The difference between the Southern and the Northern school of Zen is one inherent in human mind; if we call the one intellectual or intuitional, the other would be regarded as pragmatical. The reason why the Southern school is known as “abrupt” or “instant” (_yugapad_) against the “gradual” (_kramavṛittya_) school of the North is because it upholds that the coming of enlightenment is instantaneous and does not allow any gradation, as there are no stages of progress in it; whereas the Northern school emphasises the process of arriving at enlightenment which is naturally gradual, requiring much time and concentration. Hui-nêng was a great advocate of absolute idealism, while Shên-hsiu was a realist and refused to ignore a world of particulars where Time rules over all our doings. An idealist does not necessarily ignore the objective aspect of reality, but his eyes are always fixed at one point which stands by itself, and his surveyings are done from this absolute point. The doctrine of abruptness is thus the result of looking at the multitudinousness of things in absolute unity. All true mystics are followers of the “abrupt” school. The flight from the alone to the alone is not and cannot be a gradual process. The teaching of Shên-hsiu is to be heeded as the practical advice to those who are actually engaged in the study of Zen, but it fails to describe the character of experience known as “the seeing into one’s own Nature,” which was the special message of Hui-nêng as distinguished from those of the other Buddhist schools. That the school of Shên-hsiu could not survive as a branch of Zen was natural enough, for Zen could not be anything else but an instantaneous act of intuition. As it opens up all of a sudden a world hitherto undreamed of, it is an abrupt and discrete leaping from one plane of thought to another. Hsiu missed the ultimate object of Zen when he emphasised the process to reach the end. As a practical adviser he was therefore excellent and full of merit.