How is this new way of looking at things demonstrated by the Zen masters? Their methods are naturally very uncommon, unconventional, illogical, and consequently incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The object of the present essay will be to describe those methods classified under the following general headings: I. Verbal Method, and II. Direct Method. The first method may be further divided into: 1. Paradox; 2. Going Beyond Opposites; 3. Contradiction; 4. Affirmation; 5. Repetition; and 6. Exclamation. The Direct Method, so called, means a display of physical force, and may be subdivided into several groups such as gesture, striking, performance of a definite set of acts, directing others to move about, etc. But as I do not mean to offer here any scientific and thoroughgoing classification of the Zen masters’ ways of dealing with their pupils in order to initiate them into the mysteries of Zen, I will not attempt to be exhaustive in this article. Later I will write fully about the Direct Method. If I make the reader acquire here a kind of understanding as to the general tendencies and peculiarities of Zen Buddhism, I regard my task as a success. II It is well-known that all mystics are fond of paradoxes to expound their views. For instance, a Christian mystic may say: “God is real, yet he is nothing, infinite emptiness; he is at once all-being and no-being. The divine kingdom is real and objective; and at the same time it is within myself—I myself am heaven and hell.” Eckhart’s “divine darkness” or “immovable mover” is another example. I believe we can casually pick up any such statements in mystic literature, and compile a book of mystic irrationalities. Zen is no exception in this respect, but in its way of thus expressing the truth there is something we may designate characteristically Zen. It principally consists in the concreteness and vividness of expression. It generally refuses to lend an ear to abstractions. A few examples will be given. According to Fudaishi (Fu-ta-shih)[6.8]; “Empty-handed I go and yet the spade is in my hands; I walk on foot, and yet on the back of an ox I am riding: When I pass over the bridge, Lo, the water floweth not, but the bridge doth flow.”