The Phoenix. An illustrated review of occultism and philosophy

Wisdom: not freedom from law but freedom under law.
Truly secret knowledge is communicated in silence.
Attempted communication through speech reveals ignorance.

The eccentricities of Bodhidharma and his enigmatical method of teaching endeared him to the few who understood the workings of his brilliant mind. As in the case of Pythagoras, most men, however, hate mysteries, and the patriarch made many enemies among those unable to comprehend his metaphysical speculations. Like Socrates, this grand old master of Zen a school of Buddhism focused on meditation and intuition was loved by the few, hated by the many, and feared by all alike. On at least three different occasions priests of rival sects made efforts to poison Bodhidharma, but in each case his great knowledge enabled him to frustrate their designs. It is not amazing, therefore, that he was regarded as being divinely protected and the ignorant assumed that he possessed some magical secrets for the indefinite extension of his life. Wisdom, however, does not bestow freedom from law but rather freedom under law. Like the great who had gone before him, the blue-eyed Brahman passed from the scene of mortal action.

When after a long and intense life, the time came for Bodhidharma to depart into the Law, we discover him the same fierce-appearing but mysterious old man, still huddled in his voluminous cloak and surrounded by the monks and nuns whom he had converted to Dhyana the doctrine of meditation. With his great rumbling voice he speaks thus: "And now the time of my departure is at hand. Say unto me one and all how do you understand the Law." Then reverently the assembled brethren spoke, each in turn summarizing what he had gained from the teachings. One disciple, Tao Fu, answered: "To me it seems that the Law does not lie in the letters nor yet is it separated from the letter: but it works." Bodhidharma nodded gravely and replied: "By your realization you have obtained my skin." Then a nun, Tsung Chi, spoke up, saying: "As Ananda, the beloved disciple of the Buddha, achieved the firmness of thought but once or twice, so I understand the Law." Bodhidharma nodded slowly as though pondering the words and then replied: "And by your realization you have attained to my flesh."

The Void

Another to speak was Tao Yuh, a great student. His words were thus: "The four elements are unreal from the first. Nor are form, perception, consciousness, action or knowledge really existent. All is emptiness according to my view." Again Bodhidharma inclined his massive shoulders, mumbling in his cloak: "By your realization you have acquired my bones." The last to be called upon for his understanding of the Law was Hwui Ko, who, after making a most polite obeisance, sat at a little distance and, assuming the position of meditation, gazed silently at Bodhidharma for several minutes. The aged patriarch was very still also and then leaning forward he whispered: "By your realization you have in silence attained to my marrow." Bodhidharma then took the great green cloak of Zen and spread it over Hwui Ko's shoulders, proclaiming him the next patriarch of Zen and pouring into the vessel of his soul as into a new pitcher the everlasting waters of the Law.

Three years after his death a strange story began to be circulated concerning Bodhidharma. Some peasants from the hill country had seen the fierce-looking philosopher plodding on his way amid the western mountains of China, his face resolutely turned towards India. He was barefooted, but for

some inexplicable reason was carrying one shoe in his hand. The number of persons reporting this circumstance so greatly increased that the story caused such consternation that it came to the attention of the Emperor of China, who, to settle the matter, caused the tomb of Bodhidharma to be opened. To the amazement of everyone, the grave was empty except for one shoe, the mate to the slipper that Bodhidharma had carried away. On the strength of this story it has been affirmed that the great Zen monk never really died at all, but having completed his labors in China, employed the subterfuge of death as a convenient method of disappearing. Compare with the Count of St. Germain; see page 58.

In Japan are found many curious images of Bodhidharma, or Daruma the Japanese name for the first Zen patriarch. In some he is shown with his clenched fists raised above his head in a posture of utter exasperation; in others he is depicted walking with stately tread, carrying the much discussed shoe. In still other carvings he is shown standing on a millet stalk, some say a great leaf of the ashi reed or rush tree. The latter picture refers to the account, probably apocryphal, of Bodhidharma's visit to Japan. He is declared to have crossed the Strait of Korea either walking upon the waters or standing on this leaf which had become an enchanted skiff.

Bodhidharma is often used in Japan as a pattern for children's toys. No other great philosopher seems to have suffered so many indignities at the hands of the public as this old Zen monk, and yet there is something very profound behind it all. In kite-flying season his strange, staring face gazes down from countless paper birds. Among the familiar toys modeled from him are the little tumbling egg-shaped figures, sometimes called by American children "humpty-dumpties." These are weighted at the bottom so that no matter which way they are knocked about, they always bob up serenely.

