Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series

After this says the Buddha: “O you, sons of the Jina, question me anything you feel like asking. I am going to tell you about the state of my inner attainment (pratyātmagatigocaram).” This is conclusive, nothing is left to discussion concerning the theme of the Laṅkāvatāra. The five Dharmas, the three Characteristics, etc., are referred to only in the course of the Buddha’s exposition of the principal matter.

The two later translations, which, as aforementioned, contain some extra chapters, are divided regularly in the one into ten and in the other into eighteen chapters, while the earliest one of Gunabhadra has just one chapter title for the whole book, “The Gist of all the Buddhawords.” The first extra chapter which is not found in Gunabhadra’s text is remarkable in this that it gives the outlines of the whole Sutra in the form of a dialogue between the Buddha and Rāvana, Lord of the Yakshas, in the Isle of Laṅkā. When the Buddha, coming out of the Nāga’s palace, views the castle of Laṅkā, he smiles and remarks that this was the place where all the Buddhas of the past preached regarding the excellent understanding of Enlightenment realised in their inner consciousness, which is beyond the analysis of logic and is not the state of mind attainable by the Tīrthya, Śrāvaka, or Pratyekabuddha. The Buddha then adds that for this reason the same Dharma will be propounded for Rāvana, Lord of the Yakshas. In response to this, the latter, making all kinds of costly offerings to the Buddha, sings in the praise of his insight and virtues: “O Lord, instruct me in thy system of doctrine which is based on the self-nature of mind, instruct me in the doctrine of non-ego, free from prejudices and defilements, the doctrine that is revealed in thy inmost consciousness.”

In the conclusion of this chapter, the Buddha reaffirms his doctrine of inner realisation which is Enlightenment: “It is like seeing one’s own image in a mirror or in water, it is like seeing one’s own shadow in moonlight or lamplight, again it is like hearing one’s voice echoed in the valley: as a man clings to his own false assumptions, he erroneously discriminates between truth and falsehood, and on account of this false discrimination he fails to go beyond the dualism of opposites, indeed he cherishes falsity and cannot attain tranquillity. By tranquillity is meant singleness of purpose (or oneness of things), and by singleness of purpose is meant the entrance into the most excellent samadhi, whereby is produced the state of noble understanding of self-realisation, which is the receptacle of Tathagatahood (tathāgatagarbha).”

From these quotations we can easily see why Bodhi-Dharma recommended this Sutra for the special perusal of his Zen disciples. But in order to impress the reader further with the great importance of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra in the historical study of Zen in India and China, I quote a few more passages showing how the teaching of self-realisation is developed in the Sutra.

According to the author, the anuttara-samyak-sambodhi attained by the Muni of the Śākyas, whereby he became the Buddha, is realisable by transcending the ideas of being and non-being (nāsy-asti-vikalpa). This being the fundamental error—this cherishing of dualism—must be got rid of as the first necessary step to reach the state of self-realisation. The error comes from not perceiving the truth that all things are empty (śūnya), uncreated (anutpāda), non-dualistic (advaya), and have no immutably individualistic characters (niḥsvabhāvalakshaṇa). By the emptiness of things is meant principally that their existence being so thoroughly mutually conditioning, nowhere obtains the false notion of distinctive individuality, and that when analysis is carried to its logical consequence there exists nothing that will separate one object from another in a final way; therefore says the Sutra, “Sva-para-ubhaya-abhāvāt” (there exists neither one nor another nor both). Secondly, things are uncreated, because they are not self-created, nor are they created by an outside agency. Thirdly, as their existence is reciprocally conditioning, a dualistic conception of the world is not the ultimate one, and thus it is a mistake, due to this wrong discrimination (vikalpa), to seek Nirvana outside of Samsara (birth-and-death) and Samsara outside of Nirvana.

Fourthly, this principle of mutuality means the denial of individuality as absolute reality, for there is nothing in existence that will absolutely maintain its individuality standing above all conditions of relativity or mutual becoming—in fact, being is becoming. For these reasons, we can realise the truth of Enlightenment only by transcending the first condition of intellection, which is, according to the Laṅkāvatāra, Parikalpa, or Vikalpa (discrimination). The warning against this Vikalpa which is the analysing tendency of mind, or, we may say, the fundamentally dualistic disposition of consciousness is the constant refrain of the Sutra, while on the other hand it never forgets to emphasise the importance of self-realisation which is attained by overcoming this fundamental tendency.

