Dalma, Dalma, Dalma, Dalma

Here's an egotistical psych test for the people who know me best. My boss sent me the following four Dalma-daesa (Bodhidharma) pictures, each of which hit me differently. Which of these pictures do you think had the greatest impact on me? People who know me, my sense of humor and drama, my drawing style, and other aspects of my character might be able to guess which of the following pictures I immediately found most impressive and impactful.

Use your nunchi, then leave your guess in the comments.

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This Dalma seems to be missing an arm, but there's a story about the monk Hui-ke, who wanted to study under Dalma-daesa. Hui-ke cut off his left arm and presented it to the master as a token of his commitment to practice, and Dalma accepted him as a pupil. Anyway, the above is definitely not Hui-ke: he has all the Dalma traits I've talked about before when you're evaluating a Dalma-do (image of Bodhidharma): (1) a frown of concentration, (2) glowering eyes, (3) a pendulous earlobe (sign of the Buddha), (4) a ring in the earlobe, (5) bald head with hair on the sides, (6) a beard (and often a mustache), (7) a robe that's usually in a shape suggesting a mountain, (8) bushy eyebrows, (9) a saintly halo, and (10) [optional] one arm held close to the opposite shoulder and clutching his robe as if to make himself warmer.

This one is the most straightforwardly cartoonish of the bunch, but what interests me, here, is the visibility of the hands. Small, Trumpian hands. And each hand is holding something: the right hand holds a danju/단주 (shorter rosary; the longer/larger rosary, with 108 beads, is called a yeomju/염주), and the left hand holds a vajra symbol—a thunderbolt (see here, too). (Tibetan Buddhism is often called Vajrayana, i.e., the Thunderbolt Vehicle, as opposed to the other yanas: Mahayana, the Larger/Greater Vehicle; and Hinayana, the Smaller/Lesser Vehicle. With some Hinayanins offended by the connotations of "smaller/lesser," any choose to call their path Theravada, i.e., the Way of the Elders. Hinayana/Theravada is, in fact, the older form of Buddhist tradition, arguably closer to the Buddha's original teachings.

My boss and I discussed the possible meanings and implications of the large, thick black arc passing by Dalma's/Bodhidharma's chin, directly under his lower lip. Recall item (10) above, among the traits of Dalma-dos—the sleeve of a robe, suggesting a robe tugged across the body, perhaps for warmth. (Although why the monk would seek such warmth in the midst of meditation is beyond me.) Note that, with the robe going over Dalma's head, the effect is less like a mountaintop (with the saintly halo representing the sun behind the mountain) and more like a face popping out of a cave—real God-Emperor of Dune vibes. We also don't see the iconic earlobe and earring. In many ways, this Dalma-do is stripped of quite a few of the usual tropes, making it both striking and the most "ordinary" of all the Dalma-dos here.

—except maybe for this one, which also features no ear, no earring, and no strikingly curved stroke, although the suggestion of Dalma tugging his robe across his body is still there. Like the first Dalma-do above, this image features writing. The only character I can clearly read on the far left is the middle one, which is the bul/불/佛/Buddha character. (The character above it might be go/고/古, i.e., "old, ancestral, primordial.") This Dalma looks fairly mountain-like.

So! Which one do you think hit me the hardest?