Sensing that the emperor was not yet prepared for such teachings, Bodhidharma left the palace and traveled to a mountain monastery to begin a long career of meditation. Over the years his reputation for wisdom gradually attracted many followers--dissident Chinese who rejected classical Buddhism and all its rigmarole in favor of Bodhidharma's meditation, or _dhyana_, a Sanskrit term they pronounced as Ch'an--later to be called Zen by the Japanese. This teaching of meditation and vast emptiness shared very little with other branches of Chinese Buddhism. Ch'an had no sacred images because it had no gods to worship, and it de-emphasized the scriptures, since its central dogma was that dogma is useless. Handed down from master to pupil was the paradoxical teaching that nothing can be taught. According to Ch'an (and Zen), understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and heeding the instincts, the intuition. Thus Zen became the religion of the antirational, what might be called the counter mind. The counter mind has taken on more concrete significance in recent years with the discovery that the human mind is not a single entity but is divided into two quite different functional sections. We now know that the left hemisphere of the brain governs the logical, analytical portion of our lives, whereas the right hemisphere is the seat of our intuitive, nonverbal perception and understanding. As far back as the ancient Greeks, we in the West have maintained an almost unshakable belief in the superiority of the analytical side of the mind, and this belief may well be the most consistent distinguishing quality of Western philosophy. By contrast, the East in general and Zen in particular have advanced the opposite view. In fact, Zen masters have deliberately developed techniques (like illogical riddles or _koan_) to discredit the logical, verbal side of the mind so that the intuitive perceptions of the right hemisphere, the counter mind, may define reality. What is the counter mind really like? What is there about it that has caused Western thinkers to disavow its functions for so many centuries? The answer to these questions is not simple, but the path leading to it is directly before us. Zen has produced a rich culture which we may now examine at length. As the scholar-diplomat Sir George Sansom has pointed out, "The influence of [Zen] upon Japan has been so subtle and pervading that it has become the essence of her finest culture." And in the classical culture of Japan it is possible to find the most revealing examples of the arts of the counter mind. Zen culture invites us to experience reality without the intervening distractions of intellect, categories, analysis. Here we may find the best evidence of what the intuitive side of the mind can produce--evidence all the more fascinating because it repudiates many of the most cherished assumptions of Western civilization.