Bodhidharma — the semi-legendary Indian monk who transmitted Chan (Zen) Buddhism to China circa the early sixth century C.E. — occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychology corpus as a figure at the intersection of historical inquiry, mythic amplification, and psychological allegory. Suzuki provides the most sustained scholarly treatment, situating Bodhidharma as the founder whose ‘wall-contemplation’ (pi-kuan) inaugurated a distinctive Chinese Buddhism, while simultaneously interrogating the textual reliability of the two primary biographical sources: Tao-hsüan’s Biographies and the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp. Watts and Campbell employ Bodhidharma primarily as a dramatic protagonist whose encounters — with Emperor Wu Ti and the self-mutilating Hui-k’o — crystallize the Zen insistence that merit-accumulation, doctrinal study, and conceptual self-knowledge are insufficient paths to liberation. Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki treats him tersely as ‘First Ancestor,’ integrating the famous ‘No merit’ reply into a lived monastic teaching. Across these voices the central tension is historiographical versus mythopoeic: Suzuki disentangles legend from chronicle, while Campbell and Watts freely deploy Bodhidharma’s iconography — the nine years facing a wall, the severed arm, the penetrating eyes — as poetic vehicles for the Zen claim that enlightenment cannot be transmitted through another. The figure thus serves depth-psychological discourse as both a documented founder and an archetype of radical immediacy.
Wu Ti: ‘What, then, is the Noble Truth in its highest sense?’ Bodhidharma: ‘It is empty. There is nothing noble about it.’ Wu Ti: ‘And who is this monk now facing me?’ Bodhidharma: ‘I do not know.’
Campbell presents the Bodhidharma–Wu Ti dialogue as the paradigmatic Zen demonstration that merit, doctrine, and personal identity are all equally empty, making Bodhidharma the embodiment of non-conceptual awakening.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962thesis
‘My soul is not yet pacified. Pray, master, pacify it.’ ‘Bring your soul here, and I will have it pacified.’ Kuang hesitated for a moment but finally said, ‘I have sought it these many years and am still unable to get hold of it!’ ‘There! it is pacified once for all.’
Suzuki’s rendering of the Hui-k’o encounter establishes Bodhidharma’s central pedagogical method: forcing the disciple to discover that the restless mind is unfindable and therefore already at rest.
, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949thesis
The one started by Bodhidharma was uninterruptedly carried on by Hui-k’ê, Shêng-ts’an, Tao-hsin, and Hung-jên, who proved to be the most fruitful and successful.
Suzuki traces the patriarchal lineage from Bodhidharma through successive masters, arguing that his school uniquely succeeded because it aligned with Chinese psychological modes while gradually shedding Indian metaphysical accretions.
, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949thesis
Hui-nêng (637-713), who was the sixth patriarch after Bodhidharma, was the real Chinese founder of Zen; for it was through him and his direct followers that Zen could cast off the garment borrowed from India.
Suzuki distinguishes Bodhidharma as the Indian originating impulse of Zen from Hui-neng as its true Chinese founder, framing Bodhidharma’s legacy as a seed requiring native soil to bear full fruit.
, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949thesis
Dharma, the founder of Zen, is treated as one of the many other Buddhist priests eminent in various fields as translators, commentators, scholars, Vinaya-followers, masters of meditation… He is described merely as one of those.
Suzuki contrasts the two biographical traditions, showing that the earlier Tao-hsüan account subordinates Bodhidharma to a crowd of eminent monks, revealing how Zen hagiography progressively elevated him to singular founding status.
, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949thesis
There came to China from India, about the year 520 A.D., a curiously grim old Buddhist saint and sage known as Bodhidharma, who immediately proceeded to the royal palace… Bodhidharma answered, ‘None!’
Campbell introduces Bodhidharma mythically as the radical disruption of institutionalised Buddhist merit-making, his ‘None!’ functioning as a koan that overturns five centuries of pious accumulation.
, Myths to Live By, 1972thesis
Zen tradition represents Bodhidharma as a fierce-looking fellow with a bushy beard and wide-open, penetrating eyes — in which, however, there is just the hint of a twinkle.
Watts frames Bodhidharma’s legendary iconography — including the eyelid and legless legends — as imaginative expressions of Zen’s paradoxical union of fierce discipline and spontaneous vitality.
, The Way of Zen, 1957supporting
The earlier part of Bodhidharma’s life while in India as narrated in the Records may be discredited as containing a large dose of fiction, but the latter part of it cannot so easily be disposed of.
Suzuki applies historical-critical method to the Bodhidharma biography, separating mythic accretion from a documentary core that can be treated as credible evidence of early Zen formation.
, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949supporting
Tao-hsüan, the author of the Biographies, refers to Dharma’s tai Ch’êng pi kuan (Mahāyānistic wall-contemplation) in his commentary notes to Zen, as the most meritorious work Dharma achieved in China.
Suzuki identifies pi-kuan (wall-contemplation) as the doctrinal signature Bodhidharma bequeathed to Chinese Zen, and examines Dharma’s deliberate substitution of textual terminology to produce a philosophically novel meditative concept.
, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949supporting
Hui-k’o could not find his mind when Bodhidharma asked him to produce it.
Watts interprets the Bodhidharma–Hui-k’o exchange as a direct phenomenological demonstration of the absence of a separate self, grounding Zen’s non-dual insight in the impossibility of objectifying the mind.
, The Way of Zen, 1957supporting
The result I have reached is that the author of the Biographies used the one preserved in the Records, which is more faithful to the original if there were any such besides this very version.
Suzuki argues on literary-critical grounds that the Records version of Bodhidharma’s writing is chronologically and stylistically prior to the Biographies version, reversing naive assumptions about textual authority.
, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949supporting
Bodhidharma famously answers, ‘No merit.’
Dōgen’s annotator references the Wu Ti encounter to gloss the concept of merit-free Buddhadharma, integrating Bodhidharma’s radical answer into the practical soteriology of the Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki.
, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, 1234supporting
Bodhidharma (First Ancestor), 195, 197, 311, 318, 418n72, 437n191, 448n261, 448n263, 458–59n339
The index entry confirms Bodhidharma’s canonical designation as ‘First Ancestor’ throughout Dōgen’s text, indicating the frequency with which this figure anchors discussions of lineage, merit, and Zen orthodoxy.
, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, 1234supporting
Hu Shih and T’ang Yung-t’ing have suggested that Bodhidharma was in China at the earlier date of 420 to 479.
Watts cites competing scholarly datings of Bodhidharma’s Chinese sojourn, situating the historical uncertainty that surrounds the founder and the methodological debates it generates.
, The Way of Zen, 1957supporting
List of Illustrations 1. Bodhidharma. By Hakuin Zenji (1683–1768). 3. Bodhidharma and Hui-k’e. By Sesshu (1420–1506).
Watts’s selection of two canonical Bodhidharma images — by Hakuin and Sesshū — as frontispieces signals the iconic, not merely historical, weight the figure carries in his exposition of Zen.
, The Way of Zen, 1957aside
The twenty-eight patriarchs of Zen regarded by its followers as the orthodox line of transmission.
Suzuki contextualises the Indian patriarchal lineage terminating in Bodhidharma, explaining why Zen historians constructed an unbroken transmission chain to legitimise his role as founding ancestor.
, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949aside