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change it has taken a different flavor; with each change of climate it has taken a new perfume. It has become more and more beautiful. Now it is far more beautiful than it was ever before, and it has traveled a long way.
From dhyana to Zen there is tremendous evolution; unimaginable new dimensions have appeared, so much so that if ancient Sanskrit, Vedic seers come to know about Zen they will not believe that this is what has happened to their dhyana. It has moved almost to the opposite polarity, but it has become far more beautiful, far more aesthetic, far more graceful, far more feminine. It has not lost anything.
Ordinarily just the reverse happens: as time goes by things deteriorate. This has not been the case with Zen. With each passing age and with new conquest of a new country and climate, of new people. Zen was so capable it absorbed new qualities; it became enriched. It started growing new flowers with new colors.
It is the meeting of the whole genius of Asia because the Indian genius, the Chinese genius and the Japanese genius -- these are the three main currents of Asian genius -- they all have contributed to Zen.
The first thing to be understood about it is: it is not goal-oriented. It is a way of life herenow; it has nothing to do with a future life, with any paradise. It is not in the ordinary sense another branch of spirituality. It is neither spiritual nor material; it is a transcendence of both. It is not other-worldly, it is not this-worldly either, but it is a great synthesis.
The Zen Master lives in the ordinary life, just as everybody else, but lives in an extraordinary way, with a totally new vision, with great exquisiteness, with tremendous sensitivity, with awareness, watchfulness, meditativeness, spontaneity. There is nothing as sacred in Zen, there is nothing as mundane. All is one, indivisibly one; you cannot divide it as mundane and sacred.
Hence you will find Zen Masters engaged in very mundane activities; no Hindu saint will be ready to do such things. He will call them worldly things. No Jain saint can conceive himself cutting wood or drawing water from the well or carrying water from the river
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