Tracking Bodhidharma by Andy Ferguson Page A

common translation “formless,” partly because the Buddha held up a flower. Using a flower to represent the signless teaching is apt. A flower, though beautiful, is not something extraordinary or other worldly, and therefore it best conveys the idea of signlessness. A flower is not “formless.” Translating the phrase in question as “formless” leads to an unwarranted and un-Zen-like emphasis on “emptiness” and an incorrect nihilistic interpretation of Zen teachings.
    Examining the Zen koan I mentioned before, the apparent gibberish recited by the Zen master Linxi starts to make sense. He declared that his teaching was about “mountains and rivers,” a traditional Zen symbol of “signlessness”—of something beautiful and yet ordinary. The people who live in the realm of his teaching are said to be “behind the Buddha Hall,” that is, the location of the Dharma Hall where signlessness dominates, and “in front of the temple gate,” meaning the ordinary everyday world of people who live outside the temple’s religious activities. These are Zen’s signless places, the places where people live their life without being corrupted by external religious symbols. Linxi’s great teaching is not found in the Buddha or Heavenly Kings Halls, where the “signs” of religiosity abound.
    One final note on this subject. There are indications in early records that certain very early Zen temples, such as the one established by Zen
Master Baizhang (about whom I’ll speak more later), had only a Dharma Hall and did not have the other two halls I’ve discussed. Other records from the same period mention all three of the halls in the temples of famous Zen teachers. Perhaps some early Zen temples, especially private remote temples that were not generally open to the public, emphasized Sudden Enlightenment and eschewed the “stages” on the path to enlightenment that the other two halls represent.

5. Grand Buddha Temple
    GRAND BUDDHA TEMPLE, like so much else in China, is currently under renovation and reconstruction. And like other temples in China, it has slightly changed the traditional layout of the three main halls I’ve just discussed. While the Heavenly Kings Hall and Buddha Hall have remained in the positions they formerly held, the Dharma Hall has lost its position of importance and, at the time of my visit, seems to have been eliminated altogether. This departure from the traditional layout has become increasingly common in modern times. Temples today often no longer have a formal Dharma Hall positioned where it used to be. Now the importance of written scriptures is emphasized more, and in place of a Dharma Hall there may be, for example, a Sutra Storage Hall. I think this change in the layout of many modern Zen temples directly reflects the loss of early Zen teachings, the idea that meditation reveals something outside the traditional (read “scriptural”) teachings. Instead of following Bodhidharma’s instruction about just observing, practitioners everywhere now focus on the words and phrases of Buddhist scriptures.
    Grand Buddha Temple’s existing Buddha Hall is over a thousand years old, certainly one of the oldest structures of its kind in China. It is still used daily for morning and evening services. A service is being conducted as we pass the building, with drums beating and bells ringing, the monks chanting and bowing before a grand statue of Shakyamuni Buddha.
    We enter the temple’s secondary buildings built around its perimeter. There, in a guest-reception room at the top of some stairs, I’m introduced to a bespectacled and earnest-looking man holding several books. I learn his name is He Fangyao (), the man who recently wrote about the famous monks who passed through Guangzhou on their way to and from India in ancient times. Upon receiving a message that a
foreign guest had expressed an