How did Zen become Zen? And what the heck is it, anyway? I’m on a personal mission to the lands of its history to find out.

Where did Zen come from and how is it different to other forms of Buddhism? Did it start in India or China? How come it’s so popular in Japan? Why does it appeal to so many people in the west now? And what, for the love of Buddha, is the sound of one hand clapping?

These are all questions that I’ve been mulling for thirteen years, since I first put my bottom on a black meditation cushion and began to stare at a wall back in 2001.

On the back of my first book, Never Mind the Bullocks, which was the account of a 10,000km drive around India in the world’s cheapest car, I now plan a longer, more ambitious journey that will set off from one of the most ancient cities in the world, Varanasi, and end up in one of the most modern, Tokyo, charting the 2,500 year journey of Zen along the way.

I’m hoping to unearth what remains of the great masters of Zen who have purportedly carried and transmitted the great teaching in an unbroken line since one fateful afternoon on Vulture Peak back in four-hundred-and-something BC when the Buddha twirled a flower between his fingers and beamed a wry smile at his disciple Mahakasha.

The journey itself will cover about 12-15 key destinations in India, China and Japan from the story of Zen, from the place of Buddha’s first sermon, through the temples of the ancient patriarchs of China, to the headquarters of contemporary Zen in Japan. The places will provide cues for stories such as the ones outlined above, which will in turn provide a kind of outline of the basics of Zen itself for readers unacquainted with the tradition. This will be the skeleton of the book, while the flesh will be the narrative itself, a much more personal take with prose that endeavours to be outrageous, funny and devoid of the usual dry earnestness associated with spiritual books.

As a girl, and now a wife with the prospect of one day becoming a mother, I don’t quite fit snugly into the traditional, patriarchal zen mould that often looks bleakly the chances of lasses like me having any kind of spiritual practice. I beg to differ for many reasons, and will be putting this question to the monks I meet along the way, as well as the nuns I hope to encounter.