It has often been said that the later development of Buddhism was due to the inability of the
 Indian mind to rest content with that silence, so that at last it had to indulge its overwhelming
 urge for abstract metaphysical speculations about the nature of reality.
 There are two sets of Buddhist scriptures, the Pali Canon of the Southern School of Buddhism,
 which flourishes in Ceylon, Burma, and Thailand, and the Sanskrit-Tibetan-Chinese Canon of
 the Mahayana, or Northern School.
 The vast body of Mahayana doctrine arose not so much to satisfy intellectual curiosity
 as to deal with the practical psychological problems encountered in following the Buddha's
 way.
 Certainly the treatment of these problems is highly scholastic, and the intellectual
 level of the Mahayana texts is very lofty.
 But the consistent aim is to bring about the experience of liberation, not to construct
 a philosophical system.
 The great concern of the Mahayana is the provision of skillful means, upaya, for making nirvana
 accessible to every type of mentality.
 These skillful means range from the sophisticated dialectic of Nagarjuna, whose object is to
 free the mind of all fixed conceptions, to the pure land doctrine of liberation through
 simply repeating the name of Amitabha.
 They even include the tantric Buddhism of medieval India, where liberation may be realized
 through the repetition of sacred words and formulae called dharani, and through special
 types of yoga involving sexual intercourse with a shakti, or spiritual wife.
 No one has been able to find any trace of a specific dhyana school in Indian Buddhism.
 However, it is not really necessary to suppose that there was ever a specific dhyana school
 in India.
 The creation of Zen would seem to be sufficiently explained by the exposure of Taoists and Confucians
 to the main principles of Mahayana Buddhism.
 Therefore, the appearance of trends very close to Zen can be seen almost as soon as the great
 Mahayana sutras became available in China.
 Buddhism came to China about the year 400.
 A very great Sanskrit scholar by the name of Kumarajiva came and started teaching Chinese
 scholars Sanskrit.
 Slowly then, Indian attitudes began to be modified by Chinese attitudes, because the
 Chinese read into these translations Taoist meanings.
 So things got a little altered.
 So Chinese Zen is the preeminent expression of this, because it is the mixture of Indian
 Buddhism and Chinese Taoism, plus a certain Confucian practicality.
 Shortly before 500, as the dates now check out, another Indian came to China whose name
 was Bodhidharma.
 And Bodhidharma was the person who touched off Zen as a specific movement.
 Bodhidharma had a pupil by the name of Eka.
 The story is that when Eka came to Bodhidharma, Bodhidharma refused to accept him as a student.
 All Zen masters do this.
 They reject you.
 And this stimulates you, you see, to come back stronger, I mean if you're going to learn
 at all.
 And Eka came back stronger and stronger and stronger, and Bodhidharma resisted him stronger
 and stronger, and finally he cut off his left arm and presented it to Bodhidharma and said,
 "Look, here's my left arm, given to you as a token that nothing in the world matters
 to me except to find out what you're all about."
 "All right," he said, "what do you want to know?"
 Eka said, "I have no peace of mind, please pacify my mind."
 In Chinese, mind is this word pronounced shin, and shin is here.
 Shin is the heart mind, it's the psychic center.
 And so Bodhidharma said, "Bring out your shin here before me and I will pacify it."
 Eka said, "When I look for it, I can't find it."
 Bodhidharma said, "Then it's pacified."
 And Eka immediately understood what all the thing was about.
 That's the experience called Satori in Japanese, Wu in Chinese, Mandarin, and in the Cantonese
 dialect, "mmm."
 It's just what we call in our modern psychological jargon, the "aha" phenomenon.
 The "aha" phenomenon.
 Aha!
 Now I see.
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