Nowadays people use the word Zen indiscriminately for everything from the Zen of making an instant fortune overnight to the Zen of cooking hard boiled eggs. But what is Zen and what are its philosophical origins as a living tradition of Mahayana Buddhism? This book explores the original "no-mind" teachings of early Zen Buddhism as they evolved in T'ang Dynasty China during the 8th and 9th centuries. In short this book is about Zen before it became Zen.