Zen

According to tradition, Zen was introduced into China in 520 by the Indian Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The most important figures in Zen's early development, which is distinctively Chinese, were Hui-neng, Te-shan, and Lin-chi. Chinese black-ink painting during the Song dynasty (960-1279) became one of the finest artistic expressions of the Zen school.

The two main sects of Zen were brought to Japan by Japanese who had studied in China. The Buddhist monk Eisai introduced Rinzai Zen in 1191, and the Buddhist monk Dōgen introduced Soto Zen in 1227. Both sects continue to flourish in Japan. With the development of Zen in Japan, such painters as Sesshū, Sesson Shūkei, and Jasoku expressed the Zen view of nature directly in their work. Under Zen influence the Japanese brought the art of ceremonial tea drinking to a high degree of refinement and also developed a distinctive kind of poetry, the brief verse form haiku.

Western interest in Zen dates from the publication of the first authoritative account of the subject in English, Essays in Zen Buddhism by the Japanese scholar Daisetz T. Suzuki. After World War II and the occupation of Japan, a great interest in Zen developed in Europe and the U.S., notably among artists, philosophers, and psychologists. It had a special appeal for abstract and nonobjective painters and sculptors. Philosophers have noted its affinities with the thought of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, with the theory of general semantics of the American scientist and writer Alfred Korzybski, and, to some extent, with existentialism as propounded by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.