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Actually, Zen owes more to Chinese Quietism than it does to Mahayana Buddhism.

The Ch'an ( Zen ) sect may have derived its metaphysic from Mahayana, but its psychology was pure early Taoist.

This is well evidenced by the Quietist doctrines carried over in Zen: the idea of the inward turning of thought, the enjoinder to put aside desires and perturbations so that a return to purity, peace, and stillness -- a union with the Infinite, with the Tao -- could be effected.

In fact, the antipathy to outward ceremonies hailed by modern exponents as so uniquely characteristic of the `` direct thinking '' Zennist was a feature of Taoism.

So, too, was the insistence on the relativity of the external world, and the ideas that language and things perceived by consciousness were poor substitutes indeed for immediate perception by pure, indwelling spirit: the opposition of pure consciousness to ratiocinating consciousness.