Zen and the art of real time cash transfers. That's what it said in a recent Scotia Bank ad that I saw when I visited the Globe and Mail website. If you Google zen, you end up getting stuff like "Zen and the Art of the Internet", and "Zen Blogging". Searching on Amazon.com you get a link for a "Zen Hug", as well as the "Zen Bra", a "Zen tank top", as well as a host of books entitled "Zen and the art of________".

So one is really left with one question; what the hell is zen? Is it a brand name - like Hello Kitty - that can be slapped onto any product to give an earthy feeling of new-age wholesomeness? Type 'Islam' into Amazon.com and you come up with a list of books on - you guessed it; Islam.

'Christianity' brings up a list of books, for the most part, though there is a selection of Christian T-shirts with slogans such as "I love you this much" or "Accused of being a Christian? Do they have enough evidence to convict you?" which seem, at least, to be somehow connected to the religion itself.

So what is it about Zen that is so open to interpretation and manipulation? What is it in Zen philosophy that makes cash transfers easy, and breasts perky?

A quick look in the dictionary is of no help in trying to resolve the murky connections between the manipulation of personal finances and the managing of one's mammaries, as the word 'Zen' comes up in the Oxford Dictionary as "A Japanese form of Buddhism".

Was the Buddha into banking? Or fashion? Why does this stuff come up if you search for Zen? Weren't Mohammad and Jesus interested in the fusion of comfort and support that women could enjoy from a well designed bra?

It's difficult to say if there has ever been a religious practice that has been so heartily exploited in the commercial and cultural arena for such a wide array of products, books, crackpot philosophies and self-help gurus. But therein lies part of what we in the West have been fed about Zen. Zen is freedom. Zen is the abandonment of rules. Zen is relaxation, and leaving behind the worries of the everyday world. It is perfect self-expression and the comic, slightly ironic approach to the regular workaday world.

There's just one problem for the Western Zen enthusiast, however. Apparently - and I know this may come as a shock - Japanese Zen master haven't (gasp) heard of Enya. It's true. What's worse, Japanese monks, far from being a bunch of grass-smoking hippies, are actually people who live a life of rigid and brutal discipline. They wake up early. They don't eat much. They concentrate a lot, and don't drink alcohol or do drugs...and what's even harder to believe, they aren't really interested in interior design or fashion!