Books on the Far East often mention a sect of Buddhism called Zen. They
say that it was a “school of abstract meditation” and that it exercised
a profound influence upon art and literature; but they tell us very
little about what Zen actually was, about its relation to ordinary
Buddhism, its history, or the exact nature of its influence upon the
arts.
The reason of this is that very little of the native literature which
deals with Zen has yet been translated, perhaps because it is written
in early Chinese colloquial, a language the study of which has been
almost wholly neglected by Europeans and also (to judge by some of
their attempts to translate it) by the Japanese themselves.
The present paper makes no attempt at profundity, but it is based on
the study of original texts and furnishes, I hope, some information not
hitherto accessible.
* * * * *
Before describing the origins of Zen itself I must give some general
account of Buddhism. At the time when it reached China[1] there were
two kinds of Buddhism, called the Lesser Vehicle and the Greater. The
former, Primitive Buddhism, possessed scriptures which in part at
any rate were genuine; that is to say, they recorded words actually
used by Shākyamuni. The ordinary adherent of this religion did not
hope to become a Buddha; Buddhas indeed were regarded as extremely
rare. He only aspired to become an Arhat, that is “an ascetic ripe
for annihilation,” one who is about to escape from the wheel of
reincarnation--whose present incarnation is an antechamber to Nirvāna.
To such aspirants the Buddha gives no assistance; he is what children
in their games call “home,” and his followers must pant after him as
best they can.
[1] First century A.D.
Those who found this religion too comfortless invented another, which
became known as Mahāyāna, the Greater Vehicle. Putting their doctrines
into the mouth of Shākyamuni, they fabricated _ad hoc_ sermons of
enormous length, preached (so they asserted) by the Buddha himself in
his “second period” to those who were ripe to receive the whole truth.
The great feature of this new Buddhism was the intervention of the
merciful Bodhisattvas, _illuminati_ who, though fit for Buddhahood,
voluntarily renounced it in order to help mankind.
The first Buddhist books to reach China emanated from the Lesser
Vehicle. But the Greater Vehicle or Bodhisattva-Buddhism soon
prevailed, and by the sixth century A.D. over two thousand
works, most of them belonging to the Greater Vehicle, had been
translated into Chinese.