By thus transcending the intellectual condition, Paramārthasatya is realised, which is the ultimate truth, and which subjectively constitutes Pratyātmajñāna; it is also the eternally abiding law of the universe (paurāṇasthitidharmatā). This inwardly realised truth has many names as it is viewed in various relations in which it stands to human activities, moral, spiritual, intellectual, practical, and psychological. “Bodhi” is enlightenment and used most generally, in Mahayana as well as in Hinayana literature, to designate the mind in which Ignorance is completely wiped out; Tathatā (thatness) or Bhūtatā (reality) is metaphysical. Nirvana is conceived as a spiritual state in which all passional turmoil is quieted; Tathāgatagarbha is more psychological than ontological; Citta is used as belonging to the series of mental terms such as Manas, Manovijñāna, and other Vijñānas, and is not always synonymous with Bodhi or Pratyātmajñāna unless it is qualified with adjectives of purity; Śūnyatā is a negative term and distinctively epistemological, and Buddhist scholars, especially of the Prajñāpāramitā school, have been quite fond of this term, and we see that the Laṅkāvatāra too has indulged in the use of it. It goes without saying however that these synonyms are helpful only as sign-posts indicating the way to the content of self-realisation.

Besides these, we have two or three most frequently repeated phrases to characterise the central idea of the Mahayana text. In fact, when the meaning of these phrases is grasped together with psychological discourse on the Citta and Vijñāna, the whole philosophy of Zen as it is expounded in the Sutra grows transparent, and also with it the general tendency of Mahayana thought. The phrases are: “Vāg-vikalpa-ahita” or “vāg-akshara-prativikalpanaṁ vinihata” or “śāśvata-uccheda-sad-asad-dṛishṭi-vivarjita.” With these the reader is most frequently greeted in the Sutra. The first and the second phrases mean that the inner content of the noble understanding is beyond the reach of words and analytical reasoning, and the third phrase says that the ultimate truth is not to be found in eternalism, or nihilism, or realism, or non-realism. The Sutra sometimes goes so far as this: “O Mahāmati, it is because the Sutras are preached to all beings in accordance with their modes of thinking, and do not hit the mark as far as the true sense is concerned; words cannot re-instate the truth as it is. It is like mirage, deceived by which the animals make an erroneous judgment as to presence of water where there is really none; even so, all the doctrines in the Sutras are intended to satisfy the imagination of the masses, they do not reveal the truth which is the object of the noble understanding. Therefore O Mahāmati, conform yourself to the sense, and do not be engrossed in words and doctrines.”f44

The purport of these adjectives and phrases is that no conceptual interpretation is possible of Enlightenment or self-realisation and that the realisation must issue from one’s own inner consciousness, independent of scriptural teaching or of another’s help. For all that is needed to lead one to the attainment of Pratyātmāryajñāna is within oneself, only that it is in a state of confusion owing to wrong judgments (vikalpa) cherished and infused (vāsanā) in the mind since beginningless time. It requires a direct, personal confirmation or transmission from the Buddhas, but even these latter are unable to awaken us to the exalted state of Enlightenment unless we ourselves concentrate our spiritual efforts in the work of self-emancipation. Therefore, meditation (dhyāna) is recommended in the Sutra as the means of attaining to the truth of the inmost consciousness.

