Practice · SamādhiVolume FivePart VII · ChanPaper 22 of 31

Bodhidharma's Wall-Gazing and the Birth of Chan

中文主題：達摩壁觀

Author: Shi Huijing 釋慧鏡

Date: Summer 2026

Version: 1.0

ID: SAMADHI-P22

Abstract

For a reader raised on the Chinese tradition, the word "Chan" pulls almost by reflex toward seated meditation, toward dhyāna as a state to be entered, toward the figure of Bodhidharma (達摩) "facing a wall for nine years" — and toward the graded climb of the four jhānas and eight attainments behind all of these. This paper sets that reflex aside and asks a structural question that only appears once the legend is bracketed: the concentration taught by the earliest doctrinal core of Chan — the Two Entrances and Four Practices, and wall-gazing (biguan, 壁觀) — is it of the same kind as the staged ascent of the four jhānas at all? Anchored on the earliest datable witness, Daoxuan's Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks (645), the paper shows that from its first textual appearance Bodhidharma's concentration is named in so many words as a pacifying of the mind (安心), not as some rung of dhyāna. It then takes as its spine Zongmi's doxographical scheme of the five kinds of chan, in which Zongmi himself places what Bodhidharma transmitted outside the four jhānas and eight attainments — "utterly different from all [other] gates." And it closes on Huike's "I have searched for the mind and cannot find it at all," where the question of concentration has, within Chan, turned over from "how does one enter concentration?" into "the mind cannot be found." The conclusion is that Chan, from Bodhidharma onward, did not add one more technique for entering concentration but re-conceived concentration itself — and that this is the point at which the present volume departs from the four-jhāna architecture shared by its first six Parts. The whole is handled as doctrine and as history, and is deliberately not written as any manual of "how to sit facing a wall."

I. Introduction: Strip Away the Legend — What Did the Earliest "Concentration" Teach?

Within the feel of Chinese-language Buddhism, Bodhidharma is just about the most thoroughly mythologised name the Chan tradition has. Nine years facing a wall, the crossing of the Yangzi on a single reed, Huike standing in the snow and severing his arm — the images are so vivid that the mere mention of Bodhidharma calls up a legend of concentrative power, and "wall-gazing" is read, as a matter of course, as a way of sitting: facing a wall, motionless for long stretches. Add to this the habit a Chinese reader already carries — of hearing in "Chan" the overtones of seated meditation, of dhyāna-attainment, of the graded sequence of the four jhānas and eight attainments — and Bodhidharma facing his wall comes to look like some pinnacle of that very sequence.

This paper does not set out from that intuition; it first suspends it. Two reasons must be stated plainly at the outset. The first is that this paper's handling of the Bodhidharma legend is a historian's bracketing, not an antiquarian's litigation: the nine years at the wall, the reed-crossing, the severed arm have been broadly taken by scholarship as a stratum of later accretion, and this paper grants throughout that they are the tradition's self-construction — its argument needs no historical Bodhidharma. The second, and this is the foremost discipline of the present volume, is that the paper treats wall-gazing and the Two Entrances and Four Practices as a question of what Bodhidharma's concentration was, and of how the tradition interpreted it, and does not write them up as steps of practice — "how to face a wall, how to abide fixedly, how to sit." The writing of the concentration-teaching has two besetting slides, and the first of them is to turn history and philosophy into an operating manual; this paper keeps, from first to last, on the side of "what it is."

Once the legend is suspended, what remains is the text. And the earliest material most likely to lie near Bodhidharma's own teaching is a short piece: the Two Entrances and Four Practices (二入四行, also titled the Treatise on the Two Entrances and Four Practices). The question then becomes clean: this earliest doctrinal core — which kind of concentration is the one it teaches?

The paper's answer composes a hinge for the volume. The concentration treated across the first six Parts — whether the Pāli jhāna-sequence, the Abhidharma attainments, or the dhyāna of the Xuanzang line — unfolds, in every case, within the architecture of staged ascent that is the four jhānas and eight attainments. Following the preceding paper (P21), which sealed the line of the Śūraṅgama's great concentration and closed on the criterion for the by-paths within concentration, this paper turns the page into Chan — and Chan, from the very start, does not place its "concentration" within that architecture. Bodhidharma's concentration is named a pacifying of the mind: abiding fixedly in wall-gazing, firmly abiding without shifting, still and unconditioned, it is a single, non-graded abiding upon the ground that "all the living share one same true nature." This is where the volume's spine begins: the concentration of Chan is not the four jhānas and eight attainments. (That spine is completed only in this Part's later paper on the non-duality of concentration and wisdom; here it merely sets out.)

II. Wall-Gazing: Pacifying the Mind, Not Facing a Wall

The two words "wall-gazing" are the signboard of Bodhidharma's teaching, and also the place where it is most readily misread. To read it true, two readings must first be set side by side, with no haste to adjudicate between them.

