Bodhidharma had come from India to China in the fifth century, carrying the direct transmission of the Buddha's teaching — not the texts, not the doctrines, but the wordless pointing at what the texts could only approach. He was not interested in students who wanted knowledge. He was interested in students who were prepared to receive transmission.
Shenguang — who would later be known as Huike — was a scholar of Buddhist texts and Confucian classics. He had studied for years. He knew the doctrines. He knew the arguments. He felt that something in all the knowing was still missing — the specific thing that the knowing was supposed to point at, which the knowing itself could not produce.
He went to Bodhidharma's cave at Shaolin monastery in the Henan mountains. He waited outside. Bodhidharma did not open the door.
He waited through the day. He waited through the night. Snow fell. He stood in it. He was a scholar and a monk — he was not accustomed to standing in snow being ignored. But he stood.
At some point in the deep night — accounts vary on exactly when — he understood that the waiting itself was part of the teaching. That Bodhidharma was not being absent. He was being present in a way that was testing whether Huike had arrived at the readiness that the transmission required.
At dawn, to demonstrate his sincerity beyond any possible doubt, Huike cut off his left arm and presented it at the cave entrance.
Bodhidharma opened the door.
The exchange that follows is the central koan of the Zen tradition — the question and answer that most precisely describes what the tradition is doing and what it is pointing at. Huike said: my mind is not at peace. Please pacify it for me. Bodhidharma said: bring your mind here and I will pacify it. Huike searched. He searched earnestly, with the specific quality of searching that only someone who has stood in the snow all night and cut off their arm to demonstrate sincerity can bring to a search. After a long time he said: I have searched for the mind and I cannot find it. Bodhidharma said: there — I have pacified it for you. The mind that cannot be found is the mind that has been pacified. Not the absence of mind — the recognition that what was producing the anxiety was a construction, a story, a grasping after something that, when looked for directly, could not be located. The finding of the not-finding is the finding.
Huike became the Second Patriarch of Chinese Zen. He transmitted the teaching to the Third Patriarch. The transmission continues — from Bodhidharma through Huike through thirty-three generations to the present day.
The arm that was cut off is not commemorated. The exchange at the cave is commemorated. Because the arm was the price of admission and the exchange was the transmission. The price of genuine transmission has always been the willingness to give up what the transmission will make unnecessary.
What are you holding onto that is preventing you from finding that your mind — the anxious, seeking, never-pacified mind — cannot be found when looked for directly? The door is open. The question is whether you are willing to search honestly enough to discover the answer.