Why Did Bodhidharma Go to the East?

The article begins by contrasting Indian and Chinese conceptual frameworks concerning mind, language, and world, arguing that Indian Buddhist philosophy inherited a representational model in which language expresses thought and thought represents objects, while classical Chinese thought treated language more as a guiding discourse than as a representation of inner mental content. It then examines Buddhist epistemology through the distinction between direct perception and inference, showing how perception is treated as more fully authoritative while inference remains conventionally useful but ultimately dependent on conceptual constructions. Garfield next discusses conceptual and non-conceptual thought, explaining how ordinary cognition fabricates objects through concepts, whereas enlightened cognition is described as non-conceptual. The article then turns to non-duality, showing how ordinary consciousness divides subject and object, object and complement, characteristic and characterized, while awakened awareness transcends these dualistic structures. The discussion of awareness and representation develops the claim that ordinary cognition is mediated by representations, whereas a Buddha’s cognition is non-representational and immediate. The section on Yogācāra introduces the three natures, foundation consciousness, transformation of the basis, and Buddha-nature as attempts to explain how ordinary deluded cognition can be transformed into enlightened awareness. Finally, the article argues that when Buddhism entered China, these ideas found a more congenial intellectual setting, allowing Chan/Zen traditions to articulate the Buddhist critique of conceptuality, representation, and dualism with distinctive clarity.