[f89] In this connection I wish to make some remarks against certain scholars who consider the philosophy of Śūnyatā to be really the foundation of Zen. Such scholars fail utterly to grasp the true purport of Zen which is first of all an experience and not at all a philosophy or dogma. Zen can never be built upon any set of metaphysical or psychological views; the latter may be advanced after the Zen experience has taken place, but never before. The philosophy of the Prajñāpāramitā can never precede Zen, but must always follow it. Buddhist scholars like those at the time of Dharma are too apt to identify teaching and life, theory and experience, description and fact. When this confusion is allowed to grow, Zen Buddhism will cease to yield an intelligent and satisfactory interpretation. Without the fact of Enlightenment under the Bodhi-tree near the Nairañjanā, no Nāgārjunas could ever hope to write a single book on the Prajñā philosophy. [f90] As I stated before, there is a confusion between Dharma’s _mien-pi_ habit of sitting and his doctrine of the _pi-kuan_ meditation. The confusion dates quite early, and even at the time of the author of the _Records_ the original meaning of _pi-kuan_, wall-contemplation, must have been lost. [f91] Sometimes this man is said to be a civilian and sometimes a soldier embracing Confucianism. [f92] As one can readily see, this story is more or less fictitious. I mean Kuang’s standing in the snow and cutting-off of his arm in order to demonstrate his earnestness and sincerity. Some think that the snow story and that of self-mutilation do not belong to that of Kuang, but borrowed from some other sources, as Tao-hsüan makes no reference to them in his book. The loss of the arm was due to a party of robbers who attacked Kuang after his interview with Dharma. We have no way to verify these stories either way. The whole setting however is highly dramatic, and there must have been once in the history of Zen some necessity to interweave imagination largely with facts, whatever they may be. [f93] According to Hsieh-sung, the author of the _Right Transmission of the Law_, Bodhi-Dharma has here followed Nāgārjuna in the anatomy of Zen-understanding. For Nāgārjuna says in his famous commentary on the _Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra_, “Moral conduct is the skin, meditation is the flesh, the higher understanding is the bone, and the mind subtle and good is the marrow.” “This subtle mind,” says Hsieh-sung, is what is secretly transmitted from the Buddha to his successors in the faith. He then refers to Chih-I of the Sui dynasty who regards this mind as the abode of all the Buddhas and as the middle way in which there is neither unity nor multiplicity and which can never be adequately expressed in words.