(_acintya_) deeds issuing from spiritual freedom are technically called “deeds performed with no sense of utility” (_anābhogacaryā_), or the “deeds of no purpose” as referred to elsewhere, and mean the perfection of Buddhist life. The _Laṅkāvatāra_ was thus handed over by Bodhi-Dharma to his first disciple Hui-k‘ê as the most illuminating document on the doctrine of Zen. But the development of Zen in China naturally did not follow the line as was indicated in the Sutra, that is, after the Indian fashion; the soil where the dhyana of the _Laṅkāvatāra_ was transplanted did not favour its growth in the same manner as it did in the original climate. Zen was inspired with the life and spirit of the dhyana of the Tathagata, but it created its own mode of manifestation. Indeed this was where it showed its wonderful power of vitality and adaptation. _The Doctrine of Enlightenment as Zen in China_ To understand how the doctrine of Enlightenment or self-realisation came to be translated in China as Zen Buddhism, we must first see where the Chinese mind varies from the Indian generally. When this is done, Zen will appear as a most natural product of the Chinese soil where Buddhism has been successfully transplanted in spite of many adverse conditions. Roughly, then, the Chinese are above all a most practical people while the Indians are visionary and highly speculative. We cannot perhaps judge the Chinese as unimaginative and lacking in the dramatic sense, but when they are compared with the inhabitants of the Buddha’s native land, they look so grey, so sombre. The geographical features of each country are singularly reflected in the people. The tropical luxuriance of imagination so strikingly contrasts with the wintery dreariness of common practicalness. The Indians are subtle in analysis and dazzling in poetic flight; the Chinese are children of earthly life, they plod, they never soar away in the air. Their daily life consists in tilling the soil, gathering dry leaves, drawing water, buying and selling, being filial, and observing social duties, and developing the most elaborate system of etiquette. Being practical means in a sense being historical, observing the progress of time and recording its traces as they are left behind. The Chinese can very well boast of their being great recorders,—such a contrast to the Indian lack of sense of time. Not satisfied with books printed on paper and with ink, the Chinese would engrave their deeds deep in stone, and have developed a special art of stone-cutting. This habit of recording events has developed their literature, and they are quite literary and not at all warlike, they love a peaceful life of culture. Their weakness is that they are willing to sacrifice facts for literary effects, for they are not very exact and scientific. Love of fine rhetoric and beautiful expressions has frequently drowned their practical sense, but here is also their art. Well restrained even in