The literal pole comes from the lamp-records. The Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp relates that Bodhidharma "at first dwelt at Shaolin monastery, sitting facing a wall, silent all day long; none could fathom him, and they called him 'the wall-gazing brahman.'"¹ On this pole, wall-gazing is sitting before an actual wall, a visible posture of the body. It is worth noting that even within this same, literal-leaning fascicle, the words Bodhidharma gives Huike for entering the Way are still: "Outwardly cease all conditions, inwardly let the mind be without panting; the mind like a wall — thus one may enter the Way."² The phrase "the mind like a wall" has already, quietly, shifted the weight from "the wall one faces" to "a mind that is like a wall." Even the most literal-leaning of the witnesses, in other words, carries within it the seed of the figurative reading.

The figurative pole comes from Zongmi's exegesis. The Prolegomenon to the Collection of Chan Sources states it outright: "Bodhidharma taught people to pacify the mind by wall-gazing: outwardly stopping all conditions, inwardly the mind without panting, the mind like a wall — thus one may enter the Way."³ On this pole the "wall" is no actual wall but a simile for the mind — a mind that, like a wall, outwardly stops all conditions and inwardly does not pant, and can thereby enter the Way. In the lower fascicle of the same work Zongmi calls wall-gazing a simile in so many words, "by the simile of wall-gazing … causing all conditions to be cut off."⁴ The figurative reading is no isolated claim of Zongmi's: the contemporary philologist Jeffrey Broughton, collating the Tibetan Dunhuang version in his anthology of the earliest records, observes that the Tibetan for "abiding fixedly in wall-gazing" comes nearer to "abiding in brightness" than to "sitting facing a wall" — corroborating, from another language altogether, the antiquity of the figurative reading.

Which, then, is right? This paper inclines toward the figurative (pacifying-the-mind) pole, because it is on this reading that the "parting from the four jhānas and eight attainments" turns; but it does not declare the literal reading flatly wrong. ⚠️ A middle-way correction is needed here: to flatten wall-gazing into either single reading is to destroy its tension. The point is this — whether one takes the literal "facing a wall" or the figurative "mind like a wall," the load-bearing end is always pacifying the mind: the wall is either means or simile, and the pacified mind is the thing actually taught. Wall-gazing is wall-gazing not for the wall but for where the mind comes to rest.

Once the load-bearing point is seen, the parting of wall-gazing from the four jhānas and eight attainments shows itself. What the four jhānas and eight attainments measure are the successively subtler states through which the mind passes in the process of "entering concentration" — how applied and sustained thought, joy and pleasure are cast off in order, how consciousness and space are transcended layer upon layer; it is, in essence, a path that can be staged and measured by degree. But "outwardly stopping all conditions, inwardly without panting, the mind like a wall" describes not some station along that path, but an abiding that no longer moves toward any station at all: the mind like a wall means that it no longer chases after conditions, no longer rises and falls and pants, and so "the conditions cut off of themselves." There is no "which jhāna, which attainment" to be spoken of here, because it does not lie on that scale of "which" at all. This is just why the figurative reading matters: read wall-gazing as a long sitting before a real wall, and it is pulled straight back into the frame of "cultivating some concentrative state into being"; read it as the simile "the mind like a wall," and it falls on the non-graded dimension of pacifying the mind.

On this point the earliest and weightiest historical witness is Daoxuan. The Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks, in the biography of Bodhidharma (645, the earliest among extant datable witnesses), relates that Bodhidharma, "moved by [Huike's] sincerity, instructed him in the true Dharma," and at once a line: "Such pacifying of the mind is called wall-gazing; such setting-forth in conduct is called the four practices."⁵ This is the one place in the extant record that equates them in so many words: pacifying the mind is wall-gazing. From the moment Bodhidharma's concentration appears in the record, it is named as a kind of "pacifying of the mind" — and not as some rung of dhyāna, some particular attainment. A textual fact worth recording: across the four lines of witness — Daoxuan, the lamp-records, the Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā, and the Six Gates of Shaoshi — describing Bodhidharma's teaching, not one uses the graded vocabulary of "first jhāna, second jhāna, fourth jhāna, eight attainments"; what they use, throughout, is "pacifying the mind / abiding fixedly / firmly abiding without shifting / still and unconditioned."

As for the legend of the nine years at the wall, this paper brackets it in a single stroke: it belongs to the stratum of later accretion, and the paper neither endorses nor litigates it, reading the teaching the text records rather than the marvels the hagiography performs.

III. The Two Entrances and Four Practices: Entrance-by-Principle as the Re-Conception of Concentration

Set wall-gazing back into its textual matrix, and one has the Two Entrances and Four Practices. The cleanest recension of this piece is the one with Tanlin's preface; it is the version recorded in fascicle thirty of the Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, and the body text here follows it.⁶ Its overall statement runs: "There are many roads by which one enters the Way, but in brief they come to no more than two: the first is the entrance by principle, the second is the entrance by practice."⁷

The entrance by principle is the door this paper most cares about, for it is precisely where the side of "concentration" is re-conceived. The Tanlin recension reads: "As for the entrance by principle: it means awakening to the source by relying on the teaching, and trusting deeply that all the living share one same true nature, which only the adventitious dust of deluded thought has covered, so that it cannot show forth. If one then casts off the false and returns to the true, abiding fixedly in wall-gazing, with no self and no other, the ordinary and the sagely as one, firmly abiding without shifting, no longer following the verbal teaching — this is to be in tacit accord with principle, without discrimination, still and unconditioned: this is named the entrance by principle."⁷ Note that this passage describes the content of a concentration, not a set of steps for entering one: what it portrays is an abiding upon "all the living share one same true nature" — without the division of self and other, the ordinary and the sagely held as one, firmly abiding without shifting, still and unconditioned. This is not a staged ascent (the rung-by-rung climb from the first jhāna to neither-perception-nor-non-perception) but a single, non-graded abiding: concentration is no longer understood as a ladder one scales upward, but as a present accord with a true nature that already is as it is. The entrance by principle is the "what it is" of Bodhidharma's concentration.

