East Asian Buddhism on Buddhist Resources

Chan Buddhism in China

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:58:40 +0200

Chan is the Chinese meditation school — the ancestor of Korean Seon, Japanese Zen, and Vietnamese Thien. The word transliterates Sanskrit dhyana, meditation, through Chinese chan’na, abbreviated to chan.

Its self-description is a four-line verse, traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma and in fact considerably later:

Zen in Japan: Soto and Rinzai

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:59:41 +0200

Zen is Chan transmitted to Japan and developed there for eight centuries. It is not the largest Japanese Buddhist tradition — Jodo Shinshu and the Nichiren-derived organisations are considerably bigger — and it is by a very wide margin the best known outside Japan.

Nichiren Buddhism

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 01:00:44 +0200

Nichiren Buddhism is the most distinctive thing Japan did with the tradition: an exclusivist school built on a single scripture and a single practice, founded by a man who spent his career denouncing every other form of Buddhism in the strongest terms available, and which today accounts for some of the largest lay Buddhist organisations in the world.

Tiantai and Huayan

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 01:01:50 +0200

Tiantai and Huayan are the most philosophically ambitious things Chinese Buddhism produced. Neither survived as a major institution after the 845 persecution; both shaped everything that came afterwards, including Chan, which defined itself partly against them and absorbed a great deal from them.