Zen expected to become familiar with the classics of the Zen canon". A review of the early historical documents and literature of early Zen masters clearly reveals that they were well versed in numerous Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras, including Madhyamaka. Especially the Lotus Sutra played a large role in the development of East Asian Buddhism, including Zen. Nevertheless, Zen is often pictured as anti-intellectual. This picture of Zen emerged during the Song Dynasty (960–1297), when Chán became the dominant form of Buddhism in China, and gained great popularity among the educated and literary classes of Chinese society. The use of koans, which
Zen in the United States and publishing Oriental spiritual literature in the West. Shaku instead recommended Suzuki, then a young scholar and his former disciple. Starting in 1897, Suzuki worked from Carus' home in Illinois; his first projects were translations of the "Tao Te Ching" and Asvaghosa's "Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana". At the same time, Suzuki began writing "Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism", which was published in 1907. Suzuki returned to Japan in 1909 and married Beatrice Erskine Lane, an American Theosophist and Radcliffe graduate, in 1911. Through English language essays and books, such as "Essays in Zen Buddhism" (1927), he became a visible