The inner logic of the entrance by principle is also what makes it unreadable as a technique. Its premise is that "all the living share one same true nature, which only the adventitious dust of deluded thought has covered" — the true nature is complete of itself, and what is lacking is only the covering of the adventitious dust. On this premise, what "concentration" has to do is not to produce a state that was not there before, but only to "cast off the false and return to the true," letting what is already present show forth. "Abiding fixedly in wall-gazing," set in this context, speaks of a mind that no longer follows the verbal teaching and no longer raises discriminations, abiding upon this true nature. And the phrase "in tacit accord with principle, without discrimination" is especially decisive: the height of the entrance by principle is that even the gap of "subject and object" between the mind that abides and the principle abode upon is effaced — this is no longer some subject "entering concentration" by reaching after some object, but a tacit accord in which subject and object alike dissolve. A path to be cultivated rung by rung presupposes, at every rung, that one has "not yet arrived"; the entrance by principle, by contrast, sets concentration upon a true nature that already is as it is, that waits upon no rung-by-rung ascent. This is what "re-conception" actually means.

The entrance by practice, then, is this teaching's other side — the dimension of conduct and of bearing oneself in the world. The entrance by practice names four practices: "first, the practice of requiting enmity; second, the practice of according with conditions; third, the practice of having nothing to seek; fourth, the practice of according with the Dharma."⁸ The first three subdue the mind toward adversity, toward favourable circumstance, and toward striving; the fourth, according with the Dharma, is the most worth dwelling on, for it draws conduct back into principle: "The principle of nature's purity is what is meant by 'Dharma.' In this principle all marks are empty … and to remove deluded thought one practises the six perfections yet with nothing practised — this is the practice of according with the Dharma."⁸ The phrase "practises the six perfections yet with nothing practised" turns the entrance by practice, in the end, back toward the very true nature that the entrance by principle accords with.

The division between the entrance by principle (concentration; sudden) and the entrance by practice (conduct; gradual) already foreshadows, faintly, two great themes of later Chan — the sudden and the gradual, concentration and wisdom. This paper lays only the lightest of leads here: the principle/practice distinction will open out in the paper on Huineng, Shenxiu, and the sudden-and-gradual of the Platform Sūtra (P23), and the summation of "the non-duality of concentration and wisdom" belongs to this Part's later paper (P26); neither is borrowed forward here, nor unfolded. The one thing that matters is to see clearly that, in the Two Entrances and Four Practices, "concentration" has already changed its face — it is not a state to be cultivated upward rung by rung, but a true nature to be abode upon at once. This is "what it is," not "how to do it."

IV. Bodhidharma's Concentration Is Not the Four Jhānas and Eight Attainments

The previous two sections showed, from within the text, that Bodhidharma's concentration is named a pacifying of the mind and portrayed as a non-graded abiding. This section brings in one external and classical doxographical witness to nail the point down: Zongmi himself — among the most doxographically minded patriarchs in the history of Chan — places the chan that Bodhidharma transmitted expressly outside the four jhānas and eight attainments. This is the keystone link of the volume's spine.

The upper fascicle of the Prolegomenon to the Collection of Chan Sources sets out a doxography of five kinds of chan: the chan of the outer paths, of the ordinary person, of the lesser vehicle, of the greater vehicle, and the supreme-vehicle chan. The tiers of this doxography are distinguished by the depth of one's "awakening": the chan of the outer paths is cultivated with a view that longs for the higher and loathes the lower; that of the ordinary person, with right belief in cause and effect; that of the lesser vehicle, with awakening to the partial-truth principle of the emptiness of self; that of the greater vehicle, with awakening to the principle shown forth by the emptiness of both self and dharmas. What matters is this: the concentrative states attained by the cultivation of these first four, Zongmi gathers up entirely as the realisation of "four form and four formless" — that is, the four jhānas (the four form-realm concentrations) and the four formless attainments, which together are what the tradition calls the four jhānas and eight attainments. In Zongmi's taxonomy, in other words, from the outer paths up to the greater vehicle, however high or low the view, whatever lies on the road of "cultivating some concentrative state into being" attains a "concentration" that does not exceed the compass of the four jhānas and eight attainments. As for the fifth, Zongmi says: "If one suddenly awakens to one's own mind as originally pure … and cultivates on this basis, this is the supreme-vehicle chan, also named the pure chan of the Tathāgata, also named the single-practice samādhi … what was handed down in turn within Bodhidharma's school is this chan."⁹ And the verdict that follows at once is the pivot of the whole paper: "Before Bodhidharma arrived, what all the old masters understood [as chan] was only the earlier four jhānas and eight attainments … only what Bodhidharma transmitted is suddenly identical with the Buddha-body, utterly different from all [other] gates."⁹

