“Who, then, is standing before me?”

 

The first Patriarch of this "meditation" school of Buddhism was Bodhidharma. He came from southern India to southern China in 527 CE and soon visited Emperor Wu-ti, founder of the Liang dynasty at Nanking and one of Buddhism’s greatest all-time patrons in China.

Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma about the highest meaning of noble Truth, and Bodhidharma replied, “Vast emptiness, there is no noble Truth.” “Who, then, is standing before me?” “I don’t know,” said Bodhidharma. Emperor Wu then asked the enigmatic Indian sage how much karmic merit he, the emperor, had accumulated by building monasteries, ordaining monks, sponsoring translations and copies of scriptures and making Buddhist art-images. Bodhidharma was quite blunt: “No merit whatever!” And he left the region.