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 A review of the early historical documents and literature of early Zen masters clearly reveals that they were well versed in numerous Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras, including Madhyamaka.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
Emotional reasoning a way to stop emotional reasoning. As seen above, high emotional arousal inhibits brain regions necessary for logical complex reasoning. With less emotional arousal, cognitive reasoning is not diminished and the potential to not associate oneself with his or her emotions is stronger. If not treated, debilitating effects can occur, the most common being depression. On the other hand, emotional reasoning has the potential to be good when used to appraise the outside world and not ourselves. It is useful when one has to emotionally appraise something. Judging by how one feels when assessing the object, person, or event, it