So far the direct method has not been of any violent character as to involve a bodily injury or nervous shock, but the masters had no qualms if they thought necessary to shake the pupils roughly. Rinzai for one was noted for the directness and incisiveness of his dealings; the point of his sword cut through the heart of the opponent. The monk Jō (Ting)[6.75] was one of his disciples, and when he asked the master what the fundamental principle of Buddhism was, Rinzai came down from his straw chair, and taking hold of the monk slapped him with the palm of his hand, and let him go. Jō stood still without knowing what to make of the whole procedure when a by-standing monk blamed him for not bowing to the master. While doing so, Jō all of a sudden awoke to the truth of Zen. Later, when he was passing over a bridge, he happened to meet a party of three Buddhist scholars, one of whom asked Jō, “The river of Zen is deep, and its bottom must be sounded. What does this mean?” Jō, disciple of Rinzai, at once seized the questioner and was at the point of throwing him over the bridge, when his two friends interceded and asked Jō’s merciful treatment of the offender. Jō released the scholar, saying, “If not for the intercession of his friends I would at once let him sound the bottom of the river himself.” With these people Zen was no joke, no mere play of ideas, it was on the contrary a most serious thing on which they would stake their lives. Rinzai was a disciple of Ōbaku (Huang-po), but while under the master he did not get any special instruction on Zen; for whenever he asked him as to the fundamental truth of Buddhism, he was struck by Ōbaku. But it was these blows that opened Rinzai’s eye to the ultimate truth of Zen and made him exclaim, “After all there is not much in the Buddhism of Ōbaku!”[6.76] In China and in Korea what little of Zen is left mostly belongs to the school of Rinzai. In Japan alone the Soto branch is flourishing as much as the Rinzai. The rigour and vitality of Zen Buddhism that is still present in the Rinzai school of Japan comes from the three blows of Ōbaku so mercifully dealt out to his poor disciple. There is in fact more truth in a blow or a kick than in the verbosity of logical discourse. At any rate the Zen masters were in dead earnest whenever the demonstration of Zen was demanded. See the following instance.