In fact, this passage sums up the special message contained in Dharma’s teaching, and in it we may get an adequate answer as to the exact meaning of _pi-kuan_. The term must have been a novel one in his day, and the originality of his views really lay in the creative sense of the one word “_pi_” It was so concrete, so graphic, and there was nothing abstract and conceptual about it. Hence Tao-hsüan’s special reference to Dharma’s teaching as the _Tai-chêng pi-kuan_. (Mahayanistic wall-contemplation). While there was nothing specifically Zen in his doctrine of “Two Entrances and Four Acts,” the teaching of _Pi-kuan_, wall-contemplation, was what made Bodhi-Dharma the first patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China. The author of the _Rightful Transmission of the Śākya Doctrine_ interprets _pi-kwan_ as meaning the state of mind where “no external dusts get in.”[4.31] This may be all right, but we are not told where he finds the authority for this way of understanding. Had he in mind Dharma’s remark to Hui-k‘ê as recorded in the document known as _Pieh-chi_? In any event the underlying meaning of the “wall-contemplation” must be found in the subjective condition of a Zen master, which is highly concentrated and rigidly exclusive of all ideas and sensuous images. To understand the phrase, “_pi-kwan_” as simply meaning “wall-gazing” will be sheer absurdity. If the specific message of Dharma as the founder of Zen in China is to be sought anywhere in the writings of his, which are still in existence, it must be in this “Mahayanistic wall-contemplation.”