seventh world of chan buddhism - Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun

CHAPTER 2
CHINA
How wonderful! How mysterious!
I carry wood! I draw water!
- Anonymous Dao poet
Of all the world's ancient civilizations, China's is the youngest. This is somehow
surprising to westerners who tend to think that China's ancient kings reigned
contemporaneously with tyrannosaurus rex. But bones, pottery and other artifacts
incontrovertibly countermand the dictates of sentimental supposition.
Such archeological evidence as there is in China reveals that prior to 25,000 years ago
its sparse populations were proto-caucasian, the blue-eyed Ainu of northern Japan being
thought to be a remnant of these early inhabitants. Then, for reasons unknown, these iceaged
occupants disappeared from Chinese soil; and there is no record of anybody at all being
there until mongolian people from Siberian regions - with their narrow, snow-glare adapted
eyes - began to descend into China about 10,000 years ago.
The immigrants were very tough people. They had been bred for survival, having
become an identifiable race of men when, in times ancient to themselves, they had been
geographically isolated by ice. Culturally they had also been snowbound, for they found in
the conditions of their isolation few occasions for refinement. Hardship, by way of
temperatures that plunged annually to -70 degrees Fahrenheit, had siphoned off the froth.
The stock that remained was strong and indelicate.
It can be no surprise, then, that their gods were not the effete divinities of tropical
surplus - those bored and precious deities who languish, grape in hand, among the nymphs
and fauns of sylvan settings. These hardy people dwelled far north of Eden's luscious vales;
and perdition in such places does not come by way of talkative and wily serpents. The gods
of arctic regions are gods of weather and seldom do they rest.
Perdition came in disorienting blizzards, in floor ice that prematurely thawed, in
smothering snow drifts, in sleet that drenched a furskin garment and guaranteed frostbite or
death.
Unexpected changes in the weather were people's sorest tests and trials; and if they
were improperly prepared for alteration or severity, they would fail, simply and finally. The
unforgiving climate had no appellate process.
CHAPTER 2 CHINA
S EVENTH W ORLD O F C HAN B UDDHISM
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