Excerpt from The Tao of Physics

Discusses Zen and how Taoism combined with Buddhism

More than any other school of Eastern mysticism, Zen is convinced that words can never express the ultimate truth. it must have inherited this conviction from Taoism, which showed the same uncompromising attitude. "If one asks about the Tao and another answers him," said Chuang Tzu, "neither of them knows it."'

Yet the Zen experience can be passed on from teacher to pupil, and it has, in fact, been transmitted for many centuries by special methods proper to Zen. In a classic summary of four lines, Zen is described as:

A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not founded upon words and letters,
Pointing directly to the human mind,
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.