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

Walls do not long impede determined invaders. The Greeks entered Troy. The
Germans zipped past the Maginot Line. The Northerners invaded China.
There is a quirk in the human spirit which manifests itself as an inability to see a
man's character as being unredeemably corrupt: No man's soul is so inked over by crime but
that a white spot remains upon which some exonerating good may be written. It is as if we
could balance a tome of iniquity with a phrase of benevolence. Thus, for example, it is said
of the leaders of the three axis powers of World War II, Mussolini, Hitler, and Hirohito -
three men whose malignant vanity required the torture and murder of millions upon millions
of innocent people and the plunder of the accumulated treasuries of whole continents - that
they, after all, made the trains run on time, built good roads and inexpensive autos, and wrote
excellent haiku poetry.
And so it is said of this beast of ancient China, the Emperor Qin Shihuangdi, this
tyrant whose vile ambition brought such unspeakable sorrow to so many millions, that he
was, after all, responsible for standardizing the weights and measures of China. Before him,
axles were a hodgepodge of differing widths.
We surely should have no difficulty in understanding that while he reigned, life in
China was something intelligent men tried to avoid. In fact, for the entire duration of the
Warring States period, thoughtful souls of the Middle Kingdom believed that on the whole,
they'd rather be elsewhere. Sailing to distant, fabled lands had a definite appeal. So did
walking as far as possible. Fortunately, peripatetic members of the intelligentsia did not find
themselves without a desirable destination. They turned southward... for down south, in the
barbaric lands of the semi-dogs, strange and mysterious things were happening, things that
were inviting, intriguing, and wonderfully sanctuarial.
The Dao had found its followers... and northerners went to join the parade.
It is a peculiar fact that whenever anyone speaks of ancient Chinese culture, invariably
he speaks of the culture of northern China. It is as if southern lands did not exist until an
hour before the northern Chinese discovered them. So easily dismissed is southern culture
that even the Dao (Tao), China's greatest gift to religion and to philosophy, is considered an
Indian import... a variation of culture expressed originally in the Upanishads. The "Dao" is
considered a simple renaming of Brahman's One, Absolute and Ultimate Reality.
But the native populations the Aryans encountered in 1500 B.C. had not confined
themselves to the Gangetic plain or delta. They occupied China as well as the Indo-China
peninsula. The base upon which 8th Century B.C. India is credited with stamping her
metaphysics covered a vast area; and no one can say when or where the doctrines specifically
originated or which areas most contributed to their refinement.
We can note the appearance in Daoism's bible, the Dao De Jing (The Way and The
Power), of the same union of opposites - the power and the law the power obeys, female and
CHAPTER 2 CHINA
S EVENTH W ORLD O F C HAN B UDDHISM
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