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Bodaidaruma (菩提達磨)

S. Bodhidharma. According to traditional histories of the Zen lineage, Bodaidaruma was the 28th ancestral teacher (soshi 祖師) of the lineage in India and the first ancestor (shoso 初祖) of the lineage in China. He is said to have been the third son of a South Indian king who became a Buddhist monk, inherited the mind dharma (shinbō 心法) of Shakamuni that is the legacy of the Zen lineage, "come from the west" in the Putong era (520-527) of the Liang dynasty, and finally transmitted the dharma to his disciple Eka (C. Huike 慧可), thereby establishing the Zen lineage in China. Although Bodaidaruma first appears in the Additional Biographies of Eminent Monks (Zoku kōsō den 續高僧傳) as a practitioner of dhyana who promoted the Lanka Sutra (Ryōga kyō 楞伽經), Zen histories later rejected that account and described his teaching method as a "transmission of [buddha-] mind by means of mind, without setting up scriptures" (ishin denshin furyū monji 以心傳心不立文字).