佛祖統紀 29.6

29.6

初祖菩提達磨。南天竺香至王子。出家之後遇二十七祖般若多羅。付以大法。謂曰。吾滅後六十年當往震旦行化。多羅既亡。師演道國中。久之思震旦緣熟。即至海濱寄載商舟。以梁大通元年達南海（舊云。普通八年者誤。南海廣州）刺史蕭昂表聞。詔入見。上問曰。朕造寺寫經度僧有何功德。師曰。人天小果耳。上曰。何謂大乘功德。師曰。淨智妙明體自空寂。如是功德不於世求。上曰。如何是聖諦第一義。師曰。廓然無聖。上曰。對朕者誰。師曰。不識。上不契。師遂渡江。上後以問誌公。公曰。陛下還識此人不。上曰。不識。公曰。此是觀音大士。傳佛心印。上欲遣使召之。公曰。闔國人去他亦不回（圓悟云。誌公已化去。十餘年達磨方至。何云同時。今秖要知大綱而矣）師既入魏。止嵩山少林寺終日壁觀（魏孝明武泰元年也）帝聞師異迹。三詔不至。就賜摩納袈裟金鉢銀水瓶。師面壁九年將示滅。命其徒曰。時將至矣。盍各言所得乎。道副曰。不執文字不離文字而為道用。師曰。汝得吾皮。尼總持曰。我今所解如慶喜見阿閦佛國。一見更不再見。師曰。汝得吾肉。道育曰。四大本空五陰非有。無一法可得。師曰。汝得吾骨。慧可禮三拜依位立。師曰。汝得吾髓。復顧謂可曰。世尊以正法眼藏付囑大迦葉。展轉傳授以至於吾。吾今付汝。汝當護持。并授袈裟以為法信。曰後二百年衣止不傳。法周沙界。聽吾偈云。吾本來茲土。傳法救迷情。一華開五葉。結果自然成。又曰。吾有楞伽經。是如來心地要門。可以照心。乃往禹門千聖寺端坐示寂。即大統元年十月五日也。門人奉全身葬熊耳山定林寺。明年使者宋雲西域回。遇師手携隻履翩翩獨邁。雲歸為言。門人開壙視之。唯空棺隻履。師每以大乘入道理行二門。以誨學者（二門見傳燈錄）。

The First Patriarch, Bodhidharma, was a prince of the Fragrant Supreme [King] in South India. After leaving household life, he met the Twenty-seventh Patriarch, Prajñātāra, who entrusted him with the Great Dharma, telling him: "Sixty years after my extinction, you should go to Cīnasthāna to carry out transformation." After Prajñātāra passed away, the Master expounded the Way in his own country. After a long time, considering that the conditions in Cīnasthāna had matured, he went to the seashore, boarded a merchant ship, and in the first year of the Datong era of the Liang arrived in the Southern Sea (formerly said to be the eighth year of Putong, which is mistaken; the Southern Sea is Guangzhou). The Inspector Xiao Ang reported this to the court in a memorial, and an imperial decree summoned him for an audience. The Emperor asked: "What merit have I gained from building temples, copying sūtras, and ordaining monks?" The Master said: "These are merely small fruits of the human and heavenly realms." The Emperor said: "What is Great Vehicle merit?" The Master said: "Pure wisdom, wondrous and bright, its essence inherently empty and tranquil. Merit such as this is not sought in the mundane world." The Emperor asked: "What is the highest meaning of the noble truth?" The Master said: "Vast and empty, with nothing noble." The Emperor asked: "Who is facing Us?" The Master said: "I do not know." The Emperor did not grasp it. The Master then crossed the Yangtze River. The Emperor later asked Master Zhi about this. Master Zhi said: "Does Your Majesty recognise this person or not?" The Emperor said: "I do not know him." Master Zhi said: "This is the Mahāsattva Avalokiteśvara, transmitting the Buddha's mind-seal." The Emperor wished to send an envoy to summon him back, but Master Zhi said: "Even if the whole nation went, he would not return." (Yuanwu says: "Master Zhi had already passed away; Bodhidharma only arrived more than ten years later. How could they be contemporaneous? Now one need only know the general outline.") After the Master entered Wei, he stayed at Shaolin Temple on Mount Song, practicing wall-contemplation all day long (the first year of the Wutai era of Emperor Xiaoming of the Wei). The Emperor, hearing of the Master's extraordinary traces, summoned him three times, but he did not go; he then bestowed upon him a patched kāṣāya, a golden bowl, and a silver water bottle. The Master faced the wall for nine years, and when he was about to manifest extinction, he said to his disciples: "The time has come. Why does each of you not speak of what you have attained?" Daofu said: "Neither clinging to words nor parting from words, using them for the function of the Way." The Master said: "You have attained my skin." The nun Zongchi said: "My understanding now is like Ānanda beholding the land of Akṣobhya Buddha: once seen, it is never seen again." The Master said: "You have attained my flesh." Daoyu said: "The four great elements are fundamentally empty, and the five aggregates do not exist. Not a single dharma can be attained." The Master said: "You have attained my bones." Huike bowed three times and stood in his place. The Master said: "You have attained my marrow." Turning to Huike, he further said: "The World-Honoured One entrusted the treasury of the true Dharma eye to Mahākāśyapa, and it was transmitted successively until it reached me. I now entrust it to you. You should protect and maintain it." He also conferred the kāṣāya as a token of the Dharma, saying: "After two hundred years, the robe will cease to be transmitted, but the Dharma will pervade the sandy worlds. Listen to my verse: / I originally came to this land / To transmit the Dharma and save deluded beings. / A single flower opens into five petals; / The fruit will naturally mature." He also said: "I have the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra; it is the Tathāgata's essential gate to the mind-ground, with which one can illuminate the mind." He then went to Qiansheng Temple at Yumen, sat upright, and manifested nirvana; this was on the fifth day of the tenth month in the first year of the Datong era. His disciples enshrined his whole body and buried it at Dinglin Temple on Mount Xiong'er. The next year, the envoy Song Yun was returning from the Western Regions and met the Master, carrying a single shoe in hand and walking briskly and solitary. When Yun returned and spoke of it, the disciples opened the tomb and looked: there was only an empty coffin and a single shoe. The Master always taught students using the two gates of entering the path of the Great Vehicle: principle and practice (the two gates appear in the Record of the Transmission of the Lamp).