Zen claims to carry the innermost essence of Buddhism. The story unfolds that Zen was born on one still morning in India twenty-five centuries ago. Gautama the Buddha sat before a huge congregation of his followers who waited for his usual discourse. Buddha, however, simply sat in silence holding a flower before him. Mahakasyapa, Buddha's oldest disciple, smiled knowingly at the Master and Buddha proclaimed: "The most precious transcendental treasure I can now hand to you, O venerable Mahakasyapa" and gave him the flower. In that one sudden moment of revelation something had triggered the opening of the old disciple's mind and Buddha's true message, which was essentially without words, was understood and realized. Here is the quintessential message of Zen. It is a special transmission outside the realm of the scriptures. If we look here for abstract maps or philosophic words we will be disappointed. Zen is a direct "seeing into one's own nature" and the realization of one's Buddha nature.

There are two primary schools of Zen Buddhism. The Gradual School of Enlightenment is firmly rooted in the scripture of Indian Buddhism and the inheritor of that school of meditation. A verse from this tradition:

The School of Sudden Enlightenment created an entirely new phenomenon as expressed in an answering verse:

and absorbed the Taoist approach to life. "The world is always held without effort. The moment there is effort, the world is beyond holding."

The crossleggeds or "dustwipers" try to attain a state of calm through meditation (dyana), but with this method it is difficult to go beyond the self-absorption of Level Five. There is ecstasy but no seeing into one's ultimate nature. According the Hui-neng, of the sudden school, the wiping of dust in order to see the original mind-mirror-nature is impossible. Yet all Buddhists attempt it, attempt to calm the mind, much in the tradition of Indian yoga. But Hui-neng insists there is nothing to attain in the first place. Maps are all useless, sitting crosslegged, trying to make it all happen is pointless and ego gratifying. Satori, the sudden unexpected flash of insight into the true nature of man and the universe, just happens when the fruit is ripe; the goldbrick falls where it will. There is within oneself that which knows and satori happens. The sleeper once aroused continues at his own speed. All falsehoods drop away in that explosion of intense illumination. There is simply no awakening to attain, for it is always there.

Meister Eckhart, the Christian mystic once said, "It is as if one stood before a high mountain and cried 'God! Art thou there?' The echo comes back 'Art thou there?' If one cries out 'Come out, the echo comes back 'Come out!' "

The life of Zen opens with satori. Satori can be defined as the "opening of the mind-flower." It is a sudden state of heightened consciousness which is totally discontinuous with the everyday thinking mind. While it is different for different people, it often manifests as the uniting of all our normal dualistic opposites into a whole: an organic miracle and mystery of living. It is an intuitive unfolding of Reality; a perceptual revolution; a revelation and re-evaluation of the Self as spiritual unity.

A satori has the effect of severing any ties with normal everyday life, as the experiencer has known it up to that point. After satori, when the original void or no-thing is glimpsed, nothing is ever the same. The sudden school of Huineng was simply distinguished from the "mental tranquilization" school by its insistence upon the satori, the sudden inuitive flash of insight, as oposed to the subtle philosophical dialectics of the Buddhist dominated earlier school.

A monk came running to his master: "Master, I have at last experienced no-thing." "Fool, you missed! Return to your meditations. If nothing is an experience than it is still some-thing. This was just the first satori." Some time later the monk returns flush with joy. "Master, I have just experienced that there is no experience and no-experiencer, only no-thing-ness." "Idiot," and the master hits him again. "Who has still experienced? Go back and meditate." This is the second satori. Later the master passed the monk's cell and inquired, "Have you experienced nothing yet?" to which the monk only smiles and does not say a single word. The master is well pleased. Ko Hsuan says of this moment:

"He realizes the no-thing-ness of nothing is also nothing and when the nethermost nothing is reached there is most truly to be found a deep and unchanging stillness."

The void has opened its doors and the monk steps beyond the beyond.