no support in the earliest surviving biographical sources, which describe only his meditation teaching, and most historians of Chinese Buddhism regard the martial arts founding legend as a much later accretion, likely dating from the Ming dynasty or after, attached to his name to lend prestige and antiquity to Shaolin's fighting tradition; the meditation lineage claim rests on firmer, though still legendary, early textual ground than the martial arts claim does. 2 History
Historical NoteSaid to have met Emperor Wu of Liang and told him that his extensive temple building had earned no merit at all, a rebuff that became one of the most quoted exchanges in Chan literature. 2 Origins
Origin of the NameBodhidharma's name combines the Sanskrit bodhi, awakening, with dharma, teaching or law, so the name itself reads as awakening of the dharma or the teaching of enlightenment, an appropriately programmatic name for a monk chiefly remembered as a teacher of meditation rather than of doctrine. 1 Status
Scholarly Standing DetailThe historical man is barely documented: the encounter with Emperor Wu appears only in much later Chan literature, and the association with Shaolin martial arts is later still and has no early support in the record. 2 Cult
Principal Cult CentreShaolin Monastery in Henan province is traditionally named as the site where Bodhidharma sat in wall facing meditation for nine years, and the monastery today maintains a cave shrine associated with the story alongside its martial arts tradition, which some later legends trace to exercises he is said to have taught the monks. 3 Attributes and IconographyTraditionally depicted as a wide eyed, bearded, fierce looking foreign monk, the semi-legendary figure credited with bringing Chan Buddhism from India to China and, in later legend, with founding the Shaolin monastery's martial tradition. 2 Life
Associated RelicChan tradition holds that Bodhidharma passed his robe and begging bowl to his successor Huike as tokens of dharma transmission, objects legendary chronicles describe being passed down through the first six Chinese patriarchs before the practice of physical transmission ended. 2 Attributions
Mythic AssociationHe is also said to have cut off his own eyelids to keep himself from falling asleep during his nine years of wall facing meditation, a legend illustrating the severity of the discipline rather than a historical claim. 2 Mythic AssociationSaid to have crossed the Yangtze on a single reed and sat facing a wall at Shaolin for nine years; in Japan he is known as Daruma, and his weighted round image, sold with no pupils painted in until a goal is achieved, is a popular emblem of persistence. 2 Belief
TheologyNon-theistic: no creator god is central 2 Attestation
Era of Attestation Veneration TodayActively venerated in a living tradition 1 Position Profile
Key TextChan tradition holds that Bodhidharma spent nine years in silent wall gazing meditation at Shaolin Monastery, and a later legend claims that after once falling asleep during his practice he tore off his own eyelids in frustration and cast them to the ground, where they sprouted into the first tea plants, a story scholars treat as pious legend layered onto an already historically obscure founding figure rather than a verifiable event. 2 Practice
LineageTraditional Chan lineage lists count him the twenty eighth patriarch after the Buddha in India and the first patriarch of Chan in China, the hinge figure the tradition uses to connect its Indian dhyana lineage to its East Asian one. 2 Sources
Textual NoteSeeing Through Zen situates the traditional account of Bodhidharma's transmission of Chan teaching from India to China within a much later body of genealogical legend, and treats most biographical details attributed to him as unrecoverable by historical method. 2 Learn More
The First Patriarch of Chan
Bodhidharma is revered as the First Patriarch of Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China, the Indian or Central Asian monk who, by tradition, brought the meditation-centred teaching from India to China in the late fifth or early sixth century. The traditions about him are as much legend as history: he is said to have met the pious Emperor Wu of Liang and told him bluntly that his temple-building and almsgiving had earned no merit at all, then to have crossed the Yangtze and settled at the Shaolin monastery, where he sat facing a wall in silent meditation for nine years.
The earliest surviving reference to Bodhidharma is far more modest than the later legends built around him. Yang Xuanzhi's Record of the Buddhist Monasteries of Luoyang, composed around 547 CE, only a few decades after Bodhidharma is traditionally supposed to have lived, mentions a monk of this name, described there as Persian or Central Asian rather than straightforwardly Indian, who visited and admired the splendour of a specific Luoyang temple; the text says nothing of Chan patriarchy, wall-gazing or Shaolin, all of which appear only in considerably later sources composed as the Chan school constructed its own foundation narrative, making this brief sixth-century mention the closest thing available to a contemporary historical trace of the man.
History, Legend, and the Emblem of a Lineage
Modern scholarship treats the biography of Bodhidharma cautiously, since the fullest accounts were composed generations later, as the Chan school defined its own descent back to India, and the historical figure behind them is hard to recover with certainty. What is clear is his function within the tradition: he stands as the emblem of Chan's claim to a direct transmission of awakening outside the scriptures, passed mind to mind from the Buddha through the patriarchs. Later legend also made him the founder of the Shaolin martial arts, a popular association without early support. In East Asian art he is a favourite subject, a fierce, bearded, wide-eyed figure, and in Japan his image became Daruma, the round-bottomed doll that rights itself when pushed over, an everyday emblem of perseverance.
The legend that Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze River balanced on a single reed became one of the most enduringly popular subjects in East Asian ink painting, taken up by generations of Chan and Zen monk-painters in China and Japan, including the celebrated Japanese painter Sesshu Toyo in the fifteenth century, who used the loose, spontaneous brushwork associated with Zen aesthetics to capture the wandering monk's legendary journey in just a few economical strokes. The image, alongside the wide-eyed, fierce-browed portrait type used for his wall-gazing meditation, made Bodhidharma one of the most frequently painted individual figures in the entire history of East Asian religious art, a visual legacy far exceeding what is known of him historically.
Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Bodhidharma directly: "Museum's own collections record for "Bodhidharma Crossing the Yangtze River," a Dehua porcelain figure with white glaze, Fujian province, China, 1800 to 1900, showing Damo (Bodhidharma) standing on..."
Depicted In
The V&A's own title and physical description name Bodhidharma directly, standing on water waves in his legendary crossing of the Yangtze River, a Dehua porcelain figure long displayed on household and temple altars in China.
Related To
He is counted sixth in the line of Chan patriarchs the tradition traces back to Bodhidharma.
Transmitted Its Concept To
Worshipped In
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