The idea of dhyana as explained in the Laṅkāvatāra, however, is different from what we generally know in Hinayana literature,f45 that is, from those kinds of dhyana mentioned in the previous part of this essay. The Sutra distinguishes four dhyanas: the first is practised by the unlearned (bālopacārika), such as the Śrāvakas, Pratyeka-buddhas, and devotees of the Yoga. They have been instructed in the doctrine of nonātman, and regarding the world as impermanent, impure, and pain-producing, they persistently follow these thoughts until they realise the samadhi of thought-extinction. The second dhyana is designated “statement-reviewing” (artha-pravicaya) by which is meant an intellectual examination of statements or propositions, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, such as “Each object has its individual marks,” “There is no personal Atman,” “Things are created by an external agency,” or “things are mutually determined”; and after the examination of these themes the practiser of this dhyana turns his thought on the non-atman-ness of things (dharma-nairātmya) and on the characteristic features of the various stages (bhūmi) of Bodhisattvaship, and finally in accordance with the sense involved therein he goes on with his contemplative examination. The third dhyana is called “Attaching oneself to Thatness” (tathatālambana) whereby one realises that to discriminate the two forms of non-atman-ness is still due to an analytical speculation and that when things are truthfully (yathābhūtam) perceived, no such analysis is possible, for then there obtains absolute oneness only.

The fourth and last is “Tathāgata-dhyāna.” In this one enters into the stage of Buddhahood where he enjoys a threefold beatitude belonging to the noble understanding of self-realisation and performs wonderful deeds for the sake of all sentient beings. In these dhyanas we observe a gradual perfection of Buddhist life culminating in the utmost spiritual freedom of Buddhahood, which is above all intellectual conditions and beyond the reach of relative consciousness. Those wonderful, unthinkable (acintya) deeds issuing from spiritual freedom are technically called “deeds performed with no sense of utility” (anābhogacaryā), or the “deeds of no purpose” as referred to elsewhere, and mean the perfection of Buddhist life.

The Laṅkāvatāra was thus handed over by Bodhi-Dharma to his first disciple Hui-k‘ê as the most illuminating document on the doctrine of Zen. But the development of Zen in China naturally did not follow the line as was indicated in the Sutra, that is, after the Indian fashion; the soil where the dhyana of the Laṅkāvatāra was transplanted did not favour its growth in the same manner as it did in the original climate. Zen was inspired with the life and spirit of the dhyana of the Tathagata, but it created its own mode of manifestation. Indeed this was where it showed its wonderful power of vitality and adaptation.

To understand how the doctrine of Enlightenment or self-realisation came to be translated in China as Zen Buddhism, we must first see where the Chinese mind varies from the Indian generally. When this is done, Zen will appear as a most natural product of the Chinese soil where Buddhism has been successfully transplanted in spite of many adverse conditions. Roughly, then, the Chinese are above all a most practical people while the Indians are visionary and highly speculative. We cannot perhaps judge the Chinese as unimaginative and lacking in the dramatic sense, but when they are compared with the inhabitants of the Buddha’s native land, they look so grey, so sombre. The geographical features of each country are singularly reflected in the people. The tropical luxuriance of imagination so strikingly contrasts with the wintery dreariness of common practicalness. The Indians are subtle in analysis and dazzling in poetic flight; the Chinese are children of earthly life, they plod, they never soar away in the air. Their daily life consists in tilling the soil, gathering dry leaves, drawing water, buying and selling, being filial, and observing social duties, and developing the most elaborate system of etiquette. Being practical means in a sense being historical, observing the progress of time and recording its traces as they are left behind. The Chinese can very well boast of their being great recorders,—such a contrast to the Indian lack of sense of time.

Not satisfied with books printed on paper and with ink, the Chinese would engrave their deeds deep in stone, and have developed a special art of stone-cutting. This habit of recording events has developed their literature, and they are quite literary and not at all warlike, they love a peaceful life of culture. Their weakness is that they are willing to sacrifice facts for literary effects, for they are not very exact and scientific. Love of fine rhetoric and beautiful expressions has frequently drowned their practical sense, but here is also their art. Well restrained even in this, their soberness never reaches that form of fantasy which we encounter in most of the Mahayana texts.

The Chinese are in many ways great, their architecture is great indeed, their literary achievements deserve the world’s thanks; but logic is not one of their strong points; nor are their philosophy and imagination. When Buddhism with all its characteristically Indian dialectics and imageries was first introduced into China, it must have staggered the Chinese mind. Look at its gods with many heads and arms—something that has never entered into their heads, in fact into no other nation’s than the Indian’s. Think of the wealth of symbolism with which every being in Buddhist literature seems to be endowed. The mathematical conception of infinities, the Bodhisattva’s plan of world-salvation, the wonderful stage-setting before the Buddha begins his sermons, not only in their general outlines but in their details—bold, yet accurate, soaring in flight, yet sure of every step—these and many other features must have been things of wonderment to the practical and earth-plodding people of China.