The weight of this passage repays careful setting-out. Zongmi is not saying that Bodhidharma's chan is "one rung higher" than the four jhānas and eight attainments — for were it one rung higher, his concentration would still stand on the same ladder, only further up it. What he says is "utterly different from all [other] gates": before Bodhidharma, what the masters understood as "chan" did not exceed that set of graded realisations; what Bodhidharma transmitted is "suddenly identical with the Buddha-body," another matter entirely, not on that ladder at all. The four words "suddenly identical with the Buddha-body" repay dwelling on: their core is "suddenly" — not "gradually becoming identical" by a rung-by-rung sequence, but "identical" at the very instant of suddenly awakening to one's own mind as originally pure; and being a sudden identity, it admits of no rung to divide, no station to scale. This stands exactly opposite the frame of the first four, "cultivating some concentrative state into being by some sequence." Even Tiantai's threefold cessation and threefold contemplation, perfect and sublime as they are, Zongmi still judges to be, in their gated sequence, "no more than the practice-marks of the earlier chans" — meaning that however perfect and sublime the doctrine, the marks of its cultivation still fall within the frame of staged ascent. Even a contemplative system as lofty as Tiantai's, in Zongmi's eyes, has "practice-marks" still of the chan kind; Bodhidharma's gate alone is judged to lie outside that frame. To place Bodhidharma's concentration outside the four jhānas and eight attainments, then, is not this paper's modern invention but a classical witness Zongmi left behind.

The Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā sounds the same note. Jingjue's compilation (a Dunhuang manuscript, c. 713–716), discussing the pacifying of the mind, says in so many words that "sitting in the second dhyāna, the third dhyāna … is not called pacifying the mind."¹⁰ To sit and enter the graded states of the second or third jhāna is just what is not the pacifying of the mind spoken of here. Pacifying the mind being neither the second nor the third jhāna, it plainly is not measured within the vocabulary-system of jhāna-grades at all. ⚠️ A note must be appended: the Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā belongs to the transmission of the Northern line, and its text reads "bi-gazing" (with the loan-graph 辟 for 壁, "wall") for wall-gazing — a recension variant; this paper takes only its verdict as corroboration and does not blur its graph.

Take the four sources together and the conclusion is clear: from Daoxuan to the lamp-records, from Zongmi to the Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā, Bodhidharma's teaching is described in the vocabulary of pacifying the mind, abiding fixedly, firmly abiding without shifting, still and unconditioned, the supreme-vehicle chan, utterly different from all other gates — and in not one place is it set on the graded scale of the four jhānas and eight attainments to be measured. This is the departure the volume makes at this point: the concentration of the first six Parts unfolds within the four-jhāna architecture, while Chan, from Bodhidharma onward, proceeds apart from it. The spine begins here; its completion waits upon this Part's later paper on the non-duality of concentration and wisdom (P26).

V. Huike's Pacified Mind: The Question Shifts from "How to Enter Concentration" to "The Mind Cannot Be Found"

If Zongmi's doxography nails Bodhidharma's concentration outside the four jhānas and eight attainments "from the outside," then Huike's seeking of a pacified mind speaks the character of this concentration in a single stroke "from the inside." The Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp relates the episode:

"[Huike said:] 'My mind is not yet at peace; I beg the master to pacify it.' The master said, 'Bring me the mind and I will pacify it for you.' He said, 'I have searched for the mind and cannot find it at all.' The master said, 'I have pacified your mind for you.'"²

These few words are the most textbook proof there is of the sense "concentration is pacifying the mind." See how it turns. What Huike asks for is, in the ordinary sense, an "entering of concentration" — his mind is not at peace, he begs the master to pacify it, which is all but a request for "how to make the mind settle." And Bodhidharma's reply gives not a method of entering concentration but a turning-over of the question itself: "Bring me the mind and I will pacify it for you" — bring out that mind you would have pacified. Huike searches, and finds that "the mind cannot be found at all": the very mind to be set at rest, sought everywhere, is nowhere to be grasped. Bodhidharma then confirms him: "I have pacified your mind for you" — at this one thought, that "the mind sought cannot be found," the pacifying of the mind is already accomplished.

The edge of this exchange lies precisely in its resetting of the problem of concentration. What Huike brings is a methodological question: the mind is unquiet, by what means is it to be settled? The very form of the question already presupposes that "there is a mind to be settled, and a set of means by which to settle it." Bodhidharma does not answer within that presupposition but dismantles it: that mind you would settle — bring it out and look — and looked for, it cannot be found. The question then collapses of itself: there being no really-existing mind to be settled, the technical question "how to settle it" comes to nothing. The accomplishment of pacifying the mind lies not in finding a method or cultivating a state into being, but in seeing through the assumption that "there was a mind to be settled" in the first place. And just for this reason no operable step is to be found here — this is not some more adept method of pacifying the mind, but the dissolving of the assumption that "pacifying the mind needs a method."

