As a system of belief, Zen Buddhism arrived in Japan in the 14th
             century as the result of liberalization of trade relationships between
             Japan and China. (Kitagawa, 1966) Zen Buddhism was, and is a system of
             belief which was meant to give the practitioners influence and control over
             suffering in the world by teaching then to have greater control over
             themselves. The combined effect was to help the Buddhist to respond
             differently to the suffering around him, and thereby less entangled in it,
             and less affected by it. In Medieval Japan, a place which was rule by
             militaristic lords and frequently experiences civil uprisings, and
             territorial battles, suffering was an element of life which the Japanese
             had little to no control over. So the Buddhist treatise, which taught the
             Japanese citizen that they could affect influence over the pain and
             suffering of their world thorough their life style held immediate emotional
             As a result, Zen Buddhism became a part of the Japanese culture. In
             their book, Sources of Japanese Tradition, (1958) editors Tsoumada, deBary,
             and Keene describe the entrance, and saturation of Buddhism into the
             "As for the characteristic feature of Japanese culture, it seems to
             me to lie in moving in the direction from subject to object
             (environment), ever thoroughly negating the self and becoming the
             thing itself; becoming the thing itself to see; becoming the thing
             itself to act. To empty self and see thing, for the self to be
             immersed in things, no mindedness' (as described by Zen Buddhism) or
             effortless acceptance of the grace of Amida. --- These, I believe, are
             the states we Japanese strongly yearn for. . . The essence of the
             Japanese spirit must be to become one in things and in events. If it
             to become one at that primal point in which there is neither self nor
             In other words, the goal o...