When Bodhidharma came to China, he saw that most Chinese learners did not grasp the truth of Buddhism. They merely sought it through interpretation of texts and thought of the changing phenomena all around them as real action. Bodhidharma wished to make these eager learners see that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself. The real truth is nothing but one’s own mind.

Thus, he maintained that the real teaching must be transmitted directly from one mind to another, without the use of words.

Guifeng Zongmi (780 CE-841 CE), Guifeng Zongmi was a Tang dynasty Buddhist scholar and bhikkhu, installed as fifth patriarch of the Huayan school as well as a patriarch of the Heze school of Southern Chan Buddhism. He wrote a number of works on the contemporary situation of Tang Buddhism, which also discussed Taoism and Confucianism.