One quotation from a Mahayana Sutra will convince readers of the difference between Indian and Chinese minds, in regard to their imaginative powers. In the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka the Buddha wishes to impress his disciples as to the length of time passed since his attainment of Supreme Enlightenment; he does not merely state that it is a mistake to think that his Enlightenment took place some countable number of years ago under the Bodhi-tree near the town of Gayā; nor does he say in a general way that it happened ages ago, which is very likely the way with the Chinese, but he describes in a most analytical way in how remote an age it was that he came to Enlightenment.

“But, young men of good family, the truth is that many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of æons ago I have arrived at Supreme, Perfect Enlightenment. By way of example, young men of good family, let there be the atoms of earth of fifty hundred thousand myriads of kotis of worlds; let there exist some man who takes one of these atoms of dust and then goes in an eastern direction fifty hundred thousand myriads of kotis of worlds further on, there to deposit that atom of dust; let the man in this manner carry away from all those worlds the whole mass of earth, and in the same manner, and by the same act as supposed, deposit all those atoms in an eastern direction. Now would you think, young men of good family, that any one should be able to weigh, imagine, count, or determine the number of these worlds? The Lord having thus spoken, the Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Maitreya and the entire host of Bodhisattvas replied: They are incalculable, O Lord, those worlds, countless, beyond the range of thought. Not even all the Śrāvakas and Pratyeka-buddhas, O Lord, with their Ārya-knowledge, will be able to imagine, count, or determine them. For us also, O Lord, who are Bodhisattvas standing on the place from whence there is no turning back, this point lies beyond the sphere of our comprehension; so innumerable, O Lord, are those worlds.

“This said, the Buddha spoke to those Bodhisattvas Mahāsattvas as follows: I announce to you, young men of good family, I declare to you: However numerous be those worlds where that man deposits those atoms of dust and where he does not, there are not, young men of good family, in all those hundred thousands of myriads of kotis of worlds so many dust atoms as there are hundred thousands of myriads of kotis of æons since I have arrived at Supreme, Perfect Enlightenment.”f46

Such a conception of number and such a method of description would never have entered the Chinese mind. They are, of course, capable of conceiving long duration, and great achievements, in which they are not behind any nation; but to express their idea of vastness in the manner of the Indian philosophers would be beyond their understanding.

When things are not within the reach of conceptual description and yet when they are to be communicated to others, the ways open to most people will be either to remain silent, or to declare them simply to be beyond words, or to resort to negation saying, “not this,” “not that,” or if one were a philosopher, to write a book explaining how logically impossible it was to discourse on such subjects; but the Indians found quite a novel way of illustrating philosophical truths that cannot be appealed to analytical reasoning. They resorted to miracles or supernatural phenomena for their illustration. Thus they made the Buddha a great magician; not only the Buddha but almost all the chief characters appearing in the Mahayana scriptures became magicians. And in my view this is one of the most charming features of the Mahayana texts—this description of supernatural phenomena in connection with the teaching of abstruse doctrine. Some may think it altogether childish and injuring the dignity of the Buddha as teacher of solemn religious truths. But this is a superficial interpretation of the matter. The Indian idealists knew far better; they had a more penetrating imagination which was always effectively employed by them whenever the intellect was put to a task beyond its power. We must understand that the motive of the Mahayanists who made the Buddha perform all these magical feats was to illustrate through imageries what in the very nature of things could not be done in an ordinary method open to human intellect.

When the intellect failed to analyse the essence of Buddhahood, their rich imagination came in to help them out by visualising it. When we try to explain Enlightenment logically, we always find ourselves involved in contradictions. But when an appeal is made to our symbolical imagination—especially if one is liberally endowed with this faculty—the matter is more readily comprehended. At least this seems to have been the Indian way of conceiving the signification of supernaturalism.