There is no graded ascent here, no temporal sequence of cultivation. The pacified mind is not some endpoint reached step by step through a number of stages and attainments (an absorption-sequence), but is accomplished at once upon the recognition that "the mind cannot at root be found." The problem of concentration has thus turned over from "how to cultivate the mind into stillness" into "the mind has, at root, nothing in it to be stilled" — what was to be set at rest being unfindable, the pacifying of the mind lies not in "producing some concentration" but in "laying down the very search that would produce it." This echoes the previous section exactly: Bodhidharma's concentration is utterly different from all other gates because it does not lie within the frame of "cultivating upward rung by rung" at all.

⚠️ A historian's correction must be appended to this section. This dialogue of Huike's seeking a pacified mind is not recorded in Daoxuan's 645 biography of Huike; it is a developed form crystallised gradually in the later lamp-histories (the Jingde Record was completed in 1004). Doctrinally it bears great weight, yet it is not a verbatim sixth-century record of an exchange between Bodhidharma and Huike. This paper cites it as the tradition's mature self-interpretation of "concentration as the pacifying of the mind" (belonging to the interpretive frame of the lamp-records), not as a documentable historical event. To read it as "a mature doctrinal crystallisation" rather than "a recording of fact" is just the measure that a historian's sobriety requires.

Huike's pacified mind is also the bridge that carries this Part's spine toward its later papers. The abiding upon "the mind cannot be found" points of itself toward the more complete summation of "a living concentration that is the non-duality of concentration and wisdom, within marks and apart from marks" — but that is the home ground of this Part's later paper (P26), and this paper only draws the lightest of leads toward it, borrowing none of its conclusions forward here.

VI. Conclusion: Opening the Part, the Scholarly Conversation, and a Single Closing Note

Opening the Part. This paper opens the seventh Part of the present volume, and is the starting point of one of the volume's spines. To gather the previous five sections into a sentence: Chan, from Bodhidharma onward, did not add one more technique for entering concentration but re-conceived concentration itself. Daoxuan's earliest witness names Bodhidharma's concentration in so many words as a "pacifying of the mind" (such pacifying of the mind is called wall-gazing); the entrance by principle of the Two Entrances and Four Practices portrays this pacified mind as a single, non-graded abiding upon one true nature; Zongmi's doxography of the five kinds of chan places what Bodhidharma transmitted outside the four jhānas and eight attainments (utterly different from all other gates); and Huike's "the mind cannot be found at all" shows that the question of concentration, within Chan, is no longer "how to enter concentration" but "the mind cannot at root be found." The concentration of the first six Parts is set out within the architecture of the four jhānas and eight attainments; Chan, from Bodhidharma onward, proceeds apart from that architecture — this is the volume's departure, and here it has only set out.

The scholarly conversation. Western scholarship on Bodhidharma divides broadly into two approaches, and this paper stands in a particular relation of debt and of distinction to each. The first is the text-critical approach, represented by Broughton's anthology of the earliest records. Broughton judges the Two Entrances and Four Practices to be the doctrinal core with the strongest claim to authenticity, and supports the figurative reading of wall-gazing with the Tibetan Dunhuang version ("abiding fixedly in wall-gazing" coming near to "abiding in brightness" rather than to sitting facing a wall). This paper rests on his textual base — that wall-gazing is a re-conception of concentration and not a posture — but must mark honestly where its own extension lies: Broughton's is a work of textual collation, and he does not frame the Two Entrances and Four Practices as "a re-conception of the graded ascent of the jhānas." To take "concentration" as the axis and judge Bodhidharma's concentration as lying apart from the four jhānas and eight attainments is this paper's own structural argument, built upon his textual base rather than drawn from his conclusions.

The second is the genealogical-critical approach, represented by McRae's study of encounter, transformation, and genealogy in Chinese Chan. McRae takes Bodhidharma to be a product of later retrospective construction; the first of his well-known "rules of Zen studies" runs, "It's not true, and therefore it's more important." To this the paper grants in full what it wins: the nine years at the wall, the reed-crossing, the severed arm are all of them accretion, and the paper needs no historical Bodhidharma. But one key counter-clarification must be made: what McRae dissolves is the Bodhidharma of biography and lineage; this paper's claim lies on the plane of doctrine and structure — once historicity is bracketed (by McRae's own first rule), the Two Entrances and Four Practices still stands as a text articulating a certain view of concentration, and the genealogical critique does not touch how that text is to be read. The two do not, in other words, meet on the same plane.

Of the same structure as McRae's, at higher theoretical voltage, is Faure's epistemological critique of the Chan tradition. Faure takes Bodhidharma to be a textual and religious paradigm constructed by the tradition's will-toward-orthodoxy. His deconstruction is aimed at the plane of legitimation, while this paper operates on the plane of meditative content; the two do not collide either. A single closing stroke, by way of contrast: the 2005 reissue of the first volume of Dumoulin's history of Zen carries a foreword by McRae — a long-transmitted "received account," now wrapped within its own critique, which marks neatly the contemporary condition of this field of study.

