For the followers of Bodhidharma, however, this conception of Buddha seemed too crude to be accepted unhesitatingly and the doctrine too much irrelevant with and uncongenial to actual life.  Since Zen denounced, as we have seen in the previous chapter, the scriptural authority, it is quite reasonable to have given up this view of Buddha inculcated in the Mahayana sutras, and to set at naught those statues and images of supernatural beings kept in veneration by the orthodox Buddhists.  Tan Hia (Tan-ka), a noted Chinese Zen master, was found warming himself on a cold morning by the fire made of a wooden statue of Buddha.  On another occasion he was found mounting astride the statue of a saint.  Chao Chen (Jo-shu) one day happened to find Wang Yuen (Bun-yen) worshipping the Buddha in the temple, and forthwith struck him with his staff.  “Is there not anything good in the worshipping of the Buddha?” protested Wang Yuen.  Then the master said:  “Nothing is better than anything good."[FN#140] These examples fully illustrate Zen’s attitude towards the objects of Buddhist worship.  Zen is not, nevertheless, iconoclastic in the commonly accepted sense of the term, nor is it idolatrous, as Christian missionaries are apt to suppose.

[FN#140] Zen-rin-rui-shu.

Zen is more iconoclastic than any of the Christian or the Mohammedan denominations in the sense that it opposes the acceptance of the petrified idea of Deity, so conventional and formal that it carries no inner conviction of the believers.  Faith dies out whenever one comes to stick to one’s fixed and immutable idea of Deity, and to deceive oneself, taking bigotry for genuine faith.  Faith must be living and growing, and the living and growing faith should assume no fixed form.  It might seem for a superficial observer to take a fixed form, as a running river appears constant, though it goes through ceaseless changes.  The dead faith, immutable and conventional, makes its embracer appear religious and respectable, while it arrests his spiritual growth.  It might give its owner comfort and pride, yet it at bottom proves to be fetters to his moral uplifting.  It is on this account that Zen declares:  “Buddha is nothing but spiritual chain or moral fetters,” and, “If you remember even a name of Buddha, it would deprive you of purity of heart.”  The conventional or orthodox idea of Buddha or Deity might seem smooth and fair, like a gold chain, being polished and hammered through generations by religious goldsmiths; but it has too much fixity and frigidity to be worn by us.

“Strike off thy fetters, bonds that bind thee down Of shining gold or darker, baser ore;

Know slave is slave caressed or whipped, not free;
For fetters tho’ of gold, are not less strong to bind.”

—­The Song of the Sannyasin.

3.  Buddha is Unnamable.