Around 583 A.D., in China, during the Period of Bea-Chou , Emperor Wu advocated Taoism and oppressed Buddhism. He vacated all monks out of the Buddhist temples, torn down all the temples, destroyed all the status, and burned all the sutras. The monks had to escape and took refuge in the mountains, away from the authority, so they could practice their religion.
In the mountains, there were no temples, sutras to help them with the learning. They could only relied on their inner Buddha within themselves to guide them through the harsh life in the wild.
In a sense, this harsh environment has became a cradle for the development of a particular Buddhism teaching and learning method which we now refer to as the Zen Buddhism.
In the primitive environment, away from all outside artificial influences, the cultivators were focus and became much more aware of the nature. They were able to draw correlation between the Buddhism teaching and the nature through observation.
The teaching was normally all based on real life experiences and the interaction between human and the nature.
Through Zen Buddhism,
one would realize that the answer to one's problem may not be far away
- The truth is within an arm's reach, if one is willing to search for
it.
