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CHAPTER FIVE
THE FRUITS OF ZEN
"By their fruits ye shall know them.” Zen is to Zen Buddhism as life to form, but as the life is formless it is by the visible form that one must judge the quality and value of the life. What is the record of Zen Buddhism, what its effect on the people of China and Japan, their life and culture, art and philosophy?
ZEN INFLUENCE IN CHINA
The impact of Zen upon the Chinese character was tremendous, and none the less so for the fact that its form-side is in a way the product of that character. As already explained, the Buddhism which first arrived in China was indigestible to the Chinese mind, and it was only after centuries of adaptation that it became an expression of their highest thought. The Chinese from the dawn of history have shown themselves a practical people, with a love of beauty, the beauty of worldly things, which is almost a religion in itself. As early as the third millenium B.C. their art, so far as we know it, was complex and advanced in form, noble and serene in character, and it is idle to suggest that its highest flowering, in the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-906) and the Sung Dynasties (A.D. 960–1279), was of purely Buddhist origin.
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