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Alexander the Great went east

By the 4th century BC, the legends of The Buddha, Socrates, Zoroaster, LaoTzu, and Confucius had already been installed in their respective cultures. Then, in 334 BC, Alexander the Great, having been tutored by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (who in turn had been a student of Plato - the primary source of information about Socrates), set off east from Macedonia to successfully conquer the Persian Empire, and following that, the Indian subcontinent - all the way to the foot of the Himalayas. Within the 100 years before Alexander's arrival, at a place now called Bodh Gaya in India, the Buddha had sat under a fig tree in an ancient 'Hindu' yoga asana known most famously as the lotus posture. In that position he practiced mindfulness of the present moment with deep persistence, and was said to have eventually found liberation from all suffering. Subsequently, in the decades that followed, the Buddha's cultural practices met with Alexander's Greek practices in the northern reaches of India, and created a new synthesis; the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom.

Greek and Buddhist cultures mixed

Alexander the Great's tolerance of other belief systems meant that there were plenty of opportunities for cultures to mix. As an example, the tradition of making statues of the Buddha in human form came from the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom on the Indian subscontintent (the Buddha had expressed that no depictions of a representative 'buddhist' human form were to be made). Even in modern-day China there are ancient images of the Buddha wearing robes which are clearly from the Greek artistic tradition.

Greco-Buddhism and Zoroastrianism mixed

The flame of Zoroastrianism became incorporated into Greco-Bactrian Buddhism as a ring of fire surrounding the meditating buddha as a symbol of purification. This new synthesis, from an area which is now a border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan (then called Gandhara), was to be carried east into China along the Silk Road. It is now one of the main branches of Buddhism - Mahayana Buddhism.

Greco-Iranian-Buddhism and Daoism and Confucianism mixed

Mahayana Buddhism, arriving in China from the Silk Road, was interpreted and translated into Chinese by native scholars who were steeped in the Daoist and Confucian teachings of China dominant at that time. The Greco-Iranian-Buddhist tradition then took on a further significant 'distillation' as it mixed with the deep practical wisdom already present in Chinese culture. This Greco-Iranian-Sino-Buddhism found its height in Chinese society in the form of Ch'an (or 'Zen') Buddhism. It was a synthesis of the most useful mind-body insights from Greece, Persia, India, and China - an area of land which covered the vast majority of the 'civilized' world at that time - an area which did not include Britain or the Americas to the west.

An Iranian Buddhist master called Bodhidharma went east

An ancient Chinese official recorded a visit of a travelling Iranian Buddhist master to China in the 6th Century AD; a Mahayana teacher who went by the name of Bodhidharma. There are other accounts of a Buddhist master of the same name and time period, but they say he came to China by sea from South India. Arrival by the northern Silk Road was more likely, however, and the fact that this Boddhidharma became the first patriarch of Chinese Zen Buddhism reinforces a probable origin somewhere on or near the Indian subcontinent where Greco-Iranian Mahayana Buddhism was, or had been, still alive.

Bodhidharma founded the Zen school and Buddhist martial yoga

To this day people visit a meditation cave where Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Zen, is said to have meditated - on the side of a mountain overlooking China's famous Shaolin Temple. Not only is Bodhidharma attributed with founding the Zen school, however, but also with teaching a special yoga which could be used to defend oneself if faced with an attacker. Thus, Shaolin KungFu and related disciplines were established. The similarity between the two muscly guardians at the entrance to Shaolin Temple and Greek statues of Heracles/Hercules have been noted by scholars - especially in the light of a muscly Hercules having often been carved on ancient Greco-Buddhist buildings as a bodyguard standing next to a depiction of the Buddha in the same stance.

Japan inherited China's Zen which was then discovered by the West

China's Zen was carried east to Japan, and it also spread down to Vietnam and up into Korea. China then suffered invasions from the Mongols, and their golden era of Zen culture became watered down and diluted, and different schools of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism emphasised various aspects of practice which produced a different cultural perspective. Japan managed to repel attempted invasions from the Mongols, and so preserved many of the ancient Chinese Zen traditions, although of course local interpretations and influences could not be avoided. It was from Japan that after 1500 years Zen meditation would finally make it's way west to modern Europe, as interest in Samurai ethics, bonsai, and the green tea ceremony (the latter two practices inherited from China) caught people's attention and intrigue.

Zen meditation lead the way to secular mindfulness

Although mindfulness practices can be found in a variety of religious and philosophical traditions - like hesychasm in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and whirling dervishes in Sufi Islam, the Zen Buddhist tradition from the Far East, with its emphasis on simplicity, direct observation governing belief, questioning of the truth of all phenomena, exploration of psychological patterns, and a grounding in the natural world, has historically lent itself more easily and effectively, as a system of mindfulness practice, to being explored by scientists in a secular context. This is verified by the likes of Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn and Tara Bennett-Goleman finding core mindfulness resources in Korean Zen and Japanese Zen respectively during the 1970s, as they lead the way for secular mindfulness-based interventions for stress and depression to be further explored. This 'secular Zen' lens then allowed for the mindfulness components in the practices of a host of other schools and cultural traditions - such as Indian yoga - to be distilled from their mystical frameworks.

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