A single point of candour. It must be stated honestly: a Western monograph centred on the thesis that "Bodhidharma's wall-gazing / the Two Entrances and Four Practices = a re-conception of graded jhānic concentration, a non-graded pacifying of the mind set against the four jhānas and eight attainments" does not at present exist. The text-critical approach has supplied the textual base for the figurative reading of wall-gazing; the genealogical-critical approach has won the bracketing of historicity. What this paper does is to reassemble these existing materials, along the axis of "concentration," into a synthetic argument of "departure." The materials are ready to hand; this concentration-axis synthesis is the paper's own contribution.

Two middle-way corrections, and a single closing note. Two middle ways are to be kept throughout. The first: the literal and figurative senses of wall-gazing are not to be flattened into a single reading, and the load-bearing end is always the pacified mind. The second: the lineage genealogy of Bodhidharma → Huike and onward is the tradition's self-construction (as McRae has shown); this paper narrates it in neutral historical language, takes no single lineage as the standard, and asserts no superiority of transmission. (Jingjue's placing of Guṇabhadra as first patriarch is itself a polemical move; it is flagged, not endorsed.) One closing note is left unopened: the volume will in the end point toward the question of "concentration returning to prajñā, concentration not being ultimate" — the pacifying-the-mind reading extends of itself in that direction, but that is the business of the volume's sealing paper (P31), touched here only in passing.

Following this paper's departure, the next paper (P23) will, along the lead of principle and practice, enter the sudden-and-gradual debate of Huineng, Shenxiu, and the Platform Sūtra; this Part's later paper (P26) will close on the non-duality of concentration and wisdom, completing the spine that here sets out.

To put it in a word: what Bodhidharma brought to "concentration" was not one more rung of height, but a turn of direction — concentration named as the pacified mind, abiding on a nature that needs no climbing, the point where this volume departs from the ladder of the four jhānas.

To pacify the mind is itself wall-gazing.

References

I. Primary Buddhist Sources

Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks （續高僧傳）, composed by Daoxuan （道宣） of the Tang (645). Taishō vol. 50, no. T2060.
Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp （景德傳燈錄）, compiled by Daoyuan （道原） of the Song (1004). Taishō vol. 51, no. T2076.
Prolegomenon to the Collection of Chan Sources （禪源諸詮集都序）, set forth by Zongmi （宗密） of the Tang. Taishō vol. 48, no. T2015.
Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā[vatāra] （楞伽師資記）, compiled by Jingjue （淨覺） of the Tang (Dunhuang manuscript). Taishō vol. 85, no. T2837.
Six Gates of Shaoshi （少室六門, attributed to Bodhidharma, authorship disputed). Taishō vol. 48, no. T2009. [Note: the authenticity of the Treatise on the Bloodline, the Discourse on Pacifying the Mind, and other pieces gathered in this collection is disputed in scholarship; CBETA leaves the author field blank, and only the Two Entrances and Four Practices is generally held to lie plausibly near Bodhidharma. This paper does not treat it as a standalone Bodhidharma primary source, citing it only in support and marking it "attributed-to-Bodhidharma Chan layer · ascription disputed."]

II. Modern Scholarship

The voices below are engaged in this paper by paraphrase only, for dialogue and contrast; no original text is quoted, save McRae's single published aphorism.

Broughton, Jeffrey L. The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
McRae, John R. Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Faure, Bernard. Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Dumoulin, Heinrich. Zen Buddhism: A History, Vol. 1: India and China. Trans. James W. Heisig and Paul Knitter; foreword by John R. McRae. Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2005 (reissue).

III. Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Author / Compiler	Taishō no.	Use in this paper
T2060	Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks (續高僧傳, fasc. 16, "Biography of Bodhidharma")	Daoxuan (道宣), Tang	T2060 (vol. 50)	The earliest datable witness; the explicit equation "such pacifying of the mind is called wall-gazing"; the entrance-by-principle passage as Daoxuan transmits it
T2076	Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp (景德傳燈錄, fasc. 3 and fasc. 30)	Daoyuan (道原), Song	T2076 (vol. 51)	The literal "wall-gazing brahman" and "the mind like a wall"; the Tanlin-recension text of the Two Entrances and Four Practices; the Huike "pacifying the mind" exchange
T2015	Prolegomenon to the Collection of Chan Sources (禪源諸詮集都序, upper and lower fasc.)	Zongmi (宗密), Tang	T2015 (vol. 48)	The doxography of the five kinds of chan and the verdict "before Bodhidharma … the four jhānas and eight attainments … utterly different from all gates"; wall-gazing as simile for the pacified mind
T2837	Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā (楞伽師資記, fasc. 1)	Jingjue (淨覺), Tang	T2837 (vol. 85)	The corroborating verdict "sitting in the second / third dhyāna … is not called pacifying the mind"; the 辟觀 recension variant
T2009	Six Gates of Shaoshi (少室六門)	attributed to Bodhidharma (disputed)	T2009 (vol. 48)	Cited only in support, as the attributed-to-Bodhidharma Chan layer; ascription disputed

