The Zen (Dhyana), that is "holy meditation" in its original meaning of the word, has its ultimate purpose in the great Enlightment, and it cannot be attained with any conceptional knowledge ; it is the supreme wisdom to be obtained beyond any power of speculation. By acquiring this great Enlightment man may be delivered not only from the problem of life and death, but also from all the sufferings of a human being. The objective description of the motives, by which the founder of the Zen sect was inspired to the great Enlightment, and the landscape paintings with verses have been numerously counted among the Zen sect pictures. But it is not appropriate to regard them as the essential ones. The essence of the Zen sect pictures should be the manifestation of the very content of the great Emlightment. One of the good examples is "The Catifish Caught with Gourd" by Josetsu, a Japanese Zen sect priest in the early fifteenth century. And the writer believes that "The Paintings Representing an Anecdote of Hui-Neng, the Sixth Inheritor of the Zen sect" attributed to Tsu-Weng, "An Arhan and a Serpentine" and "Kan-non, Monkeys and a Crane" by Mu-ch'i must be held in. the special esteem as the typical masterpieces of the Zen sect pictures. In these works, full of smooth and soft strokes, the liberated mind of the painters is most clearly evinced. It seems to the writer that the painters, without having attained the great Enlightment, create such masterpieces illustrating the very essence of Zen.
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