When Vimalakīrti was asked by Śāriputra how such a small room as his with just one seat for himself could accommodate all the hosts of Bodhisattvas and Arhats and Devas numbering many thousands, who were coming there with Mañjuśrī to visit the sick philosopher, replied Vimalakīrti, “Are you here to seek chairs or the Dharma?... One who seeks the Dharma finds it in seeking it in nothing.” Then learning from Mañjuśrī where to obtain seats, he asks a Buddha called Sumerudīparāja to supply him with 32,000 lion-seats, majestically decorated and as high as 84,000 yojanas. When they were brought in, his room, formerly large enough for one seat, now miraculously accommodated all the retinue of Mañjuśrī, each one of whom was comfortably seated in a celestial chair, and yet the whole town of Vaiśāli and the rest of the world did not appear on this account crammed to overflowing. Śāriputra was surprised beyond measure to witness this supernatural event, but Vimalakīrti explained that for those who understand the doctrine of spiritual emancipation, even the Mount of Sumeru could be sealed up in a seed of mustard, and the waves of the four great oceans could be made to flow into one pore of the skin (romakūpa), without even giving any sense of inconvenience to any of the fishes, crocodiles, tortoises, and other living beings in them; the spiritual kingdom was not bound in space and time.

To quote another instance from the first chapter of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, which does not appear in the oldest Chinese translation. When King Rāvaṇa was requesting the Buddha through the Bodhisattva Mahāmati to disclose the content of his inner experience, the king unexpectedly noticed his mountain-residence turned into numberless mountains of precious stones and most ornately decorated with celestial grandeur, and on each of these mountains he saw the Buddha manifested. And before each Buddha there stood King Rāvaṇa himself with all his assemblage as well as all the countries in the ten quarters of the world, and in each of those countries there appeared the Tathagata, before whom again there were King Rāvaṇa, his families, his palaces, his gardens, all decorated exactly in the same style as his own. There was also the Bodhisattva Mahāmati in each of these innumerable assemblies asking the Buddha to declare the content of his inner spiritual experience; and when the Buddha finished his discourse on the subject with hundreds of thousands of exquisite voices, the whole scene suddenly vanished, and the Buddha with all his Bodhisattvas and his followers were no more; then King Rāvaṇa found himself all alone in his old palace. He now reflected: “Who was he that asked the question? Who was he that listened? What were those objects that appeared before me? Was it a dream? or a magical phenomenon?” He again reflected: “Things are all like this, they are all creations of one’s own mind.

When mind discriminates, there is manifoldness of things; but when it does not, it looks into the true state of things.” When he thus reflected, he heard voices in the air and in his own palace, saying: “Well you have reflected, O King! You should conduct yourself according to this view.”

The Mahayana literature is not the only recorder of the miraculous power of the Buddha, which transcends all the relative conditions of space and time as well as of human activities mental and physical. The Pali scriptures are by no means behind the Mahayana in this respect. Not to speak of the Buddha’s threefold knowledge which consists in the knowledge of the past, the future, and of his own emancipation, he can also practise what is known as the three wonders which are the mystic wonder, the wonder of education, and the wonder of manifestation. But when we carefully examine the miracles described in the Nikayas, we see that they have no other objects in view than the magnification and deification of the personality of the Buddha. The recorders of these miracles must have thought that they could thus make their master greater and far above ordinary mortals in the estimate of their rivals. From our modern point of view it was quite childish for them to imagine that any unusual deeds performed by their master would attract, as we read in the Kevaddha Sutta, people’s attention to Buddhism and recognise its superior value on that very account; but in those ancient days in India, the masses, nay even learned scholars, thought a great deal of supernaturalism, and naturally the Buddhists made the best possible use of this belief.