Cross-Reference

SAMADHI-P21　The Fifty Skandha-Māras as Meditation-Pitfalls (this volume's preceding paper) → it sealed Part VI (the Śūraṅgama), closing on the criterion for the by-paths within concentration (the state is in itself good; construing it as sagehood makes the māra; the remedy lies in wisdom). The present paper turns the page to open Part VII, taking up the lead it left at its close — "Bodhidharma's wall-gazing, where Chan departs."
This Part's spine → the present paper sets out the spine of departure (Bodhidharma's concentration is not the four jhānas and eight attainments); SAMADHI-P23　The Sudden and the Gradual: Huineng, Shenxiu, and the Platform Sūtra opens out the sudden-and-gradual along the lead of principle and practice; SAMADHI-P26　The Non-Duality of Concentration and Wisdom completes this spine (the living concentration within marks and apart from marks).
Distant reference → the papers of Part I — the four-jhāna-and-eight-attainment architecture — form the background against which this paper's departure is set. The volume's sealing paper, SAMADHI-P31 (concentration returning to prajñā, concentration not being ultimate), is the distant pointing of this paper's pacifying-the-mind reading, marked here by a single line only.

Paper: SAMADHI-P22 · Bodhidharma's Wall-Gazing and the Birth of Chan · SAMĀDHI · Part VII · Chan Author: 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · Project: 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · Series: The Six Practice Gates (六行門) License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 CBETA collation: Citations from Daoxuan's Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks (T2060), Daoyuan's Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp (T2076), Zongmi's Prolegomenon to the Collection of Chan Sources (T2015), and Jingjue's Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā[vatāra] (T2837) are verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka; the body text of the Two Entrances follows the Tanlin-preface recension. "Wall-gazing" (壁觀) names a pacifying of the mind (安心), not a posture: what abides "like a wall" is the mind, outwardly stopping all conditions. The legend of Bodhidharma is treated as historical accretion, not adjudicated; the Huike "pacifying the mind" dialogue is a developed form of the 1004 Lamp, cited as the tradition's self-interpretation, not as a sixth-century record. Broughton, McRae, Faure, and Dumoulin are cited by paraphrase only, for contrast, not doctrinal equation. The Six Gates of Shaoshi (T2009) is of disputed authorship and is cited only in support. Variant graphs (辟 for 壁, 疑 for 凝, 怨 for 冤) are left as the base text reads. Repository: https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates

What Bodhidharma brought to concentration was not one more rung of height but a turn of direction; the wall is means or simile, and to pacify the mind is itself wall-gazing.

