ZenExperience-obooko-rel0025

oom as my clothing. Why, then, do you enter here into my
trousers." 14
It is also told that two of the sages (Juan Chi, 210-63, and his
nephew Juan Hsien) often sat drinking with their family in such
conviviality that they skipped the nuisance of cups and just drank
directly from a wine bowl on the ground. When pigs wandered by,
these too were invited to sip from the same chalice. If one
exempts all nature—including pigs—from distinction, discrimination,
and duality, why exclude them as drinking companions?
But perhaps the most significant insight of the Seven Sages
of the Bamboo Grove was their recognition of the limited uses of
language. We are told, "They engaged in conversation 'til, as they
put it, they reached the Unnameable, and 'stopped talking and
silently understood each other with a smile.' " 1S
THE BUDDHIST ROOTS OF ZEN
There is a legend the Buddha was once handed a flower and
asked to preach on the law. The story says he received the
blossom without a sound and silently wheeled it in his hand. Then
amid the hush his most perceptive follower, Kashyapa, suddenly
burst into a smile . . . and thus was born the wordless wisdom of
Zen.
The understanding of this silent insight was passed down
through the centuries, independent of the scriptures, finally
emerging as the Chinese school of Ch'an, later called Zen by the
Japanese. It is said the absence of early writings about the school
is nothing more than would be expected of a teaching which was,
by definition, beyond words. The master Wen-yu summed it up
when he answered a demand for the First Principle of Ch'an with,
"If words could tell you, it would become the Second Principle."
This version of Zen's origin is satisfying, and for all we know it
may even be true. But there are other, considerably more
substantive, sources for the ideas that came to flower as Ch'an.
Taoism, of course, had plowed away at the Confucianist clutter
restraining the Chinese mind, but it was Buddhism that gave
China the necessary new philosophical structure—this being the
metaphysical speculations of India. Pure Chinese naturalism met
Indian abstraction, and the result was Ch'an. The school of Ch'an
was in part the grafting of fragile foreign ideas (Buddhism) onto a
sturdy native species of understanding (Taoism). But its simplicity