But when we come to the Mahayana Sutras we at once perceive that the miracles described here on a much grander scale have nothing to do with supernaturalism as such or with any ulterior motives such as propagandism or self-aggrandisement, but that they are essentially and intimately connected with the doctrine itself which is expounded in the texts. For instance, in the Prajñā-pāramitā Sūtra every part of the body of the Buddha simultaneously emits innumerable rays illuminating at once the furthest ends of the worlds, whereas in the Avataṁsaka Sūtra the different parts of his body shoot out beams of light on different occasions. In the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka Sūtra, a ray of light issues from within the circle of hair between the eyebrows of the Buddha which illuminates over eighteen hundred thousand Buddha-countries in the eastern quarter, revealing every being in them, even the inhabitants of the deepest hell called Avici. It is evident that the Mahayana writers of these Sutras had in their minds something much different from the Hinayana compilers of the Nikayas in their narratives of the miraculous power of the Buddha. What that something was I have here pointed out in a most general way. A systematic study in detail of the Mahayana supernaturalism will no doubt be an interesting one.

At all events, the above references will suffice I believe to establish my thesis that the reason for the introduction of supernaturalism into the Mahayana literature of Buddhism was to demonstrate the intellectual impossibility of comprehending spiritual facts. While philosophy exhausted its resources logically to explain them, Vimalakīrti like Bāhva, a Vedic mystic, remained silent; not satisfied with this, the Indian Mahayana writers further introduced supernaturalistic symbolism, but it remained with the Chinese Zen Buddhists to invent their own methods to cope, according to their own needs and insight, with the difficulties of communicating one’s highest and deepest spiritual experience known as Enlightenment in Buddhism.

The Chinese have no aptitude like the Indians to hide themselves in the clouds of mystery and supernaturalism. Chwang-tzŭ and Lieh-tzŭ were the nearest to the Indian type of mind in ancient China, but their mysticism does not begin to approach that of the Indian Mahayanists in grandeur, in elaborateness, and in the height of soaring imagination. Chwang-tzŭ did his best when he rode up in the air on the back of the Tai-p‘êng whose wings soared like overhanging clouds; and Lieh-tzŭ when he could command winds and clouds as his charioteers. The later Taoists dreamed of ascending to the heavens after so many years of ascetic discipline and by taking an elixir of life concocted from various rare herbs. Thus in China we have so many Taoist hermits living in the mountains far away from human habitations. No Chinese saints or philosophers are however recorded in history who have been capable of equalling Vimalakīrti or Mañjuśrī or even any of the Arhats. The Confucian verdict that superior man never talks about miracles, wonders, and supernaturalism, is the true expression of Chinese psychology. The Chinese are thoroughly practical. They must have their own way of interpreting the doctrine of Enlightenment as applied to their daily life, and they could not help creating Zen as an expression of their inmost spiritual experience.

If the imagery of supernaturalism did not appeal to sober Chinese character, how did the Chinese followers of Enlightenment contrive to express themselves? Did they adopt the intellectual method of the Śūnyatā philosophy? No, this too was not after their taste, nor was it quite within the reach of their mental calibre. The Prajñā-Pāramitā was an Indian creation and not the Chinese. They could have produced a Chwang-tzŭ or those Taoist dreamers of the Six Dynasties, but not a Nāgārjuna or a Śankāra. The Chinese genius was to demonstrate itself in some other way. When they began inwardly to assimilate Buddhism as the doctrine of Enlightenment, the only course that opened to their concrete practical minds was to produce Zen. When we come to Zen after seeing all the wonderful miracles displayed by the Indian Mahayana writers, and after the highly abstracted speculations of the Mādhyamika thinkers, what a change of scenery do we have here? No rays are issuing from the Buddha’s forehead, no retinues of Bodhisattvas reveal themselves before you, there is indeed nothing that would particularly strike your senses as odd or extraordinary, or as beyond intelligence, beyond the ken of logical reasoning. The people you associate with are all ordinary mortals like yourselves, no abstract ideas, no dialectical subtleties confront you. Mountains tower high towards the sky, rivers all pour into the ocean. Plants sprout in the spring and flowers bloom in red. When the moon shines serenely, poets grow mildly drunk and sing a song of eternal peace.