Footnotes

Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, fascicle 3: "At first he dwelt at Shaolin monastery, sitting facing a wall, silent all day long; none could fathom him, and they called him 'the wall-gazing brahman'" — the literal, facing-a-wall reading of Bodhidharma's residence at Shaolin. Taishō vol. 51, no. T2076, p. 0219b03. 「初居少林寺，面壁而坐，終日默然，人莫之測，謂之壁觀婆羅門。」 ↩
Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, fascicle 3, the episode of Huike's seeking a pacified mind: "'My mind is not yet at peace; I beg the master to pacify it.' The master said, 'Bring me the mind and I will pacify it for you.' He said, 'I have searched for the mind and cannot find it at all.' The master said, 'I have pacified your mind for you.'" Taishō vol. 51, no. T2076, p. 0219b20–b23. 「我心未寧，乞師與安。師曰：將心來，與汝安。曰：覓心了不可得。師曰：我與汝安心竟。」 Note: this exchange is not recorded in Daoxuan's 645 biography of Huike; it is a developed, mature form of the later lamp-histories (this work completed in 1004), and is cited here as the tradition's doctrinal self-interpretation, not as a verbatim sixth-century record. In the same fascicle Bodhidharma's words to Huike, "Outwardly cease all conditions, inwardly let the mind be without panting; the mind like a wall — thus one may enter the Way," at p. 0219c28, may be read alongside Zongmi's figurative gloss. 「外息諸緣，內心無喘，心如牆壁，可以入道。」 ↩ ↩²
Prolegomenon to the Collection of Chan Sources, upper fascicle: "Bodhidharma taught people to pacify the mind by wall-gazing: outwardly stopping all conditions, inwardly the mind without panting, the mind like a wall — thus one may enter the Way" — Zongmi's figurative reading, with the wall as a simile for the mind and wall-gazing glossed as the pacifying of the mind. Taishō vol. 48, no. T2015, p. 0403c27–c29. 「達摩以壁觀教人安心，外止諸緣，內心無喘，心如牆壁，可以入道。」 ↩
Prolegomenon to the Collection of Chan Sources, lower fascicle: "by the simile of wall-gazing … causing all conditions to be cut off" — Zongmi naming wall-gazing a simile in so many words. Taishō vol. 48, no. T2015, p. 0405b05. 「喻以壁觀……令絕諸緣。」 The elision (……) follows the source. ↩
Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks, fascicle 16, "Biography of Bodhidharma": "Moved by his sincerity, [Bodhidharma] instructed him in the true Dharma. Such pacifying of the mind is called wall-gazing; such setting-forth in conduct is called the four practices … By relying on the teaching one awakens to the source, deeply trusting that all the living share one same true nature … Abiding fixedly in wall-gazing, with no self and no other, the ordinary and the sagely as one, firmly abiding without shifting, not following other teachings, in tacit accord with the Way, still and unconditioned — this is named the entrance by principle." Composed by Daoxuan in 645, the earliest among extant datable witnesses; the one place that equates pacifying-the-mind with wall-gazing in so many words. Taishō vol. 50, no. T2060, p. 0551c05–c12. 「感其精誠，誨以真法。如是安心，謂壁觀也；如是發行，謂四法也……藉教悟宗，深信含生同一真性……凝住壁觀，無自無他，凡聖等一，堅住不移，不隨他教，與道冥符，寂然無為，名理入也。」 The base text reads 「疑住」; it is corrected to 「凝住」 ("abiding fixedly") on the sense of the passage and on other recensions. The graphs 「報怨／他教」 are this recension's usage and differ from the Tanlin-preface recension (「報冤／文教」); all are recension variants. The elisions (……) follow the source. ↩
The Two Entrances and Four Practices is here cited in the cleanest recension, the one with Tanlin's (曇林／曇琳) preface, as recorded in fascicle 30 of the Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp. The Dunhuang manuscripts (such as the Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā line) read 「辟觀／言教／冥狀」 and the like — recension variants, not to be blurred with the base text. ↩
Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, fascicle 30, "A Brief Discernment of the Mahāyāna Entrance to the Way by the Four Practices" (Tanlin-preface recension): "There are many roads by which one enters the Way, but in brief they come to no more than two: the first is the entrance by principle, the second is the entrance by practice. As for the entrance by principle: it means awakening to the source by relying on the teaching, and trusting deeply that all the living share one same true nature, which only the adventitious dust of deluded thought has covered, so that it cannot show forth. If one then casts off the false and returns to the true, abiding fixedly in wall-gazing, with no self and no other, the ordinary and the sagely as one, firmly abiding without shifting, no longer following the verbal teaching — this is to be in tacit accord with principle, without discrimination, still and unconditioned: this is named the entrance by principle." Taishō vol. 51, no. T2076, p. 0458b21–b26. 「夫入道多途，要而言之不出二種：一是理入，二是行入。理入者，謂藉教悟宗，深信含生同一真性，但為客塵妄想所覆，不能顯了。若也捨妄歸真，凝住壁觀，無自無他，凡聖等一，堅住不移，更不隨於文教，此即與理冥符，無有分別，寂然無為，名之理入。」 ↩ ↩²
Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, fascicle 30, "A Brief Discernment of the Mahāyāna Entrance to the Way by the Four Practices": the four practices of the entrance by practice, "first, the practice of requiting enmity; second, the practice of according with conditions; third, the practice of having nothing to seek; fourth, the practice of according with the Dharma," and the practice of according with the Dharma, "the principle of nature's purity is what is meant by 'Dharma.' In this principle all marks are empty … and to remove deluded thought one practises the six perfections yet with nothing practised — this is the practice of according with the Dharma." Taishō vol. 51, no. T2076, p. 0458b26–c24. 「一報冤行，二隨緣行，三無所求行，四稱法之行……性淨之理目之為法。此理眾相斯空……為除妄想，修行六度而無所行，是為稱法行。」 The elisions (……) follow the source. ↩ ↩²
Prolegomenon to the Collection of Chan Sources, upper fascicle, the doxography of the five kinds of chan: "If one suddenly awakens to one's own mind as originally pure … and cultivates on this basis, this is the supreme-vehicle chan, also named the pure chan of the Tathāgata, also named the single-practice samādhi … what was handed down in turn within Bodhidharma's school is this chan. Before Bodhidharma arrived, what all the old masters understood [as chan] was only the earlier four jhānas and eight attainments … only what Bodhidharma transmitted is suddenly identical with the Buddha-body, utterly different from all [other] gates" — Zongmi placing Bodhidharma's chan outside the four jhānas and eight attainments. Taishō vol. 48, no. T2015, p. 0399b12–b27. 「若頓悟自心本來清淨……依此而修者，是最上乘禪，亦名如來清淨禪，亦名一行三昧……達摩門下展轉相傳者，是此禪也。達摩未到，古來諸家所解，皆是前四禪八定……唯達摩所傳者，頓同佛體，逈異諸門。」 The elisions (……) follow the source. ↩ ↩²
Record of the Masters and Disciples of the Laṅkā, fascicle 1, compiled by Jingjue (a Dunhuang manuscript, c. 713–716, of the Northern line), on the pacifying of the mind: "sitting in the second dhyāna, the third dhyāna … is not called pacifying the mind." Taishō vol. 85, no. T2837, p. 1284a16–28. 「坐二禪三禪……不名安心。」 This recension reads 「凝住辟觀」 (the loan-graph 辟 for 壁, "wall") at p. 1285a11–16, a recension variant. The elision (……) follows the source. ↩

Source on GitHub ↗