On the other hand, the Zen masters so called are unable to present their understanding in the light of modern thought. Their most intellectually-productive years are spent in the Meditation Hall, and when they successively graduate from it, they are looked up to as adepts thoroughly versed in the kō-ans.[2] So far so good; but, unfortunately from the scholarly point of view, they remain contented with this, and do not show any lively intellectual interest in the psychology and philosophy of Zen. Thus Zen is left to lie quietly sealed up in the “Sayings” of the masters and in the technical study of the kō-ans; it is thus incapacitated to walk out of the seclusion of the cloisters. Of course, great mistake it would be if one should ever take the notion even for a moment that Zen could be mastered from its philosophical presentation or its psychological description; but this ought not to mean that Zen is not to be intelligently approached or to be made somewhat accessible by our ordinary means of reasoning. I need not mention that my attempts in the following pages are anything but adequate for the rational treatment of the subject. But as a tentative experiment to present Zen from our common-sense point of view and as a direct lineage of Buddhist faith as first proclaimed or rather realised by the Buddha, I hope I have worked towards removing some of the difficulties usually besetting us in the mastery of Zen thought. How far I have succeeded or how utterly I have failed,—this is naturally for the reader to judge. The book is a collection of the Essays originally published in _The Eastern Buddhist_ except one on the “History of Zen Buddhism” which was written specially for this volume; but all of them have been thoroughly revised and in some parts entirely re-written and new chapters added. The book will be followed by a second series of Essays before long, in which some more of the important points in the constitution of Zen will be treated. The publication of these Essays in bookform is principally due to the most liberal encouragement, both material and moral, of Mr Yakichi Ataka, of Osaka, who is an old friend of the author’s and who has not forgotten the pledge half-seriously and half-dreamily made in our youthful days. The author also owes a great deal to his wife in the preparation and revision of the MS, without which the book would have shown many more imperfections than it does now in various ways.