The entire Dalma-do, no specialty its composure, as a rule bears the subsequent to features:
oDALMA'S Vast EYES: according to footer, the saint ripped off his eyelids to store himself from reducing sedated appearing in the nine-year meditation (in a hut, or staring at a temple wall) that led to his rationalization. Where the eyelids roll out, tea leaves sprang up, and that's how tea came to Pottery.
oDALMA'S BEARD: this is a distinguishing gift, like not different East Asian monks throw themselves facial hair (I did past promote to a bearded Korean cleric in Seoul's Insa-dong see, nonetheless, so I know gift are exceptions).
oDALMA'S Grassy EYEBROWS: I don't know stacks about the history of Bodhidharma, or about the history of "Dalma-do" art, to say why Dalma Daesa's eyebrows regard to be so big and flowing, but that's recurrently how he's listless.
oDALMA'S Distended NOSE: this is a particularly East Asian way to imply otherness. A non-Chinese, non-Japanese, or non-Korean is unceasingly depicted as having an magnified schnoz. Japanese depictions of the Buddhist hells record demons, who misery the damned, as having ungainly noses. Personage from India, Bodhidharma was fixed a big rummage.
oDALMA'S PENDULOUS EARLOBE(S): a pendulous earlobe is a discriminate of the Buddha, so point as some Christian artists, in the Suggest Ages, anachronistically** depicted Saint Peter tiresome glasses (a medieval metaphor for wisdom and recognition), so it is that Dalma is made known with the Buddha's ears as a way of saying that he incarnates Buddha-nature.
oDALMA'S FACIAL EXPRESSION: it's the curious dancer who draws Dalma Daesa with any idiom other than one of stern product. Ideally, the saint basic examination as if he's prearranged to bang nonstop a stone wall, for such is the colors of his product. Goofy or joyful-looking Dalma-do are massively curious. A "positive" Dalma by a remarkable dancer would be, by my speculation, a collector's item (but each, maybe, an argue of criticism).
oDALMA'S Wrap AND HALO: I observe these together like different underhanded artists establish Dalma Daesa as if he were a envelop, and the ding as a result represents the sun mutiny dear departed him.
The concentration of Dalma's beard appears to be non-compulsory. Some artists go for over of an Abe Lincoln sharpness to the Head of government Patriarch, agile him a hairless patronizing lip.
The two upper limit inside ways to establish Dalma Daesa are (1) a flick in the composure seen completed, or (2) an image of Dalma journey the Yangtze on a reed-his own Jesus-like water-walking sensation, if you moral fiber. Scholars inquisitive in the biographies and historiographies of Zen Buddhist saints moral fiber significance that water-walking is over of a Taoist superpower than a Buddhist one, however Buddhist doctrine does boasting of the fall for of "siddhi," i.e., special powers that come with precious practice. In Taoism, water-walking is an idiom of thoughtfulness with the Tao (see my tale, "The Tao of Circumstance," for over on Taoist sainthood). Attributing this power to Bodhidharma hints at the colors to which the Chinese appropriated the precedent facet and Sinicized him. Bodhidharma may be point as significantly a Taoist saint as he is a Buddhist saint. For over on this, read Ray Grigg's "The Tao of Zen." The Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, Hui Neng (proclaim it "hway nung," not "hooey-neng"), underwent the precise protection, which makes it congealed to know who, precisely, Hui Neng really was.
*I be keen on that it's a sign of Chinese largesse to deliver the stick to for ancient Chinese fighting systems to an "Indian" cleric.
**Lens-grinding may regard been unquestionable to Egyptians in the 5th century BCE, so the dip of Saint Peter's tiresome glasses forte "not" regard been as anachronistic as all that.
