Chan Buddhism

Chan is a form of Buddhism that developed in China from the sixth century CE and spread to the rest of East Asia, where it is known as Zen in Japan and Seon in Korea. Its name transliterates the Sanskrit dhyāna, “meditation”, but what set it apart was less meditation than its insistence that awakening is realised directly, in embodied practice, rather than by studying texts and commentaries.

Building on the Chinese Buddhist conviction that all beings have Buddha-nature, Chan held that enlightenment is not a destination to be reached but something to be demonstrated. Later tradition summed it up as “a special transmission outside the scriptures, not established upon words and letters”. When the teachings of Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch, were given the title of a sutra, a word reserved for the Buddha’s own teachings, it in effect proclaimed him China’s first homegrown Buddha.