The Japanese reformation represented by Amidism and Nichiren was a natural outcome of the contempt for the average man that characterized the early sects. It also opened the door for Zen, which found an appeal among the non-aristocratic warrior class to equal that of the popular Buddhist sects among the peasantry and bourgeoisie. As it happened, the warriors who became fired with Zen also took control of the government away from the aristocracy after the twelfth century, with the result that Zen became the unofficial state religion of Japan during its great period of artistic activity. CHAPTER FOUR The Chronicles of Zen _A special transmission outside the _sutras_; No reliance upon words and letters; Direct pointing to the very soul; Seeing into one's own essence. _(Traditional Homage to Bodhidharma) _ _ _Bodhidharma _THERE IS A ZEN tradition that one day while the Buddha was seated at Vulture Peak he was offered a flower and requested to preach on the law. He took the flower, and holding it at arm's length, slowly turned it in his fingers, all the while saying nothing. It was then that his most knowing follower smiled in understanding, and the silent teaching of Zen was born. That wordless smile is believed to have been transmitted through twenty-eight successive Indian patriarchs, ending with the famous Bodhidharma (ca. A.D. 470-534), who traveled to China in 520 and founded the school of Ch'an Buddhism, becoming the first Chinese patriarch. What Bodhidharma brought to China was the Indian concept of meditation, called _dhyana _in Sanskrit, Ch'an in Chinese and Zen in Japanese. Since the transmission of the wordless insights of meditation through a thousand years of Indian history must, by definition, have taken place without the assistance of written scriptures or preaching, the identity and role of the twenty-eight previous Indian patriarchs must be approached with caution. It has been suggested that the later Chinese Ch'an Buddhists, striving for legitimacy of their school in the eyes of colleagues from more established sects, resurrected a line of "patriarchs" from among the names of obscure Indian monks and eventually went on to enshroud these faceless names with fanciful biographies. These Indian patriarchs reportedly transmitted one to the other the wordless secrets of _dhyana_, thereby avoiding any need to compose _sutras_, as did the lesser-gifted teachers of the other schools.