The introduction of the Zen, or contemplative sect, did, in a sense, both precede and follow that of Shingon. The word Zen is a shortened form of the term Zenna, which is a transliteration into Chinese of the Sanskrit word Dhyana, or contemplation. It teaches that the truth is not in tradition or in books, but in one's self. Emphasis is laid on introspection rather than on language. "Look carefully within and there you will find the Buddha," is its chief tenet. In the Zen monasteries, the chair of contemplation is, or ought to be, always in use.
The Zen Shu movement may be said to have arisen out of a reaction against the multiplication of idols. It indicated a return to simpler forms of worship and conduct. Let us inquire how this was.
It may be said that Buddhism, especially Northern Buddhism, is a vast, complicated system. It has a literature and a sacred canon which one can think of only in connection with long trains of camels to carry, or freight trains to transport, or ships a good deal bigger than the Mayflower to import. Its multitudinous rules and systems of discipline appall the spirit and weary the flesh even to enumerate them; so that, from one point of view, the making of new sects is a necessity. These are labor-saving inventions. They are attempts to reduce the great bulk of scriptures to manageable proportions. They seek to find, as it were, the mother-liquor of the great ocean, so as to express the truth in a crystal. Hence the endeavors to simplify, to condense; here, by a selection of sutras, rather than the whole collection; there, by emphasis on a single feature and a determination to put the whole thing in a form which can be grasped, either by the elect few or by the people at large.
The Zen sect did this in a more rational way than that set forth as orthodox by later priestcraft, which taught that to the believer who simply turned round the revolving library containing the canon, the merit of having read it all would be imputed. The rin-zō[24] found near the large temples,—the cunning invention of a Chinese priest in the sixth century,—soon became popular in Japan. The great wooden book-case turning on a pivot contains 6,771 volumes, that being the number of canonical volumes enumerated in China and Japan.
The Zen sect teaches that, besides all the doctrines of the Greater and the Lesser Vehicles, whether hidden or apparent, there is one distinct line of transmission of a secret doctrine which is not subject to any utterance at all. According to their tenet of contemplation, one is to see directly the key to the thought of Buddha by his own thought, thus freeing himself from the multitude of different doctrines—the number of which is said to be eighty-four thousand. In fact, Zen Shu or "Dhyana sect" teaches the short method of making truth apparent by one's own thought, apart from the writings.
The story of the transmission of the true Zen doctrine is this:
"When the blessed Shaka was at the assembly on Vulture's Peak, there came the heavenly king, who offered the Buddha a golden-colored flower and asked him to preach the law. The Blessed One simply took the flower and held it in his hand, but said no word. No one in the whole assembly could tell what he meant. The venerable Mahahasyapa alone smiled. Than the Blessed One said to him, 'I have the wonderful thought of Nirvana, the eye of the Right Law, which I shall now give to you.'[25] Thus was ushered in the doctrine of thought transmitted by thought."
After twenty-eight patriarchs had taught the doctrine of contemplation, the last came into China in A.D. 520, and tried to teach the Emperor the secret key of Buddha's thought. This missionary Bodhidharma was the third son of a king of the Kashis, in Southern India, and the historic original of the tobacconist's shop-sign in Japan, who is known as Daruma. The imperial Chinaman was not yet able to understand the secret key of Buddha's thought. So the Hindu missionary went to the monastery on Mount Su, where in meditation, he sat down cross-legged with his face to a wall, for nine years, by which time, says the legend, his legs had rotted off and he looked like a snow-image. During that period, people did not know him, and called him simply the Wall-gazing Brahmana. Afterward he had a number of disciples, but they had different views that are called the transmissions of the skin, flesh, or bone of the teacher. Only one of them got the whole body of his teachings. Two great sects were formed: the Northern, which was undivided, and the Southern, which branched off into five houses and seven schools. The Northern Sect was introduced into Japan by a Chinese priest in 729 A.D., while the Southern was not brought over until the twelfth century. In both it is taught that perfect tranquillity of body and mind is essential to salvation. The doctrine is the most sublime one, of thought transmitted by thought being entirely independent of any letters or words. Another name for them is, "The Sect whose Mind Assimilates with Buddha," direct from whom it claims to have received its articles of faith.
Too often this idea of Buddhaship, consisting of absolute freedom from matter and thought, means practically mind-murder, and the emptiness of idle reverie.
Contrasting modern reality with their ancient ideal, it must be confessed that in practice there is not a little letter worship and a good deal of pedantry; for, in all the teachings of abstract principles by the different sects, there are endless puns or plays upon words in the renderings of Chinese characters. This arises from that antithesis of extreme poverty in sounds with amazing luxuriance in written expression, which characterizes both the Chinese and Japanese languages.