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. How prosaic, how ordinary, we may say! but here was the Chinese soul, and Buddhism came to grow in it.
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.
While this intellectual assimilation was going on on the one hand, the practical side of Buddhism was also assiduously studied. Some were followers of the Vinaya texts, and others devoted themselves to the mastery of dhyana. But what was here known as dhyana was not the dhyana of Zen Buddhism, it was a meditation, concentrating one’s thought on some ideas such as impermanence, egolessness of things, chain of causation, or the attributes of the Buddha, Even Bodhi-Dharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, was regarded by historians as belonging to this class of dhyana-adepts, his peculiar merits as teacher of an entirely novel school of Buddhism were not fully appreciated. This was inevitable, the people of China were not yet quite ready to accept the new form; for they had only inadequately grasped the doctrine of Enlightenment in all its bearings.
The importance of Enlightenment in its practical aspects, however, was not altogether overlooked in the maze of doctrinal intricacies. Chi-i (Chigi, 522–597), one of the founders of the T‘ien Tai school and the greatest Buddhist philosopher in China, was fully awake to the significance of dhyana as the means of attaining Enlightenment. With all his analytical powers, his speculation had room enough for the practice of dhyana. His work on “Tranquillisation and Contemplation” is explicit on this point. His idea was to carry out intellectual and spiritual exercises in perfect harmony, and not partially to emphasise either one of the two, Samādhi or Prajñā, at the expense of the other. Unfortunately, his followers grew more and more one-sided until they neglected the dhyana practice for the sake of intellection. Hence their antagonistic attitude later towards advocates of Zen Buddhism, for which however the latter were to a certain extent to be responsible, too.