When a monk asks who is the Buddha, the master points at his image in the Buddha Hall; no explanations are given, no arguments are suggested. When the mind is the subject of discourse, asks a monk, “What is mind, anyway?” “Mind,” says the master.[2.5] “I do not understand, Sir.” “Neither do I,” quickly comes from the master. On another occasion, a monk is worried over the question of immortality. “How can I escape the bondage of birth and death?”[2.5] Answers the master, “Where are you?” The Zen adepts as a rule never waste time in responding to questions, nor are they at all argumentative. Their answers are always curt and final, which follow the questions with the rapidity of lightning. Some one asked,[2.6] “What is the fundamental teaching of the Buddha?” Said the master, “There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool.” What a most matter-of-fact answer this! That inevitable formula of Buddhism, the Fourfold Noble Truth, apparently has no place in the scheme of Zen teaching, nor has that persistently enigmatic statement in the Prajñā-Pāramitā, “taccittam yaccittam acittam,” threatens us here. Ummon (Yün-mên)[2.7] once appeared in the pulpit and said, “In this school of Zen no words are needed; what then is the ultimate essence of Zen teaching?” Thus himself proposing the question, he extended both his arms, and without further remarks came down from the pulpit. This was the way the Chinese Buddhists interpreted the doctrine of Enlightenment, this was the way they expounded the Pratyātmajñanagocara of the Laṅkāvatāra.

And for the Chinese Buddhists this was the only way, if the inner experience of the Buddha were to be demonstrated, not intellectually or analytically, nor in supernatural manners, but directly in our practical life. For life, as far as it is lived in concreto, is above concepts as well as images. To understand it we have to dive into it and to come in touch with it personally; to pick up or cut out a piece of it for inspection murders it; when you think you have got into the essence of it, it is no more, for it has ceased to live but lies immobile and all dried up. For this reason, Chinese minds, ever since the coming of Bodhi-Dharma, worked on the problem how best to present the doctrine of Enlightenment in their native garment cut to suit their modes of feeling and thinking, and it was not until after Hui-nêng (Yeno) that they satisfactorily solved the problem and the great task of building up a school to be known thenceforward as Zen was accomplished.

That Zen was the thing Chinese minds wanted to have when they thoroughly comprehended the teaching of Buddhism is proved by the two incontestable historical facts: first, after the establishment of Zen, it was this teaching that ruled China while all the other schools of Buddhism, except the Pure Land sect, failed to survive; and secondly, before Buddhism was translated into Zen it never came into an intimate relation with the native thought of China, by which I mean Confucianism.

Let us see first how Zen came to rule the spiritual life of China. The inner sense of Enlightenment was not understood in China, except intellectually, in the earlier days of Buddhism. This was natural, seeing that it was in this respect that the Chinese mind was excelled by the Indian. As I said before, the boldness and subtlety of Mahayana philosophy must have fairly stunned the Chinese, who had, before the introduction of Buddhism, practically no system of thought worthy of the name, except moral science. In this latter they were conscious of their own strength; even such devout Buddhists as I-ching (Gijō) and Hs‘üan-chuang (Genjō) acknowledged it, with all their ardour for the Yogācāra psychology and the Avatamsaka metaphysics; they thought that their country, as far as moral culture was concerned, was ahead of the land of their faith or at least had nothing to learn from the latter. As the Mahayana Sutras and Shastras were translated in rapid succession by able, learned, devout scholars, both native and Indian, the Chinese mind was led to explore a region where they had not ventured very far before. In the early Chinese biographical histories of Buddhism, we notice commentators, expounders, and philosophers far outnumbering translators and adepts in dhyana so called. The Buddhist scholars were at first quite busily engaged in assimilating intellectually the various doctrines propounded in Mahayana literature. Not only were these doctrines deep and complicated but they were also contradicting one another, at least on the surface.

If the scholars were to enter into the depths of Buddhist thought, they had to dispose of these entanglements somehow. But if they were sufficiently critical, they could do that with comparative ease, which was however something we could never expect of those earlier Buddhists; for even in these modern days critical Buddhist scholars will in some quarters be regarded as not quite devout and orthodox. They all had not a shadow of doubt as to the genuineness of the Mahayanist texts as faithfully and literally recording the very words of the Buddha, and therefore they had to plan out some systems of reconciliation between diverse doctrines taught in the Scriptures. This meant to find out what was the primary object of the Buddha’s appearance in the world ignorant, corrupted, and given up to the karma of eternal transmigration. Such efforts on the part of Buddhist philosophers developed what is to be distinctly designated as Chinese Buddhism.