When the Buddha gave the Flower Sermon and Mahākāśyapa smiled at the first Buddhist council at Vulture Peak around two thousand five hundred years ago, Chan Buddhism was born.
The aim of Chan is expressed in four short verses: “Independent of words; special transmission beyond the doctrine; pointing directly to the mind; seeing one’s nature and becoming an Awakened One.”
Chan was passed on, from mind to mind. Mahākāśyapa passed it on to Ānanda (the second Indian patriarch) who passed it on to Shanavasa (the third Indian patriarch), and so on to many others, all the way down to the twenty-eighth patriarch, Bodhidharma.
Travelling far and wide throughout the East in the sixth century CE, Bodhidharma introduced Chan to China, where he is honoured as the father of Chan. In its collision and fusion with traditional Chinese thinking, Chan Buddhist philosophy has left an indelible imprint on Chinese culture, undergoing six major stages of development leading up to the present day.
Chan Buddhism found wide acceptance among believers and developed into China’s largest sect, while simultaneously passing out of China into Northeast Asia—Korea and Japan—and into Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam.