Many Taoists have an interest in both Buddhism and Zen. Buddhism arrived into China from India about the first century AD. It soon became obvious to the ancient Chinese that both Buddhism and Taoism were on a similar wavelength. For example, both Taoists and Buddhists believe at the heart of reality is emptiness. This belief is consistent with quantum physics which has shown the atom, the building blocks of all matter, is mostly an empty vacuum. So essentially all matter is empty.
Like Taoists, Buddhists also do not believe in a creator God. Buddha was neither a God nor a messenger of God. Buddha's real name was Siddhartha Gautama. He was an Indian prince who left his royal position to determine why people suffer.
Buddha determined we suffer because we have a grasping desire and we are unable to accept change. He concluded that we could end our suffering by developing the correct understanding of life. Cultivating the correct understanding to relieve suffering is the main focus of Buddhism.
When Buddhism was translated into Chinese, many Taoist phrases were used to explain Buddhist concepts. This introduced many Taoist views into Buddhism and greatly simplified the Indian tradition. This began a new school of Buddhism called Mahayana or "the great vehicle". Mahayana Buddhism has a decreased focus on meditation and temple life than its Southern Asian counterpart, Theravada Buddhism.
Although there are many similarities between Buddhism and Taoism, there are some fundamental differences. Buddhists believe the world we experience is not real and that even Nature is an illusion. Taoists not only believe the world is real, but also consider Nature the ultimate reality. Many Buddhists also believe in reincarnation, where as Taoists do not claim any knowledge of what happens after death. A Taoist simply trusts Nature in death as they did in life.
Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism were later combined to form Ch'an Buddhism. Ch'an was later taken to Japan, where it became known as Zen Buddhism. Zen has no fixed doctrines and no dependence on words. Some Zen practitioners say that Zen is not to teach you something new, but is to remind you of something you have forgotten. Others say that you understand Zen when you realise that there is nothing to realise. When an ancient Zen Master was once asked "What is the fundamental meaning of Zen?" he replied "WALK ON!" In other words, continue regardless of any adversity encountered.
At first glance most Westerners would find Zen practices rather bizarre. For instance, a Zen master may ask a student to meditate on an unanswerable riddle called a "koan". A well-known koan is "You know the sound of two hands clapping, but what is the sound made by one hand when it's clapping?" The purpose of a koan is to cultivate a "great doubt" in the student. From the position of a great doubt, the Zen student is then in a state of mind to look at reality from a new perspective, without interference from the ego.
Quantum physics has also found that many aspects of Nature unanswerable. A modern koan may be, "Does light travel as particles or waves?" This question is impossible to answer since light appears to have the paradoxical behaviour of being particles or waves depending on how it's observed. Like a Zen koan, an explanation of this phenomenon is beyond language and reasoning.
Zen is about changing one's consciousness to see the world and one's self as they truly exist. Zen Buddhists believe everyone has a Buddha nature and everyone is a potential Buddha.
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