that the true mystics of all religions are truth-seers and that Ch’an (Zen) is of peculiar importance to the West for the very reason that it states in clear, god-free terms what Meister Ekhart, St John of the Cross and their fellow mystics experienced for themselves but saw fit to veil in the religious symbolism generally accepted by their contemporaries. Indeed, they had not much choice. Since the ultimate vision is a perception in which perceiver and perceiving are transcended and nothing remotely describable is perceived, the successful adept is left with three alternatives — to remain silent, thereby relinquishing all attempt to guide others towards the goal; to clothe invisible reality in the garments of the religion then and there prevailing; or to point the way by systematically demolishing all the categories of thought, such as colour, shape, size, existence, nonexistence, space, time and so on. It is this last approach which gave rise to that school of Buddhism which, known in Sanskrit as Dhyana and in Chinese as Ch’an, or Ch’an-na, has reached the West under its Japanese name of Zen.

John Blofeld in is introduction to Zen Teaching of Instantaneous Awakening being: the teaching of the Zen Master Hui Hai, known as the Great Pearl