Bodhidharma, who is regarded as the First Patriarch of Ch'an or the Zen tradition, is sometimes called the wall-contemplating or wall-gazing Brahmin. He is often depicted as sitting in a cave gazing at the cave's wall which he did, supposedly, for nine years! Most likely this is a fictional account devised by later Zennists to fill in the gap left by the elusive term "wall-gazing" which in Chinese is biguan/pi-kuan. Heinrich Dumoulin gives us a better understanding of Bodhidharma's wall-contemplation.

"In an ancient text ascribed to Bodhidharma, his way of meditation is characterized by the Chinese word pi-kuan, literally wall-gazing or wall-contemplation. Except for the word pi-kuan, the same passage is found in a Mahayana sutra; it reads: "When one, abandoning the false and embracing the true, in simplicity of thought abides in pi-kuan, one finds that there is neither selfhood nor otherness, that ordinary men (prthagjana) and saints (arya) are of one essence." The sutra speaks of the "vision of enlightenment [chüeh-kuan]" at this point—an expression that also occurs in Zen literature. Whatever the case may be, with the insertion of the word pi-kuan in this text (most likely taken from the sutra), the expression pi-kuan and the whole text indicated a manner of meditation that later generations typified as "Bodhidharma Zen" (Zen Enlightenment, p. 38).

Pi-kuan is certainly a special kind of vision or insight which is not this worldly. Jeffrey Broughton provides us with another angle on pi-kuan—a Tibetan perspective—one which is certainly more esoteric.

"Various Ch'an text were translated into Tibetan, one of the most important being the Bodhidharma Anthology, which in Tibetan is usually referred to as the Great Chinese Injunctions (Rgya lung chen po). The recently discovered ninth-century Tibetan treatise Dhyâna of the Enlightened Eye (Bsam gtan mig sgron) contains translations of some of [Bodhidharma's] the Two Entrances, some material from Record I, and the whole of Record III. Early on the Dhyâna of the Enlightened Eye gives summaries of four teachings known in early Tibet: the gradualist gate; the all-at-once gate (Chinese Ch'an); Mahayoga; and Atiyoga (Rdzog-chen).

The summary of Ch'an ends with a series of quotations from Ch'an masters, the first of whom is Bodhidharmatâra, the version of the name that is encountered in Tibetan sources: "From the sayings of the Great Master Bodhidharmatara [Bo-dhe-dar-mo-ta-ra]: 'If one reverts to the real, rejects discrimination, and abides in brightness, then there is neither self nor other. The common man and sage are equal. If without shifting you abide in firmness, after that you will not follow after the written teaching. This is the quiet of the principle of the real. It is nondiscriminative, quiescent, and inactive. It is entrance into principle" (The Bodhidharma Anthology, p. 67). (Italics mine.)

The Tibetan lhan me is rendered, in the above, as "abides in brightness" but could easily be rendered "abides in luminosity" which pertains to the luminosity of Mind. Abides in brightness serves to give Bodhidharma's words a profoundly spiritual ring which they deserve in light of the context of this sermon and others. Following this, here is Red Pine's translation which is roughly the same as Broughton’s translation except for the problem with the wall!

"Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason" (The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, p. 3). (Italics mine.)

Reason should tell us meditating on walls will get us no where in the spiritual scheme of things, but abiding in brightness or the luminosity of Mind certainly will. We can think of this wall as being a luminous wall. It alone represents true reality. The wall’s nature is purely universal and dynamic from which all phenomena arise and return. It is also thoroughly signless and empty—yet not empty of true reality. It is only empty of the non-real or the same, empty of illusory phenomena.

On a slightly different note, Japanese Soto Zen took Bodhidharma’s wall-gazing quite literally. This explains why Soto Zennists, to this day, still sit facing a wall when doing zazen. In the Bendowa, Dogen firmly believes Bodhidharma sat nine years in zazen at the Shaolin monastery on Mount Sung facing a wall. What Dogen is apparently not aware of is the term “zazen” doesn’t appear in the passage that contains pi-kuan. Bodhidharma never sat in a cave, facing a wall doing zazen, in other words.