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 A review of the early historical documents and literature of early Zen masters clearly reveals that they were well versed in numerous Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras, including Madhyamaka.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 Narratives narrative, due to the power of the Western colonial forces and the modernisation of Japan, and the popularization in the Western world. As a consequence of the adaptation of Zen to the modern world, and the cross-cultural fertilization of western transcendentalism and esotery and Japanese Zen,a romantic idea of enlightenment as insight into a timeless, transcendent reality has been popularized. This is especially due to the influence of Soyen Shaku and his student D.T. Suzuki, who, though known as a Zen Buddhist, was also influenced by Theosophy. Further popularization was due to the writings of Heinrich Dumoulin. Dumoulin viewed metaphysics