There are certain characteristics of Indian Buddhism, moreover, which were abhorrent, or at least incomprehensible, to the practical Chinese mind. With its tradition of asceticism inherited from Hindu thought, the Indian Buddhist could easily embrace the kind of deferred gratification prescribed in meditation (meditate and fast moderately now; attain Nirvana later).
The Chinese, immersed in a tradition which celebrated hard work and a satisfying life of the senses---including the sense of humor---undoubtedly chuckled at this and other attitudes and practices which seemed other-worldly and irrelevant to day-to-day life.
...
Buddhism holds that life is suffering, not evil, such as some of the Hindu pundits of the time proclaimed. [D.T.] Suzuki claimed that Mahayana Buddhism (the variety which was accepted in China ) was the "first...teaching in India that contradicted the doctrine of Nirvana as conceived by other Hindu thinkers. The Nirvana of the Hindu yogis was a complete annihilation of being, for they thought that existence is evil, and evil is misery, and the only way to escape misery is to destroy the root of existence, which is nothing less than the total cessation of human desires and activities in Nirvanic unconsciousness."8 This is a point of view antithetical to Chinese thought. It is also a point of view which betrays Suzuki's own bias against Hindu thought; Paramahansa Yogananda, for example, a highly regarded yogi of the 20th century, said existence was not evil, but the play or game of God.
http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/...diatoChina.htm