By their peculiar faculty of righting themselves under all conditions, these tumbling dolls, strangely enough, are very appropriate symbols of the Zen tradition. Zen is the doctrine of equilibrium, demanding a balancing of all the elements of life as a prerequisite to spiritual understanding. Students of metaphysical subjects will do well to emulate the Zen attitude of silence towards esoteric matters, for not the least important of Bodhidharma's teachings is that very evident fact that the true secrets of life can under no circumstances be communicated from one person to another, and that all who try to express outwardly the secrets of the Law expose themselves as ignorant of these secrets. Nagasena a Buddhist sage likens man to a tree, the branches and leaves of which are moved by the winds of excess which disturb the tranquillity of the outer life. The trunk of the tree is the mind which the wind cannot move. Let us use Nagasena's own words: "The branches of a tree are shaken by the storm; but the trunk remains unmoved. In like manner, as the mind of the arhat a perfected person who has attained enlightenment is bound to the firm pillar of samadhi intense meditative concentration by the cord of the four paths, it remains unmoved, even when the body is suffering pain." Zen teaches that the immovability of reason is the hope of man, for while the outer senses and perceptions are hopelessly inconstant, the mind within is capable of being so established on the eternal foundations of realization that the vicissitudes of the outer life have no effect upon the serenity of the inner existence.

A large rectangular decorative title block appears at the top of the page. The text "When The Dead Come Back" is written in a stylized, bold, serif font. The background of the text features swirling, cloud-like or smoke-like patterns. To the right of the text is a classical-style incense burner or brazier on a pedestal, with smoke rising from it. The entire block is enclosed in a double-line border with corner ornaments.

A large decorative drop-cap 'T' at the beginning of the first paragraph features floral and vine-like flourishes.

THOSE opposed to the belief that man's intellectual faculties survive the dissolution of his physical body advance, as proof of mortality, that the dead do not return. The phenomena of spiritualism are not accepted by the materialist as evidence of this survival because of the difficulty of establishing by physical means the integrity of such manifestations. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the vistas of the invisible world can be charted by clairvoyance alone. Men have died and have lived again; for returning from the vale of shadows, they have described, with minute detail, that which they experienced and beheld. In most cases they were not even believers in the metaphysical. Before their miraculous death and resurrection they were addicted to intemperance and excess; but after their return from the subterranean realms of hades the underworld or state of the dead, they became men of exemplary morals, having been shocked into a new life of piety by the awesomeness of their experiences.

By the irreligious, death is viewed as the final dissipation of both life and intelligence; by the devout, it is held as the beginning of a spiritual state where woe ceases and all things become miraculously perfected. To the rationally minded, it must be evident that both these extreme viewpoints are, to say the least, illogical. If there be either reason or consistency in Nature, order in the world or justice in the divine plan, then all things must persist in harmony with themselves. That which is to come must be justified by that which precedes it; ends must be determined by appropriate means and all conditions must generate their similars. When a man disappears from his circle of physical associations, this circumstance is scarcely sufficient to warrant the conclusion that, on the one hand, he has utterly ceased to be or that, on the other hand, he has become apotheosized elevated to the status of a god. If men would cease

to live anticipating some unreasonable postmortem metamorphosis and live now as though they were to continue as themselves throughout all space and time, there would be a greater incentive to the improvement of present conduct.

We are apt to over-estimate the importance of death as an incident in life. Death is regarded as a change of condition when, in reality, it is only a change of place. Such change can produce no appreciable difference in either the moral or ethical status. As in life, so in death a man is no better and no worse for where he is, but rather for what he is. In one sense. A person passing from one room to another does not change his temperament at the doorway, nor does he cast off his attitudes with his garments. Life and death were terms employed by the ancients to symbolize planes of human consciousness. By death should be inferred that condition of ignorance which results from the encroachments of the material impulses upon the province of the rational nature. By life should be inferred that stimulation of the energies of the soul by which man is emancipated from bondage to the illusions of materiality. To paraphrase the Platonic arguments of Plotinus a major Neoplatonist philosopher, when the soul is merged with body, so great a part of it sleeps or is obscured that the stimulation of the sense perceptions is its only employment. Resurrection, therefore, is not the elevation of the dull mass of the body but rather the elevation of the reason above this mass. Any phenomenal change from life to death or from death to life, if unaccompanied by spiritual enlightenment, is only a transmigration the passage of the soul into another body from sleep to sleep, from dream to dream, like a man passing in the dark from bed to bed. All real change must take place in the soul, by which, in turn, the body is tinctured. The vicissitudes of the body, such as its comings and its goings, while they have no direct influence upon the quality of the soul, may by indirection affect it as the mind, through the contemplation of phenomena, is led to an analysis of realities.