Zen

Several hundred years after the time of Gautam Buddham, Bodhidharma travelled to China. Buddhism had already reached China and was established as a religion alongside others. Bodhidharma though, carried something of a new energy, an energy of quirkiness, of austerity of words and something of paradox. When this paradoxical branch of Buddhism met Taoism, which was already established in China, a great new movement began. In China it was known as Chan, but later on it moved to Japan where it was known by the name Zen.

Zen is a blend of Taoism and Buddhism, and what a beautiful fusion it is too. It combines the unrelenting dedication to truth which Taoism expresses so eloquently, with the Buddha’s emphasis on attaining enlightenment, on finding the truth for oneself. So Zen expresses this yearning for enlightenment but in a language more associated with Taoism, paradoxical language, language using few words. In fact the perfect Zen statement consists of no words at all, perhaps a quirky gesture at just the right moment, perhaps a finger pointing or the clap of a hand.

The great Zen masters used many strange techniques, sometimes shocking to us. One master, seeing that a student was on the brink of a breakthrough, threw the student out of the first floor window and then jumped out on top of him. These crazy old masters knew what they were doing but they didn’t use too many words. For Zen, more than any other religion, stresses direct personal experience of truth. This is true of all branches of Buddhism but in Zen there is no getting away from it, there is no hiding in rituals. In Zen we have to do the work ourself, we have to do our homework, and if we are lucky then we will come to see the truth for ourself.

So these are two of the great contributions of Zen, that we should experience truth directly for ourself, and not rely on secondhand expressions of truth. Also that truth lies beyond words. It is not of words, not to be found in the realm of concepts, thoughts. This is the great truth that the stream of consciousness known as Zen is trying to convey in whatever creative ways it comes up with.